Wake

by Abria Mattina

  As I dig through my pockets for the car keys I realize I left my backpack with the photo album upstairs on Willa’s floor. Shit. She’ll have time to go through the whole thing now, when I’m not around to influence her impressions with an explanation of each photo. It’s a hundred page record of what a pathetic, sick bastard I am.

  I stop on the sidewalk and consider going back to the house. What’s worse, interacting with Willa’s pissed off brother or permitting her open access to my photos?

  A paper airplane to the side of the head interrupts the formation of my mental pros and cons list. I look over to see Willa leaning out her bedroom window. She points to the paper airplane on the lawn and I bend to pick it up.

  Sorry. He’s not usually rude. He fears history will repeat itself.

  I cross the lawn to stand under her bedroom window. “Can I have my album back?”

  Willa disappears inside for a moment and comes back with my bag. She drops it carefully out the window and it doesn’t take much to notice the weight difference. She took the photo album out.

  “Give it back.”

  “I’ll give it to you at school tomorrow.” Willa withdraws her head and shoulders from the window.

  “Just throw it down.”

  “I’ll trade you.” Willa leaves the window, and when she comes back and throws a smaller blue book down to me. “See you at school.” She closes the window, ending all communication until eight o’clock tomorrow. Her mouthing off means I can’t call her and I don’t have her email address to bother her in cyberspace.

  I look down at what she gave me in place of my photo album: a blue canvas book with Journal embossed in silver italics across the front. Willa handed over her diary? She doesn’t strike me as the diary-writing type. It could be considered rude to read this right in front of her window—she could be watching—but I still flip it open to the first page. Another surprise: instead of Willa’s drunk-toddler scrawl, the page lines are filled with very neat cursive. The flyleaf says: This book belongs to T. Kirk. If found, please return to… This could be interesting.

  Willa: May 8 to 12

  Monday

  I get called down to the main office just before lunch. I trudge over to the administration office and present my pink slip of summons to the secretary.

  “They’re waiting for you. Third door on the left.” She points down the hall, past the principal’s office where other administrative offices are kept. I head to the third door and find S. Neil – Guidance Counselor written on the nameplate. I bet this has something to do with the courses I requested for next year—or rather, didn’t request. The registration form is still buried in my locker somewhere. I sort of forgot it in the midst of…stuff.

  I knock and Mr. Neil calls me in. I step around the door to find that I’m not the only guest in this crowded little office. Frank is waiting for me too, and the top of Mr. Neil’s desk is covered in brochures for counseling programs in our area.

  “Have a seat, Wilhelmina.” Mr. Neil gestures to the only vacant chair in the room. I don’t bother to correct him about my name. This will all be over faster if I don’t give attitude. Just let them shepherd me into whatever youth group will best satisfy their anxiety, bullshit my way through the system, and come out the other side having lost only a few hours in therapy and gained some freedom.

  “How are you feeling today, Wilhelmina?” I know the trick he’s using. It’s the same one that police use to negotiate with hostage takers and people threatening suicide—call the person by his or her name as much as possible to show that complete attention is focused on the person and his or her issues. I hate it.

  “Hungry.”

  Mr. Neil chuckles at my little ‘joke.’ “I meant emotionally. How are you coping with school?”

  “It’s alright.” I glance at Frank out of the corner of my eye. He doesn’t look happy. Did he expect me to walk in here and pour my soul out to a guy who looks like he should be breaking eggs on the floor of the Quick Stop?

  “Have you made friends since moving here?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good friends?”

  “Very good.” They treat me like any other girl, and Jem and I are giving acquaintanceship another try. That’s about as good as can be expected on all fronts, given the circumstances.

  “Your guardian and I were having a discussion before you came in.” Does he think I’m so stupid I can’t figure that out? “We think you could benefit from participating in some form of counseling, given your history.”

  Given my history. I wonder how much Frank told him. He must be here on his lunch break—he probably wants to wrap this up quickly so he can get back to the hospital.

  “And how long will I have to behave myself before everyone stops looking at me like I’m a problem to be fixed?”

  They stare at me.

  “I’ve been off meds for over a year. I’ve been behaving for six months. Does this pigeonhole have an exit?”

  “No one is suggesting that you need to be fixed,” Mr. Neil says gently. “Counseling isn’t a punishment. We wouldn’t suggest it unless we thought it would help you.”

  I hate the way he uses ‘we,’ like he cared about me before my case was brought to his attention, or like he’ll care after I leave this office. It makes Frank, my parents and the school seem like a united front that I can’t possibly stand up to by myself.

  “Whatever you want.”

  Because the reality is that I can’t stand up to them alone.

  *

  By the time I get to the cafeteria, the lunch line has died down. I grab something to eat and head for the usual table, which is crowded and noisy. There’s only one chair left available, between Joe Moore and Jem, who has graciously decided to sit here again. There’s a hierarchy to the seating arrangement. The only person willing to sit next to Jem is Hannah. Joe got the adjacent seat because he isn’t popular enough to merit a better place in the pecking order.

  “Where were you?” Jem asks. Hannah leans forward to look past him and asks me if everything is okay.

  “Just a problem with my electives.”

