Dessert First

by Dean Gloster

  • • •

  It was a shame to waste that nice feeling on being asleep, because the next morning Rachel exploded at me by 7:03. We share one bathroom, so we have a schedule. I shower first, then Rachel takes twice as long, since she has actual gorgeousness to assemble.

  Tired from being up late, I played tag with the snooze alarm. That put me behind, so Rachel pounded on the bathroom door. Mom had spent the night at the hospital, and Dad had already left for work.

  “Why don’t you take less time?” I opened the door, wrapped in a towel, letting steam escape. “And settle for almost completely stunning.”

  “Why don’t you stop being a selfish jerk?”

  Okay, game on. “Oh—you need extra blow dryer time? To inflate your air head?”

  “What I need is sleep. You kept me up all night yelling through the wall on the phone.”

  Exaggeration. Evan and I had been talking excitedly, not yelling, and Rachel hadn’t gotten home until after midnight, long after school-night curfew.

  “For your information, I was finding Beep a clinical trial.”

  “Because you’re so damned perfect.”

  I don’t know where that came from, especially from perfect Rachel. I was still annoyed that she’d left everything to me. “At least I was doing something. Not abandoning everyone.”

  “You’re awful.” She barged past me. “No wonder you have no friends.”

  Okay, ouch.

  She slammed the bathroom door in my face, so I yelled through it. “Except you were doing something. With Brian. Moaning the theme song of the Berkeley back seat petting zoo.”

  While she was trying to assemble a response, I added, “Which you’ve moaned to so many boyfriends, guys at your school probably hum it when you walk by.”

  “Bitch” was the nicest word I could make out, muffled through the door.

  • • •

  I was still in a bad mood when I was picked up by carpool. Mad at Rachel and mad at myself for getting in a fight with her, again.

  Evan was smiling, but when he saw my grumpy expression, it faded. “Thought you’d be in a better mood.”

  “I was, but Rachel started hating on me.” And reminding me I’m a total loser. I slid into the back seat next to him. “Sorry. Just the usual.” I’ve complained about Rachel before.

  “Well,” he said a minute later, when we pulled up to Tyler’s house to pick him up, “at least you know Beep’s relapse isn’t disrupting things at home.”

  I rewarded that effort with a weak smile, which was the best I could manage. Actually, until Beep got cancer the first time, Rachel and I got along.

  • • •

  “Hey, Crazy Kat.” Tracie Walsh, my soccer teammate and least favorite person, blocked my path in the hall that morning between second and third period.

  I was not in the mood to deal with Tracie, but her hanger-on friend Ashley had me blocked too, so I stopped.

  “This year, don’t be a flunktard.” Tracie looked down at me from under her blonde hair and over her California surfer-girl freckles. She’s the head of a little in-crowd of self-congratulating girls everyone had called “the Tracies” since grade school.

  “What?” I said. Some guy bumped me hard in the back then went around us.

  “I hear you’re ineligible for volleyball this fall.” Her expression was vague disgust.

  I was, because of my grades, at least until the first quarter ended on November 1. It was annoying, though, to have Tracie remind me. With the prior go-around of Beep’s cancer, losing all my friends, and my “major depressive episode,” the end of last year had turned into a handed-in-homework-free zone. “What’s it to you?”

  “You’re not a dumbshit.” She shook her head. “Pull your grades up before soccer season.”

  I frowned at her. Her interest almost made sense. I was one of the best players on the soccer team, and because of years of playing club-league soccer with Tracie, I could practically read her mind, so when she stripped the ball and inevitably dribbled up field instead of passing, I’d cover her position.

  “Saw you with Evan yesterday,” Tracie said. She crinkled her lips as if she had a sour taste in her mouth.

  Ah. The real reason for our motivational chat.

  “Maybe this year you should concentrate on your schoolwork,” she said. “Instead of musicians. So we can have a decent soccer season.”

  If that advice had come from anyone else, I might have paid more attention. “Maybe you should learn how to pass the ball. That might help, too.” But I wasn’t done being annoyed or done talking. “You threw Evan away. Three times.” And had made sure everyone in the Berkeley-Albany-Oakland area knew that it was her choice.

