by Dean Gloster
I took two more steps backward, like I was afraid his tongue would keep slithering after me like a little poisonous snake, then stared down at him, sprawled on the path and in the shrubs.
“Wow, some fountain,” I said, before he could pick himself up or I could think of something more appropriate. “It must even have a frog. Something tried to catch me with a slimy tongue.” Then I fled back into the house.
Not the most thoughtful response.
But not as awful as his, eventually.
When I came back in through the door, people were looking over expectantly, some nudging each other. Then I got it—apparently everyone but me knew that when you disappear to the back yard, it’s for the zoning: It’s make-out city, protected by darkness and two steps down, so even Cindy’s drunken mom can’t stumble down to “supervise” you groping each other. Which was a shame, because, at a minimum, Curtis needed some coaching.
A minute later Curtis came in, pink-faced, glaring. His look said I’ll get you for this.
And by the next Monday, he had. Scattered in the hallways at school were hundreds of photocopies of his two-page description of how he supposedly had sex with me in Cindy’s back yard. Later that week, Evan got together with Tracie for the first time.
7
The next day, on a different antibiotic, Beep crawled back from the gray edge of death. Which was great, because it let the hospital get back to the urgent business of nearly killing him with the chemo drugs—so cancer would finally realize he was a bad neighborhood and move out for good.
I dragged myself to the curb for morning carpool. At school, Kayla Southerland was waiting for me by my locker, which was now graffiti-covered, illustrated with a large cartoon cat in black marker and the oversized angular letters “Crazy Kat” below. Payback for yesterday’s grab-and-insult?
“Nice.” I pulled my World History book out and stuffed my backpack in. I shut my locker.
Kayla continued to slouch there, smirking. She’s an art kid, always drawing in the margins of her notebook. And the Crazy Kat writing looked like hers.
“You’re really good with drawing.” I tilted my head and pretended to admire her cartoon cat—which was nicely done, and definitely crazy-looking. “So I can’t figure out why you’re so awful with eyeliner and mascara. Really. Your eyes are like little fishbowls of dead rainbow trout.”
She frowned, then turned to go. I walked alongside. “What do you call today’s look? Stage musical prostitute?”
“No, wait.” I snapped my fingers and pointed at her, like I’d just figured it out. “It’s ‘I’m saving myself for a color-blind guy with a raccoon fetish.’”
“You think you’re so funny.”
“I just think, Kayla, period. That’s why you have trouble keeping up.”
She took a left turn where the corridor branched. I kept going straight. “Good luck with Raccoon Boy,” I hollered after her. “And have a nice day, scaring children.”
Yeah. That went well.
At lunch, Calley Rose and I tried to scrub off the marker, using wet paper towels and liquid hand soap from the girls’ bathroom. No luck. It was permanent. “Looks like I’m stuck being crazy forever,” I finally said.
Then Mom called with more great news. For some pile of reasons even she couldn’t climb over or argue through—Beep had the wrong “allelic ratio” and also had ALL and was too sick from the infection—Beep failed to qualify for the clinical trial we found.
Here’s the demented grownup logic: They wouldn’t give possibly life-saving cutting-edge treatment to Beep, because, apparently, he was too sick. Really.
What kind of drugs are they taking in these hospitals, to think up things like that?
• • •
I’m depressed. It’s an official pronouncement and everything. Although Dr. Anne has also hinted about “anger issues” and “anxious depression.”
“Depression” should mean I get to dress in black, eat chocolate, and lie in bed all day listening to emo bands. I wish. Instead, the symptoms are fun things like inability to concentrate, withdrawal, feelings of worthlessness, and hostility possibly escalating to violence. Basically, I’m miserable and possibly scary, like some parts of life, and can’t do homework. Don’t flunk me—put my brain chemicals in detention.
The afternoon I heard Beep wouldn’t qualify for the clinical trial, I sat in front of the computer, unable to type a single sentence of homework. Somehow I just couldn’t. I stared at the assignment of simple questions in a stupor of misery. Ten minutes crawled by in wounded agony, while I felt more frozen and more of a total screw-up. Then I gave up and went to my cancer blog, because posting about cancer and chemo and barf seemed less depressing. And I might be doing someone else some good, when I couldn’t even start a homework assignment for myself.
Then I went on Facebook. Hunter had posted, Radiation today. I’m cookin’ now.
Beep always said radiation was like being microwaved, so I commented, Microwave good-bye to blasted leukemia blasts. Blasts are the immature, mutated, mostly non-working blood cells that blood cancer pumps out.
An incoming email dinged. For Cipher, from Drowningirl. Drowningirl emails from a home she calls Jupiter, where the oppressive gravity is crushing and the atmosphere is poisonous.
D: I’m at the end. It’s too hard.
Like me, Drowningirl has a sister who’s hateful, but unlike me, in some weird Stockholm syndrome, she’s grateful for her semi-perfect sister because of the help her sister gives her cancer kid brother. As far as I know, her mom is not insane, but worse—unlike me—Drowningirl doesn’t get one shred of her parents’ love, not even mixed with the little scraps of attention they have left for her.
