Wake

by Abria Mattina

  This book is dedicated to Daniel.

  Jem: January 19 to 23

  Monday

  Even sitting in the back corner of the room, in the farthest desk from student traffic and the teacher’s line of sight, it is possible to be the center of attention. The really curious thing about it is that I can be invisible at the same time.

  No one likes to look at seriously ill people. It’s awkward. It might be catching. It might happen to you some day, and that ruins the happy reality of your otherwise happy moment. That’s the invisible bit. But every student in this class is hyperaware that I’m here, even if they don’t look at or talk to me, because although they can’t admit it, they’re afraid I’m going to drop dead at any second.

  Technically, I’m in remission. I say technically because I still feel like shit. Even after the cancer is gone, the bullshit doesn’t end. Napalm-strength drugs damage practically everything, and even the most benign treatments are physically taxing.

  I lay my head down on the desk. Class hasn’t started yet, and none of my teachers tell me to straighten up and pay attention anymore, like lifting my head might kill me.

  Fourth period Social Studies is my worst class. I didn’t even want to take it, but I’m short on prerequisites and nothing else was available in this time slot. All the practical assignments are torture; most of these involve cooking, and the smell turns my stomach every time. This class is right after lunch, too, at the time of day when I’m sure to either feel queasy or tired or both. That’s part of the strategic appeal of the back corner seat: it’s out of everyone’s line of sight; it’s right next to the window, so I can lay my head down on the table and nap in the sun; thirdly, there’s a sink right behind me—lunch has reappeared a few times—and finally, it’s farthest from the storage unit and fridge that I doubt has been cleaned since September.

  Class starts right on the bell. We have a new student today, from St. John’s, Newfoundland. Who in their right mind would willingly move to Smiths Falls?

  I take my feet off the adjacent chair. New Girl is about to infringe on my nap zone, because this bird course is packed and the only other free seat is right in front of the teacher’s desk. No one wants that seat, so she’ll end up next to Cancer Boy.

  I figure it’ll be less awkward for her if we don’t talk, so I don’t even say hello. If I don’t look at her, she won’t stare at me. Luckily it’s a lecture day and we don’t have to work together on a practical assignment. We’re given a series of transparencies to copy. I make an effort at the first two, and then give up and put my head down. I’ll just read the textbook later. Maybe. If I get around to it. I’m pretty sure I’m failing this class already. I haven’t completed a practical yet.

  I have my ‘own’ cot in the nurse’s office, and it’s there that I spend fifth period. I need a nap more than I need an English lecture. It seems too short a time later that Elise is pulling my blanket off. My sister has a preternatural sense of when I’m having a really awful day.

  “Come on,” she says. “Eric’s illegally parked.”

  Tuesday

  My morning starts off on a really annoying repetitive note. Luckily, alarm clocks are equipped with snooze buttons.

  “Don’t you dare hit snooze again!” Mom yells up the stairs.

  I drag myself out of bed and head for the bathroom. I leave the light off and turn on the shower. I like to wash in the dark because it’s like an extra five minutes of sleep. That, and it’s easier on the ego.

  This room used to be Elise’s. Mine was down the hall and Eric and I shared an adjoining bathroom. The trade was her idea. She sensed how important it was to me to have a private bathroom when I got sick.

  Bathing is a pain, even with a waterproof patch over my Hickman. I can’t stand directly under the water, so I have to use a detachable showerhead to direct the spray and keep moisture away from my port—just one more aggravation in what already promises to be a long day.

  I get dressed without looking in the mirror. I don’t need to see myself. No one else needs to, either, which is why I cover up my pale, hairless skin with long sleeves and clothes that used to fit but are now too loose.

  It’s a curious thing, what hair remains and what falls out after chemo. The obvious stuff went quick: head, eyebrows, eyelashes, facial hair. I lost my body hair in patches. The only hair that remains, like some sick joke, are the fine hairs on my second knuckles and enough stray pubic hairs to make me look like a thirteen-year-old boy.

  I’ve got a drawer full of toques, mostly homemade. My crafty little sister knit me one during my first round of chemo and kept churning them out for weeks. I’ve got a toque in every color, and she gives me hell if I don’t match the damn things to whatever I’m wearing. Today’s selection is black, because I’m already in a bad mood and it’s not even eight o’clock.

  *

  I’m feeling exactly like hell by the time I get to Social Studies. Lunch isn’t sitting well. I hope we don’t have a practical today. I just shut my eyes, try to remain completely still, block out the noise of the class, and recite a little mantra in my head that I don’t vomit.

  New Girl sits down next to me. Jeez, does she have to jostle the table like that?

  “You alive?”

  I crack an eyelid and glare at her. “You’re funny.” I want to close my eye again to make the room stop spinning, but that would ruin the effect of the glare.

  “I’m Willa.”

  I turn and hurl into the sink. It feels like more comes back up than I swallowed today at lunch. How is that even possible?

  The class shuts up faster than Jonas Brothers tickets sell out. People swivel in their seats to see what’s going on, like they can’t figure it out.