  She smirked down at me. That was part of her ultimate in-girl mystique: She always broke up with the guy first, even the hot, talented guy. “So?”

  “So you don’t get to decide who he talks to anymore.” Even I knew that much about how the boyfriend thing works.

  She frowned at me. “He only hangs out with you out of pity.”

  Ouch. Had Evan told her that, along with everything else, back when she was his girlfriend? My insides felt scooped out, but I didn’t let that show. “He doesn’t hang out with you at all. Maybe he’s over you.”

  Tracie’s eyes narrowed, her expression fierce. “Ha. If I wanted Evan, I could get him back like that.” She snapped her fingers, annoyingly close to my face, a quick flash of pink nail polish. She stepped forward, crowding me.

  I didn’t back up, and I don’t do intimidated. I put my left shoulder forward, like we were on a soccer field, and drove between her and Ashley, bumping them both, hard.

  Ashley dropped her binder. “Watch it!”

  “Get your grades up,” Tracie’s voice followed me, loud over the hallway noise. “Or there’ll be consequences.”

  Ooh. Consequences. What was she going to do now? She’d already wrecked everything last year. And whatever she had in mind, it wasn’t as bad as cancer.

  • • •

  To the shock of everyone, by the middle of freshman year, I had somehow wormed my way into best-friend status with Evan. Along with writing songs and playing music together after school every day, we were spending lunches together, in plain view of humanity and even Tracie Walsh. But Evan is an awesome musician and super-hot, so then Tracie swooped in and scooped him up as her boyfriend. So much for my lunches with Evan. He was dragged around instead by Tracie, like a cute new purse with legs. How could he be with her? Tracie was the ruler of her toxic in-group, commanding its endless convulsions of expelling someone through threats that if the other girls didn’t exclude her social victim-of-the-week, they’d be next.

  I’d nearly hurled the first time I’d seen Evan making out with Tracie behind the gym, his hand tangled in her long blonde hair. Glurg. A picture of that sweaty clinch would have made an awesome diet aid, taped to the fridge at home, but about then Beep was going through his earlier round of chemo, so there was already plenty of mealtime nausea for the Monroes.

  Then, when Tracie broke up with Evan, it was all he wanted to talk about—how sad he was. A topic, weirdly, I wasn’t super interested in. I tried to be sympathetic, but then they got back together, but then she drop-kicked him away again. And then the blonde spit-burp from hell got together with him again, and he didn’t believe me, that she was horrible, because somehow her lip lock was more persuasive than my mere words.

  Tracie hated me even more than I hated her. Maybe my friendship with Evan was a threat. Unfortunately, as the leader of the popular clique, Tracie was in a position to do something about that hate. And when the Tracies crank up your misery, they’re thorough. While Tracie was using Evan as her yo-yo boy toy, she and the rest of her in-crowd also got to all my girl friends—Calley Rose, Amber, and even Elizabeth. Breathless promises of admission to the Tracie-Wannabe set were dangled, or threats of total social death, or both. Also, Tracie passed on to those girls some semi-horrible funny jokes I’d made
about them. Jokes Evan had helpfully shared with Tracie.

  With Beep’s cancer and the start of fighting with Rachel last year, I was cranky. And during my hundreds of hours with Evan, I’d vented some of that anger, joking just between the two of us. I might have been a teensy sarcastic when I talked about things like Amber’s shopping obsession and Elizabeth’s endlessly-repeated dramatic hair flip. Evan apparently thought my lines were so funny, he repeated them to his new girlfriend, Tracie. Who scuttled over to Elizabeth and Calley Rose and Amber, pointing out how amusingly Kat had slammed them. Thanks, Evan.

  I wasn’t invited to Elizabeth’s or Amber’s birthday sleepovers. Those girls cut me off. Completely. So basically, I’d lost everyone. Lost my other friends because of my big mouth. Lost Evan because every other week he was lip-locked to Tracie’s big mouth. It broke my heart.

  After that, to avoid the lemon-juice-on-paper-cut sting of sitting next to Evan on carpool days, I scooted myself into the front seat for the rest of freshman year. I’m not sure Tyler, in morning stupor mode next to Evan, noticed. But Evan did. Every day, he asked me how I was.

