by Dean Gloster
I frowned at her and crinkled my eyebrows. “Mom’s in charge of being crazy, in our family. Don’t get people’s roles confused. Dad’s just in charge of work.”
“What’s your role?”
I was the smart, funny one. The soccer player. But that had changed since Beep got sick and I went on academic probation. “I’m the one who can deal. Maybe the only.”
“Deal?”
“Yeah. Mom totally can’t deal.” It was hard to explain. “I can just sit with Beep. In the hospital. Hang out. Talk if he wants to, or not if he doesn’t. Mom endlessly futzes with him, trying to make him more comfortable, until he rolls his eyes into a please-jab-that-woman-with-a-syringe look, and I have to lunge in with a sarcasm strike to get her to stop. Or Dad, who can play videogames—but can’t just be. Or even Rachel, who wants Beep to be there for her, when she graces his room with her surgical-mask-over-snotdrip self.”
“So you can deal, in the hospital. But have trouble dealing with homework.”
I’m getting treated for depression, but Dr. Anne always brings us back to the most depressing topics. At school things weren’t getting much better. It looked like I was sliding down the porcelain passageway toward flunking out. “I can’t even do the easy assignments. I don’t know why.”
“Maybe you don’t want to be the person who always deals?”
I shook my head. “Maybe I’m not wild about being me, period.”
• • •
Evan was waiting curb-side, with his lunch, when Mom dropped me off after the end of the Doctor Anne session.
“Hey,” he said. We fell into step, headed toward our usual lunch spot over by the tennis courts. “You gonna make it to my show at the Gilman tomorrow night?”
The Gilman is a local club, where Green Day got its start. Evan, playing solo, was on the bill with a couple of other bands and some super-secret awesome guest appearance. “No.” I looked down at gum on the sidewalk. “I’m really sorry.” I was supposed to stay with Beep. Rachel couldn’t, because her nose was still a running snot hose. “Wish I could.”
“Me too,” Evan's voice was glum. “How was your, uh, meeting?” Someday we’ll run out of euphemisms for my weekly shrink-rap. But not yet.
“Weird. Apparently, I discussed being from Mars with my therapist.”
“I thought boys were from Mars and girls were from Venus.”
“You were so asleep in health class when they explained that process. ‘When a mommy and a daddy like each other very much . . .’ Thought you got a refresher course, though, last year with Tracie.”
Evan’s ears pinked. “I try to forget my worst mistakes.”
“Good thing you’re not me. Life would be like having amnesia.”
“What mistakes have you ever made?” he asked.
“Missing your show, tomorrow. Opening my mouth, constantly. Being born, almost sixteen years ago, but if my bone marrow gets used, I might make up for that one.”
Evan scuffed the ground with his running shoe. “Why do you say stuff like that?”
“Because if we get the kind of life we deserve, I must be horrible.”
“You don’t like having lunch with me?”
I approximately loved having lunch with Evan. So much it scared me. What if that stopped again? “You’re a bright spot, indie-boy. So I’m lucky you’re not on a PET scan, because then you’d be a massive tumor.”
“I love it when you compare me to having cancer. It makes me feel all—” He looked up, then shook his head. “Not great.”
“Then hang out with me more,” I said. “Life vaporizes my self-esteem. Inhale some.”
He leaned toward me and put his face right in my neck. Was he going to kiss me? Evan made a big show of breathing in, like he was smelling perfume. I could feel the air pulled along my skin. My knees felt weak.
“Wow,” he said. “You’re right. I suddenly feel awesome.”
I was feeling all woogly from him sniffing my neck and from thinking he’d kiss me. “Good. One of us should model that. Go, indie-boy, you rock.” I was just babbling. “But indie-style, not with mainstream predictability.”
“If I liked it predictable, instead of weird, how could we have conversations?”
“On that subject—” My session with Dr. Anne had actually worried me. Mom saw some kind of psychiatrist once in a while, but I was the only person in my family doing every-week shrink sessions, I couldn’t do homework, and I couldn’t even control myself enough to stop spraying Kayla and the Tracies with sarcasm. Or to stop arguing with Mrs. Miller, digging myself in deeper. “Do you think I’m not just bummed out and cranky—that I’m crazy, crazy?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Being from my family hasn’t super-prepared me for recognizing not crazy. They’re all crazy, except Beep, and we’re having him chemically poisoned. So—am I? Crazy?”
“Uh,” Evan paused. “No, I wouldn’t say that.” But it took him so long, that pretty much meant yes.
“Least convincing ‘No’ in history.”
“Well, you’re strung kind of tight.”
“Strung tight?
“Yeah. Strung so tight, if I patted your butt, dogs would howl.”
“Cute. For now, Evan, please stick to actual stringed instruments and keyboards.”
“We’ll also need a drummer,” he said. “For our future indie band.”
“Not who drums on my butt. We don’t want dogs howling over our great vocals. What do you mean, ‘strung tight’?”
“You don’t let things go. And you always say the funny thing, to block stuff that hurts. You work so hard.” He looked down at his feet. “To keep things from getting to you.”