  Hannah asks what I’m taking next year. It would be great if I had an actual answer.

  “Uh…Art, and…Physics.”

  Jem blurts out: “But you suck at both.”

  “Dude.”

  “I’ve seen your stick figures. They look like shit.”

  “I bet you’d be really good at abstract art,” Hannah says in an attempt to smooth over Jem’s jackassery. I’m not that fussed. This is just normal Jem.

  “I can finger paint.” I flip the bird at Jem and he casually steals the juice box off my tray.

  “The art teacher’s ridiculously mellow, anyway,” he says as he unwraps the straw. “You’ve got to try to fail that class. You’re boned for Physics, though.”

  “Some of us actually study for our classes.”

  Jem gives me a look of obvious condescension. “Willa, you’re a woman; you can’t do math.”

  I snatch the juice box back and leave him with the straw. Hannah looks like she might be genuinely offended.

  “No secret what you’re taking next year—the same courses you’ll fail this year.” I hold the juice box out of reach as he makes another grab for it.

  “Music and Geography.”

  I slap Jem’s hand for getting too close to my box.

  “Do you want mine?” Hannah offers Jem her unopened apple juice, probably just to get us to stop horsing around at the table. Jem looks at her like he can’t understand why she would offer and says, “No, I’m not thirsty. I just enjoy harassment.”

  I snatch my straw out of his fist while he’s distracted with Hannah, so he steals my pudding in retaliation.

  A look of understanding suddenly comes across Hannah’s face, and she smiles. “You guys are cute.”

  Everything comes to an immediate grinding, screeching halt. Jem and I both freeze. He drops my pudding back on the tray like it’s hot and gets up from
the table. Hannah casts a worried glance after him as he walks away, but I don’t turn to look.

  “Should I not have said anything?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I’ll try not to hold the awkwardness against her. She can’t have known. I never told her any of it.

  *

  I leave Hannah and the others at the spot outside the cafeteria where the hall diverges into three separate corridors and head for my locker. Jem appears at my shoulder out of nowhere and says, “Are you really taking Art?” I startle and he chuckles at me.

  “No, I’m not taking Art.”

  “What are you taking?”

  “I never handed in a form.” I turn away from him to open my locker, but he just leans against the locker beside mine and continues talking face to face.

  “Sorry I just took off like that.”

  I play dumb. “You left?”

  Jem lightly smacks my shoulder and tells me to be serious for a minute. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “Did you tell anyone about that dinner in Ottawa?” He doesn’t want anyone to think we’re dating.

  “No. Did you?”

  “No one in Smiths Falls.”

  I pause with my hand on my Soc textbook. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I mentioned it to a friend back in Ottawa. No big deal.”

  I shut my locker and tell him that he’d better grab his stuff for class. The bell is due to ring in two minutes.

  “Can I have my album back?”

  “No.” I walk away.

  “Why not?” he calls after me.

  “I’m not done with it yet.”

  *

  Jem’s strategy for getting his photos back faster is to tell me about how it’s so not worth the time to look at them. He pursues this oh-so-convincing line of reasoning all through class, even though I give him every indication that I’m not listening and not about to give that book back any time soon.

  We bump foreheads over the assignment sheet and Jem accuses me of doing it on purpose.

  “Let me see.” I put a hand to his forehead, pretending to inspect the non-existent lump. Jem lets me because he’s an attention whore like that. I flick the spot where I bumped him and steal the assignment.

  “Ow,” he complains.

  “Whiner.” Jem elbows me. He’s not that irritated; he’s still smiling. When I look up from the assignment sheet I find he’s stolen my notebook and answers.

  “Dude.”

  “What?” He’s got his smartass grin on, the lopsided one that makes him squint. His new eyelashes are just long enough to touch when he does it.

  I snatch my notebook from under his elbow and tell him to go to hell.

  “I’m taking you with me.”

  “I’m driving.”

  “The hell you are.”

  *

  I warm up a piece of leftover chicken when I get home from work and take it straight upstairs to work on my new pet project. I’ve only got so much time before Jem stops asking for his photos back and demands them instead, so I have to make the most of my access to that book.

  Eric is a very thorough photojournalist. The pictures in this album—most of them Polaroids—have a definite sense of narrative. He likes the candid shot. He captures people in their thoughtful moments.

  The story opens with a photo of a sickly, but much healthier Jem sitting in a recliner in the hospital with his dad beside him. The setup of the room is familiar: he’s at the beginning of a chemo treatment. Jem looks straight into the camera, glaring at his brother for taking pictures. Dr. Harper looks similarly annoyed, but his posture and forehead reveal anxiety.

  Flip the page ahead in time by only a day or two, and the recliner is gone. Jem is in a bed, green in the face and sick as a dog. The only good Ivy can do for him is to bathe his face and neck with a cool cloth.

  Elise plays cards with a petite bald girl. Ivy falls asleep on a waiting room couch. Whole chunks of hair are left behind on the pillow. About the same time that a bald spot develops on the back of his head, the first hat appears in the album. It’s the same color as his hair.