  “Fine,” I said in an empty voice that meant not fine, and didn’t ask how he was.

  Sometimes, Evan’s mother tried gently, “How’s your brother doing?”

  Vomiting everything, thanks, but no one wants to hear that right after breakfast. “He has cancer,” I said, to shut her up, which worked. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I put in my ear buds to listen to music and pulled the hood of my sweatshirt over my sullen face.

  Everyone tries to fit in somewhere in high school, but there’s no My Brother Has Cancer Club. I guess at the end of last year I could have done other school activities. Maybe even combined them with a service project: if not a blood drive, maybe I could have introduced the boys in chess club to the mysterious toothbrush. But somehow, Beep’s struggle with cancer seemed more important.

  4

  After school that day, Mom called to say Beep “looked punky,” but that was just Mom’s report so I didn’t worry much. Anyone back for a third round with cancer would look a little down. So, unaware of the growing problem, while I was at the computer and supposed to be doing my homework, I went on Facebook. I was way overdue in posting an update for Beep.

  Beep doesn’t really Facebook, but for the last two times he had cancer, I set up an account to share how he was doing, so we didn’t have to answer a zillion calls from distant relatives, family friends, and classmates’ parents. It helps to let everyone know what’s going on, to take the edge off worry. Which is a public service, because cancer practically pulls worried people out of passing cars.

  But the only way to prevent three time zones of mass freakout and a babbled avalanche of untested home cancer cures is to post in the language of Mom Calmese. In Mom Calmese, problems are past tense, obstacles are overcome, and there’s always a plan to deal with the current situation, which is never dire. We’re cheerful, positive, thankful, and optimistic. We never freak out.

  My mom, with an actual anxiety disorder since I was little—which Beep’s cancer hasn’t exactly made better—is useless at Mom Calmese. So I write Beep’s updates. I pretend I’m the exact opposite of my actual mom. Even in Calmese, though, I had a hard time posting about Beep’s relapse. But no one else was going to—heaven forbid we let Mom near the Internet. I sat clattering at the keyboard, messing with wording.

  A little setback this week. Beep’s blood test came back with some concerns, so he’s at UCSF for another chemo round to get back into remission. Beep is back in his temporary home away from home, surrounded by a great team.

  Mom Calmese is the perfect language for lying by telling the truth. Every word was true, but what I left out—how scared I was for Beep and how much I wished he could skip the misery of chemo again—made the whole post a hollow lie.

  I logged out of Beep’s account and logged in on my own. I still Facebook, not just because I post Beep’s updates for everyone. Lots of kids in the cancer community, like Hunter, still use Facebook, because it’s better than CaringBridge, which is similar but only for sick people, so it’s medical-information-filled, with posts about “bowel movement frequency.” Eww. I’m not exaggerating. A large part of the sick child mortality rate is probably kids dying of embarrassment when they find out what their parents posted on CaringBridge.

  Hunter, my online flirt-buddy who also has leukemia, had replied to my Facebook message about clinical trials. Yeah. I’m on one. Borte-something-Tonsylate. Not fun.

  Of course not. It was freaking chemo. Thanks for the info. How are other things? Besides possibly dying? I added that, because Hunter almost always responded “possibly dying, but otherwise fine.” Although currently cancer bald, Hunter was a hot senior—even when he wasn’t extra warm from radiation treatments. He was some kind of basketball star back at his high school in Maryland. He played point guard, which is sort of the basketball equivalent of center midfielder in soccer, the position I play. He had even gotten some scholarship to play basketball in college, which was looking less and less likely, since—as Hunter put it—he couldn’t even pass the physical for a Mighty Mites team, whatever that was.

  There was also a status update from Evan, a selfie picture with his eyes closed. Tired, he posted. Up half last night talking medical research with a cute girl.

  Evan thought I was cute? My heart flipped a little somersault. Evan is another reason I Facebook. Because he’s a musician, he uses it to get the word out about upcoming gigs and to “connect with his audience.” I wasn’t sure how to respond to the cute girl post, though. I’d sworn off flirting with Evan, except in my online secret alter ego Cipher. So I went and got the iPad, so I could also log in separately as Cipher.

  Ooh, Skinnyboy, I commented as Cipher, picking up on the “medical topic”: Concerned about a rash?