  New Girl hands me paper towels and turns on the faucet. “Isn’t this just fascinating?” she says brightly, and the other cretins all turn back to their own affairs with low noises of disgust.

  “Peas?” she guesses.

  “Lime Jell-O.” Who asks a question like that?

  This class isn’t a practical, but I nearly wish it were. We’re given our term assignments. We have to work in pairs over the next few months, so I can’t ignore the girl who just watched me puke and then tried to talk about it.

  Our assignment involves a joint paper and presentation about a social problem that affects the community we live in. This is going to be unbelievably dull.

  *

  Contrary to what Elise thinks, it’s totally possible to tell when she’s gone off her Ritalin. She can barely sit still and fiddles with her seatbelt on the ride home.

  “So guess what?”

  “Forty-two,” Eric says. I suspect he might have cracked a book sometime in the past fortnight. Or it could just be a coincidence.

  “Student Council picked a date for the winter formal.” Elise is practically vibrating in the front seat. Should I tell her there’s a Red Bull in the glove box? She starts talking a mile a minute about themes and colors and stuff, so Eric turns on the radio. She makes a valiant attempt to talk over it, even when he maxes out the volume. The second we get home she puts on her hard-done-by whine and says, “Mom, Eric’s being mean to me!”

  “She’s lying!”

  “If nobody’s bleeding, I don’t want to know,” Mom calls from the second floor. Got to love her parenting style. She thinks conflict is character building.

  I write Elise’s Stupid Dance Thing on the calendar in the kitchen. We’ll do some character building tonight when she sees it.

  Wednesday

  Lunch is always pretty boring. I sit with Elise most days, on the edge of her little group of friends. I don’t talk much. We didn’t move to Smiths Falls long before I got sick, and I didn’t meet a lot of people before treatment kept me out of school and I became the elephant in
the room.

  For the moment, I survive on water, fruit juice, yogurt and Jell-O. Everything else upsets my stomach and tastes like bitter cough syrup. Food tasted like metal during chemo, and now that it’s over everything tastes too bitter or too sweet, so I can’t eat much without feeling nauseated. Dad keeps nagging me to eat according to the plan the hospital dietician made for me, so every few days I force down something ‘real’ to appease him. Then I puke it right back up.

  Which brings me to my current conundrum of which Jell-O cup to open first: cherry or lime?

  “Just eat the cherry first, you know you want to,” Elise says.

  “Not hungry.”

  She tries to swipe my cherry Jell-O and I snatch it back. Her bullshit radar is entirely too good.

  “I’ll make milkshakes when we get home,” she says. That makes me smile and takes the bitter edge off the Jell-O. Elise figured out a kick-ass mix for fruit and frozen yogurt milkshakes during my second round of napalm, and made an addict out of me. She uses them to bargain with me like I’m an unruly child. And I’m stupid enough to keep falling for it.

  *

  “I don’t mind doing most of the work,” the Newfie says. We’re divvying up the workload for our term project. “But you’re not allowed to be a jerk.”

  “Oh, anything but that.” I really shouldn’t push my luck with sarcasm. I’m fortunate not to have a grade-grubbing partner who would complain about me not pulling my weight. She’s compassionate enough to take my fatigue into account, but it still feels lousy to be given an easy ride because she feels sorry for me.

  “You’re doing it again.”

  “You’d be in a bad mood too if you felt like shit.”

  “You have the worst attitude.” I hate it when strangers pretend to know me. It’s so easy to be high and mighty about pain that isn’t your own. I start to write stuff down on our proposal sheet as she flips through the textbook for project ideas. I don’t believe she’s really from Newfoundland. She doesn’t even have an accent.

  “Why are you staring at me?”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “Depends why you’re staring.”

  “You’re not really from Newfoundland, are you?”

  “You don’t really have cancer, do you?” That makes me smile, which throws her off.

  “Actually, I don’t.”

  She sizes me up like she thinks I’m full of it. I can’t tell by her face if she decides I am or not, but she smirks and tells me she likes my hat.

  “I like your hair.” I’m lying. She’s blonde and will sooner or later prove to be a total ditz.

  “You’re trying to make this awkward on purpose, aren’t you?”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  Newfie turns back to the textbook and tells me to start brainstorming. Why’d I have to get stuck in this stupid class? Why couldn’t I have gotten into Chemistry, learned cool things about combustion? Making bombs could be a good use of my limited energy.

  Thursday

  Social Studies is starting to become a weird part of my day. I still feel tired and sick and cranky at the end of lunch, but my project partner is the only person besides Elise who talks to me at school. It’s kind of nice, except for the fact that I can’t stand her.

  “You look better today.”

  “Do I?” Like I give a damn what she thinks. “Why do you say that?”

  “You’re sitting up, for one.”

  “Har har.” Bitch.

  Newfie starts to set up the equipment for today’s practical. We’re making enchiladas for our study of proper nutrition, since yesterday we learned all about making grocery lists and meal planning—a curriculum designed for glue-eaters. I just sit there and let her do all the work of setting up. She doesn’t ask for help.

  I’ve started to notice patterns with the Newfie. She never fails to show up to school in black and dark grey clothes, except for her gloves. This weirdo apparently owns an endless supply of fingerless gloves in any and all colors. I can’t tell if she’s trying to make a statement or just be ridiculous.