  The narrative moves to the Harper house. Jem, laid up on the couch. Elise, poised in front of a blender with a scheming smile on her face. Her hair was so long—straight down to her waist and black as a crow. One of the pictures was taken through the gap in the bathroom door. Jem is visible in the mirror, setting up swabs and a syringe at the counter. He looks pissed off and his lip is curled back like he was about to shout at Eric when the shutter closed.

  His weight loss isn’t really noticeable until twenty pages in, during what appears to be his second round of chemo. His cheeks are a little thinner and his shoulders have a habitual hunch. In one of the pictures he’s in what looks like a lounge, watching TV and quietly ignoring his companion while she vomits into an emesis basin beside him. There’s a sweet picture of him and Elise, both sleeping. He’s curled up in bed and she’s in the chair beside. Their hands rest loosely intertwined on the edge of the mattress.

  From there, Eric chose to take pictures of all the nursing staff, like yearbook photos. On the white strip of each Polaroid he wrote their names and one memorable thing about each of them. Laura, likes watermelon. Maggie the Trekkie. JoAnne, brings in cookies. Kim, reads good books.

  When the yearbook catalogue is over, the narrative resumes at home. Jem is bent over a sink with a blood-drenched towel against his nose while Dr. Harper tries his best to help. Eric included a companion shot of Jem’s bed. Presumably the nosebleed started in his sleep, because his sheets and pillow are soaked with blood.

  The snapshots move to the hospital for a while. There’s a nice shot of Elise sitting on her dad’s lap, proudly holding out her arms to be photographed. She’s got a band-aid and cotton ball on each elbow, and one higher on her shoulder. Maybe she was preparing to donate marrow, or at least being tested as a potential match.

  Frank knocks on my door and I close the album as quickly as possible. I answer the door and tell him there are leftovers in the fridge; I’m not cooking tonight. Frank doesn’t say anything, but he awkwardly hands me a pamphlet for a youth group in Perth: Companions in Christ: the Healing Power of God. It’s held in the community hall of a church.

  “We’re not Catholic. We’re not even religious.”

  Frank clears his throat. “I know, but it’s the closest one. If not that, you’ll be going to Ottawa.” He takes the pamphlet from me and opens it. “They meet on Sundays after services. You’d only have to go one day a week. It shouldn’t affect your school.”

  “It’s not the whole day is it?” I skim the brochure, but it’s vague about how long sessions last. At least the program in St. John’s never kept us past the two-hour mark.

  “I want you to go.”

  And I want to make him happy. “I will.”

  Tuesday

  Chris and Paige have broken up again. What is that, three times this month? Paige spends the majority of lunch hour crying over what a jerk Chris is while Diane and Hannah try to comfort her. I stay out of it to keep myself from laughing—Paige is mainly aggrieved by this breakup because it means she has no one to go to prom with.

  “Prom is a whole month away. You’ll find someone to go with,” Hannah consoles. Diane very helpfully points out that Paige’s dress is returnable, like there isn’t much hope of finding a date now.

  “Why don’t you just go stag?” The three of them look at me like I’m a weirdo for suggesting it.

  “Maybe Cody will go with you,” Diane says. Paige starts crying all over again.

  *

  I burn my wrist while frying beer batter fish for dinner and exclaim, “Jesus friggin’ Christ,” without thinking. Frank tells me I better start learning to curb that kind of language. “What if something like that slips out on Sunday?” He gives me a hard look. He’s right.

  Frank offers to drive me to the session on Sunday.

  “I said I’d go,
and I will.”

  “I didn’t mean you wouldn’t,” he argues. “I just thought you might like some support or something.” Does driving count as support?

  I shrug. “If you really want to.”

  Upstairs, I continue my study of The Narrative of Jem Harper’s Cancer, as I’ve come to think of it. I flip to where I left off, with the pictures of Elise donating blood. Jem doesn’t look much better for having received it. He’s got cotton plugs in both nostrils and bruising around his eyes.

  Not long after that I come across the photo of Ivy getting the good news about Elise’s donor status. She looks so relieved and overjoyed. On the opposite page there’s a shot of Dr. Harper squeezing his little girl in a bear hug, like he’s proud of her for having the right genes.

  Flip once, and Jem looks less than happy. He’s on a bed with his knees pulled up and his head in his hands, hunched up as though the news was bad. There’s no follow-up photo; nothing with his facial expression, or any clue as to why he would have been sad instead of happy. The pictures resume with him in a procedure room, lying on a table for radiation treatment. In subsequent photos the burns are visible on his neck and face. He went through another round of chemo, in the recliner this time; Ivy cuddled him.

  The next ten pages of photos aren’t very focused. They were taken through the window of an isolation room, so all I can see of Jem and the staff is a vague outline above the glare. He’s always lying down. His IV pole is always holding three or more bags of fluid. In the few shots where he’s close enough to the camera to be seen clearly, the rash on his hands is dark purple and bandaged in places. There are sores around his mouth and across his cheeks, too.

  The marrow worked, but it was clearly a hell of a fight.

  Wednesday

  Jem slides a note my way in Social Studies. Do you have any plans for tonight?

  I write No and slide the page back to him. Technically I’m grounded, but I can tell Frank that I got called in to work.