  Evan: Nah. Was researching cancer clinical trials.

  Evan knew Cipher as my online “good friend” from the cancer community. Cipher posted lots of comments on my cancer blog and had friended Evan on Facebook, where they flirted with appalling frequency. Whew! I responded as Cipher. I should definitely get to know you better. Maybe even wrap my tentacles around you. Somehow, back last year when I invented my Cipher identity to keep talking to Evan online, even though I was officially furious, I’d said, as Cipher, that I had tentacles and a poisonous stinger, and it had become a thing.

  But if Evan was being specific that he was looking up cancer treatments with a girl, people would know it was with Kat Monroe, especially after his post the day before about giving Beep and me good thoughts—and they’d probably hassle him for bad eyesight, for calling me cute. I went back to the computer keyboard, where I was logged in as me. Evan is my hero, I commented as Kat. (*Sends Evan 10,000 great friend points*)

  Tracie: Now Kat’s trying to bribe boys to be her friend.

  Evan: (*Sigh*)

  Was he sighing at my comment, or Tracie’s dig or Cipher wanting to get to know him better? But it was a problem that Tracie had posted a comment. Once Tracie posts something, the rest of her crowd piles on.

  Ashley: Bribe—ha. Kat’s parents don’t have enough money to buy her a friend.

  I went to the iPad to post as Cipher.

  Cipher: Kat’s brother just had a cancer relapse. You must be a real caring person to make fun of their spending their money on cancer drugs.

  Ashley: Didn’t know. Not what I meant. Nobody has enough money to buy Kat a friend. Not even Bill Gates.

  Evan: Stop being mean to Kat. Tracie and Ashley, I’m unfriending you.

  There was no response from Tracie or Ashley. I kept staring at his post. Had he actually unfriended them on Facebook, so they couldn’t post on his wall anymore?

  The private message counter changed on the iPad, going from a one to a two. I clicked on it.

  Thanks for sticking up for Kat, Evan had messaged Cipher.

  No problem, Skinnyboy. Sometimes I use my barbed tentacles for good.�
��Cipher.

  Cipher’s other private message was from Drowningirl. Things are awful, it read. Awful day in an awful week. It was from two hours ago. According to Facebook, Drowningirl wasn’t currently online. A spike of worry and fear stabbed me. It was like being my mom, all of a sudden. Be okay, dgirl. And don’t disappear.

  Email me, I messaged back to Drowningirl as Cipher. Or call. 1-800-SUICIDE.

  By the time I glanced back to the main Facebook feed, various other Tracies had piled on. Were they all together somewhere, or was this some test of the emergency Tracies’ cell phone network?

  Sara: geez evan they were kidding.

  Lauren: Partly.

  Right, I posted. You can say anything as long as you say ‘kidding’ afterward. Even if you can’t capitalize or punctuate and don’t have a personality.

  Jenna: See, Kat dishes 2. Crap. I’d posted that message as Kat, not Cipher.

  Lauren: Totally, but not funny.

  Sara: Yah don’t take the pity friend thing 2 far evan.

  Evan: I’m unfriending Sara and Jenna and Lauren along with Tracie and Ashley. Forever.

  Wow. Had he actually done it? There were no more comments from any of the five Tracies. I went to Evan’s timeline, and scrolled through his immense list of Facebook friends. It no longer included any of the Tracies—no Tracie, Ashley, Sara, Lauren, or Jenna. Their snark had been fairly mild, to earn a lifetime unfriending. Maybe Evan wanted me to know he was on my side, no matter what. I sat there in a long pause of happy-hopeful stunned. I picked up the iPad, because this might get mushy. As Cipher, I commented. You are also my hero. Thanks for standing up to those girls for Kat. (*Cipher tucks away her poisonous barbs and wishes she could give Evan a close tentacle hug. He is great.*)

  Evan sent back a private Facebook message to Cipher, Or maybe someday I could work my way up to at least holding your hand?

  I frowned at the computer screen. Holding hands with Cipher, not the real me, Kat. With my tentacles, I messaged back as Cipher, you’d get covered with sucker marks. Sucker. Even my flirts, as Cipher, had a drive-by bite to them.