  “I dare you to eat raw beef.”

  “After you.” She pinches a piece of ground beef off the corner of our portion and holds it out to me. I want to do it just to be a smartass, but anything more solid than yogurt will cause serious pain. My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

  “Maybe later.”

  She smirks and turns back to the practical setup. Damn it, she thinks she won. I’m sulking a bit as I write our information at the top of the worksheet. My normally dry hands are sweaty and the Newfie is stirring up odors by measuring out ingredients. I can already feel my stomach turning and we’re not even cooking yet.

  “I don’t know if I’m gonna make it through class today.”

  “Will I get to guess what you had for lunch again?”

  I don’t have a good enough comeback for that one, so I just fold my arms on the table and lay my head down. But the surface of the worktable smells like whatever they were using last period, and I sit right back up again. I just prop my head in my hands and lean my elbows on the tabletop. Breathe in—breathe out. Don’t puke. Don’t give her anything to guess at, like misery is a game.

  The Newfie puts a hand on my back. “I can walk you to the nurse’s office if you want.”

  “I’m alright.” Actually, I don’t trust myself to stand up right now. The Newfie opens the adjacent window to relieve some of the smell, which helps. She rubs little circles on my back with one hand and does our assignment with the other. It’s just seasoning the meat in a frying pan and scooping it into the store-bought shells.

  “You don’t have to keep doing that,” I say of her hand.

  “Do you want me to knock it off?” I don’t answer, because asking her to keep going sounds pathetic. I miss being touched—at least in a way that doesn’t involve needles or examinations. It gives me something to focus on besides the queasiness.

  She takes her hand off me when Mrs. Hudson comes around to check our progress. She can see I’m not doing anything and suggests I go to the nurse’s office.

  “Maybe later.”

  I last through the rest of the day without retreating to the nurse’s office, but I don’t last the entire car ride home without getting sick. Thankfully I haven’t got a big evening planned. Just three hours in a clinic recliner, hooked up to dialysis. Yes, I know, I lead a gripping life.

  Friday

  Thank God it’s Friday, and thank Elise for delicious milkshakes. She made me a thermos-full for lunch today. It’s worth noting that she only did it to apologize, though. I passed out on the couch last night and she drew eyebrows on me.

  Is it pathetic that the high point of my day is a mango milkshake?

  All of you is pathetic, idiot.

  Elise’s friends are all on the social planning committee. Lunch talk these days consists of the same things that go on in their official meetings: the upcoming dance, themes, budget, dress code, blah, blah, blah. Twenty minutes of this and I can’t take it anymore.

  “I’m going for a walk.”

  “Where?”

  “Nowhere, Mom.”

  I go out to the parking lot end up sitting in the car with the heat running to avoid the cold.

  Some walk.

  Shut up.

  Fuck you.

  My iPod comes out and the earphones go in to tune out the world. I’d blast the radio, but Eric is very protective of the tuner in his car and earphones are much better for what I need right now: Tchaikovsky, the musical cure for deep-seeded bitterness. I hear the bell ring through my earbuds but make no move to get out of the car. The warning bell rings, and there’s an annoying rap on the passenger window. I crack an eyelid and sure enough, it’s Elise. She opens the door and looks down on me with a hand on her hip.

  “Are you going to class or what?”

  “But Mom.”

  She tugs at my sleeve. “Come on. You’ll fail senior year and end up in my classes. Please, s
pare me the humiliation.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “No milkshakes for a week.”

  So I drag my ass out of the car. I really should hold her down one of these days and torture the recipe out of her—when I have the strength…six or seven months from now.

  *

  The Social Studies room smells like floor cleaner. It’s the same industrial brand they use at the hospital, which, unfortunately, smells like home to me. I hate that.

  I dump my books on the worktable and take my seat. I’m one of the last ones to arrive, but the Newfie isn’t here yet. She’d better not be absent. Ripping on her is the only thing that makes this class worthwhile.

  I should really stop thinking of her as the Newfie. I heard Chris I-am-such-a-twat Elwood call her ‘St. Johnny’ the other day like some sort of pet name. One: I will not sink to Elwood’s level of wit. Two: if I think it, I might accidentally call her that one of these days, thereby violating my first reason for not thinking of her by her place of origin.

  Do you ever think you might be over-thinking?

  Willa makes it past the threshold at the exact moment the bell rings. Our assignment today is the write-up for yesterday’s nutrition practical. I’ll just fall asleep now and save the time, thanks.

  Willa, as usual, takes the initiative. She opens her book and scribbles a few notes before asking, “So what are you doing this weekend?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I’m being friendly.”

  “Well knock it off.”

  “Fuck you and your bad mood, Harper.” I hate to admit it, but that response has a nice ring to it.

  “So what are you doing this weekend?”

  She looks at me with that I-am-so-not-impressed expression. “Entertaining some friends. There’s a basketball game on.”

  “Bullshit you’re into basketball.”

  “No. But my brother is.” She smirks at me. I don’t like it. “Nice hat.”