C: Less than one year. Then you’ll be away at college. The launch date is set. Even on Jupiter, you’ll have escape velocity.
D: That’s too long. Jupiter is so far from the sun, even part of one of my years takes forever. I’d give my life in a minute to make my brother well.
C: I don’t think that’s how it works, dgirl.
D: Guess not. But he wants to live, and I don’t want to—I hate my life. I think about ending it sometimes, but he’s fighting so hard to live, that seems wrong.
C: Way wrong. You’ve got so much ahead of you. What’s your phone number? I’ll call you.
D: Sorry, Cipher. Your phone won’t reach Jupiter. We have a weird area code.
Then she sent me another of her poems.
More
I give and give.
But life demands, More.
There must still be more pain somewhere.
Drowningirl wouldn’t give me her phone number, or tell me where she lived. So I just did what I always do. Pasted in the suicide prevention numbers:
C: 1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433) and 1-800-273-TALK (8255). They’re toll free, dgirl, so you can even call from Jupiter.
D: Thanks. If I ever get more bummed (as if) I will. Be well.
I always send her the hotline numbers, like she’ll forget. She always says be well, but I can’t remember what well is.
We’re the most dysfunctional two-person support group in the world. Or, I guess, even the solar system.
8
A few days later at lunch, Evan and I ended up on the grass at the end of the sports field, looking up at the sky. The top of Evan’s head was pressed against the top of mine. Our legs were stretched in opposite directions, so my view of the lumpy clouds was upside down from his.
“It’s an exercise,” Evan explained. “From drama class. Hey—we should take drama together next year. It’ll help you when you’re the front singer in our future indie band.”
My hair was in a ponytail, and the grass tickled the back of my neck. I wriggled to get more comfortable. “I already have enough drama.”
“No offense, but you’re not going to carry the world’s greatest indie band with just your current guitar skills.”
“There’s that.” We’d have to play songs without the weird
jazz chords Evan always noodled with. “Why this exercise, drama boy?”
“We can’t see each other. It’s supposed to make us open up and talk in a different way.”
“I’m not sure I can do this.”
“What? Talk and look up at the sky?” He kept his voice light. “Totally easy.”
“Talk, period. Let you back into my life.” I shifted, which gave me half an inch of distance, but then he pushed his head back against mine. My stomach was weirdly tense.
“Try,” he said. “Say something. Not the first things that pop into your head. But something serious.”
The first things would be about Beep, and after that about Evan, whose head bumped against mine, and whose absence at the end of last year had mashed my heart so much. “I don’t know why Rachel hates me.” That just lurched out of my mouth, catching even me by surprise.
“Rachel doesn’t hate you. Why would anyone hate you?”
“The Tracies hate me.” I tilted my head back slightly to direct the words to Evan, invisible back there. “And Kayla Southerland is working up to it.”
“Okay. Tracie does kind of hate you. But you provoke her. How come?”
“Who knows?” My version of the Book of Life is missing the chapter on the popular in-crowd girl thing. “Maybe none of us Monroes know how to get along with girls.” Rachel was popular with boys, but didn’t have close girl friends. And Dad was so hopelessly confused about females, he’d married Mom. “I don’t even know why Rachel’s so mean.”
“Rachel’s probably jealous.”
I barked out a laugh. “Of me?” Perfect, gorgeous Rachel, with her endless supply of boyfriend-candidates and amazing singing voice. Not exactly. “Did someone hit you on the head with a skateboard?”
“Seriously. She has that dyslexia thing, so she has to study really hard, but you’re super-smart, so stuff comes easy.”
“Guess again.” Like the end of last year, I was already in danger of flunking out, if I didn’t either do the homework or come up with a massive make-up project. Which I’d then have to figure out how to actually do.
“Well, weren’t she and Beep super tight when he was little? Now you’re the one who hangs out with him in the hospital.”
When Beep was small, they had been kind of a two-person mutual admiration team. “Rachel doesn’t know how to hang out at the hospital.”
“Maybe it’s not that easy. For some people.”
“It’s not easy, it’s just not complicated,” I said. “Just sit.”
“Sit?”
“Yeah. If somebody sick wants to talk, talk. If they don’t, let them rest. If they want to play shooter videogames, let them. Even when they’re confronting death by shooting zombies, they’re not alone. But that chapter is missing in Rachel’s book. Maybe with the whole section on getting along with non-boyfriend humans.”
Evan laughed, and with a pang, I realized how much I’d missed making him do that. The clouds above us were moving. One looked like a flying ice cream cone, chased by a dragon.
“Rachel always wants to do something—entertain Beep, or make things better,” I went on. “And wants him to be there for her when she graces his room with her gorgeousness. But most times Beep isn’t in the mood. Or doesn’t have the energy. Or is in videogame gunfire. So she gets frustrated. And Rachel still has sniffles, so Mom makes her wear a surgical mask when she visits.”
“See?” Evan said, like that proved something. “Also, this drama exercise is working.”
“Humph. Working to make me scared.”
“Of what’s going on with Beep?”
“That too.” I was silent for a long time. “I can’t take it if we do the bestie thing again, Evan, and then you disappear.”
“I won’t.”
I thought about that. “Then you’re on friend-probation, indie boy.”
“I’ll be nice.” He moved around. There was some light touch on the top of my head, like lips touching my hair. “Now you’ll think good thoughts.”
What? “Evan, did you just kiss the top of my head?”
“I’m not telling,” he said. “I’m on probation, so I have to be careful what I say.”
The bell rang.
• • •
I was still thinking about the top of my head thing when I got home after school. Probably Evan didn’t kiss me. Probably. Why would he kiss me on top of my head? Rachel—who had about eleven thousand times as much experience with guys as me—was sitting at the kitchen table, looking glum with a pile of books spread out in front of her while she typed on her laptop. She didn’t even have her music going, so for once she wasn’t surrounded by a bleating fog of mainstream pop.
Might as well take advantage of that once-in-a-decade opportunity. I sat down across from her and cleared my throat. “I have a question about a boy thing.”
She gave me a long, level gaze. “Is that a dig—how I’m the big expert on boys’ things?”
“No.” I took a deep breath. Life: so deeply confusing, I was asking Rachel for advice. “I think Evan kissed me, but I’m not sure.”
“If you’re not sure, then Evan needs lots more practice.” But she smiled and closed her laptop, like I’d finally said something interesting after fifteen years.
Lack of kissing practice wasn’t Evan’s issue, not after last year’s Tracie-tongue-tag tournament. “I think he kissed me on the top of my head, but I didn’t see it.”
“How could you not see . . . ?”
That was too complicated to explain. “If a boy likes you, wouldn’t he kiss you somewhere not on the top of the head?”
“He’s probably scared of getting anywhere close to your mouth,” Rachel said. “We all are, because you bite.”
“Pffft.” Insults. What did I expect? This was like asking advice from the Tracies.
“You’ve had a massive, obvious crush on Evan forever. He was probably saying that’s okay.”
“I have not.” Also, it’s not that obvious.
“Really? Then why were you in a bad mood—for months—after he got together with that Tracie girl from soccer?”
“Because I have to live with you. Also, hello: Beep’s cancer.”
“Bzzzzt.” She made the wrong answer buzzer noise from one of Mom’s game shows. “Beep was in remission this summer. When you were total sigh-soundtrack girl.”
“Was not.”
“Oh? Mom and Dad are paying for your therapy because they have extra money?”
That dig was way out of bounds. Mom’s crazy, but I’m the one who has to do shrink hour on Tuesdays with Dr. Anne. “Thanks for the reminder. What does it mean, though, if he kissed the top of my head?”
“It means we need to have the condom talk. Because of Evan. With everyone else you can keep using your personality for birth control.”
“We don’t need to have ‘the condom talk.’” This talk was bad enough. “Forget I said anything.”
“I’m just trying to help. I think—”
“Help me what? Feel bad about myself? I have that down already.”
Rachel looked surprised. “No. He . . .”
I stomped upstairs. Me and my pregnancy-prevention personality. I don’t know why Rachel hates me so much.
Up in my room, I tried to distract myself from being so annoyed with Rachel that I would break things. So I imagined Evan being my actual boyfriend. For a long, dreamy time. I pictured us sitting in his bedroom, writing a duet. Him watching my lips as I sang about him. Then, I imagined, he leaned over and kissed me with his soft lips.
Then I thought about Evan breaking up with me after that. Which interrupted quality daydream time like a kick in the chest. It probably wouldn’t take long. Evan had averaged a week and a half between breakups during his Tracie face-sucking phase. And if I started trooping around school hand-in-hand with Evan, that would draw a thick swarm of Tracies after him, like so many two-legged human flies, their eyes bulging at the sight of hot, awesome musician Evan with lowly Kat. So, after
about three weeks, I’d see Tracie or Ashley hauling him away instead, with her arms wrapped around him and his hand in her hair.
At that mental picture, a hot wave of nausea went through me. It was like I’d accidentally gobbled some of Beep’s chemo meds.
This was crazy. We’d had a conversation, and Evan touched the top of my head, and now I was actually making myself sick with my imagination. Whatever the touch on the top of the head had been, it was best to decide no kissing had been involved.
My life was already insane enough.
9
Beep begged me to stay overnight in his hospital room that Wednesday, so he could get a break from Mom.
“Please.” Beep clutched my hand in both of his, when Mom was in the bathroom. He squeezed almost hard enough to leave bruise marks. “She’s driving me crazy. And it’s more fun when you hang out.”
I was the self-appointed chief morale officer for Beep, in charge of making him laugh, when he was in the mood.
“I’ll stay with Beep tonight,” I told Mom. “Go home and get some sleep.”
On Beep’s last two bouts with cancer, he’d stayed at home and gotten his chemo treatments as an outpatient, but with his repeated infections he was stuck in the hospital this time. One family member could stay overnight with him, on the foldout mini-bed that the guest chair turned into. But it was hard to get good sleep there, because every two hours a nurse came in to check vital signs or change a drip bag.
“I can stay,” Mom said.
Behind her Beep was shaking his head no no no.
Mom looked terrible, with dark circles under her eyes and worry lines on her forehead and around her mouth, as if she’d gotten ten years older in the last month.