I just sat there. For once, I had absolutely nothing to say.
“But—” He looked over, guilty. “Not crazy crazy.”
13
The next night—during Evan’s gig at the Gilman—I was back to my by-then-usual schedule of spending Wednesdays in Beep’s hospital room, on the visitor’s chair that turns into a foldout bed. Mom spent most other nights there, except for Saturdays, when Dad spent the overnights so she could prep for her Sunday open houses.
Mom would only get rest at home if someone else in our family slept in Beep’s room, poised to wrestle the angel of death away.
I tried to get out of it, because of Evan’s show—he was even playing the four songs we wrote together last year. But Rachel was still under quarantine with continuing post-nasal drip that made her cough. When Rachel did make her five-minute visits, Mom made her put on hospital gloves and wear a surgical germ-mask across her face, so Rachel looked like some hot young doctor from a daytime TV show who had stopped by to replace a kidney. And Dad was out of town because of some “expert deposition,” so no dice. When this cancer thing was finally over and Beep was well, my family was seriously going to owe me.
“Want some apple juice?” Beep asked, pointing to the little pitcher of his urine sample. “It’s recycled.”
I rolled my eyes. He’d also recycled that joke. Because of the chemo, the pitcher was marked with the curving six-horned symbol for bio-hazardous waste. Beep wasn’t even allowed to pour his pee, with its poisonous chemical leftovers, into the toilet. “Save it for Rachel. Yellow goes with her hair.”
“Nah. Rachel’s like Dad. Doesn’t come around enough.”
“When she does, notice her more,” I said. “With her looks, she’s used to getting attention, so it’s weird to her that you just keep playing videogames.”
Beep grimaced, and pushed around some of the hospital “food” on his tray, left from dinner. “Something’s wrong with Rachel.”
“No kidding. She’s stuck-up, but unlike blood cancer, that’s not curable.”
“It’s not that. Last time she was here, she spent half the time out in the hall, crying, on her phone with her boyfriend.”
I rolled my eyes. “Boyfriend problems.”
“Nah,” Beep shook his head. “Something serious. Can
you find out?”
An uneasy thought nagged at me, just out of reach. It had to do with her boyfriend. Then worry. Something was wrong with Rachel. Didn’t she know, though, with Beep sick, the rule for the rest of us was don’t create any more family drama? “I’ll ask, but Rachel doesn’t really talk to me anymore.”
Beep nodded, like we’d made a deal. He had only eaten the dessert part of his hospital “dinner” and just pushed the rest around on his tray. “And can you work the nurses for more Jell-O? Tell them the Make-A-Wish lady says I can have as much as I want.”
“Sure.” I had money to buy him some in the cafeteria, but Beep’s neutrophil count was so low now that they’d only let him eat stuff that came directly from the kitchen, wrapped in plastic, so no germ colony had dropped in on an air current.
“Tell ’em I want two,” Beep said. “In different colors. So when I barf, it’s art.”
Gross. “Be sure to sign it then, and give it to Rachel. Tell her you want her to keep it always.”
He giggled. “You’re a bad influence.”
“I try.” I went out to the nurses’ station. My favorite nurse, Chestopher, was there. He’s a tall, gentle African-American man with gorgeous long eyelashes and an earring. He’s a Buddhist, so I asked him if some Jell-O for Beep could be in the present moment, and earned a smile.
When the Jell-O arrived twenty minutes later, Beep even ate some.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Like microwaved dog crap.” Beep pushed away the swinging tray with its quivering gelatin remains. “So—better than yesterday.”
I changed into sweatpants and a long tee shirt in the bathroom, then came back out and unfolded the visitors’ chair.
“Can we talk, after lights out?” Beep asked.
“Sure.” Sometimes Beep liked chatting in the dark. I liked it too. It was like a girl sleepover then, from back in the days when I had multiple friends.
I put the sheets from home on top of the foldout bed, and set out my earplugs and sleep eye mask. Even in the middle of the night, nurses come in and out to monitor blood pressure and replace drip bags. The sleep mask sort of defeated the purpose of lying in wait for the angel of death, but I could count on Nurse Chestopher to play backup. I flipped off the light and lay down on my little foldout bed, breathing through my mouth to avoid the faint mouthwash-truck-hit-pine-forest hospital smell of disinfectant that didn’t quite cover the ghost scent of stomach acid from an earlier barf.
“You know when my heart stopped and they shocked me with the paddles to restart?” Beep’s voice came out of the darkness from under the red glow of the LED readouts of his heart rate and blood pressure.
“Yeah. That night somehow sticks in my mind.”
“I floated up out of my body. I could see everything. Mom pushed you guys out the door. Dr. Manning told everyone what drugs to get. Nurse Adrienne was pushing on my chest, and Chestopher was squeezing a plastic bag to put air in me.”
That was actually a good description of the code, when they were hand-ventilating him. Had someone told Beep about it?
“I drifted out into the hallway, and saw you coming back, but you went into Nathan’s room instead. You told him I’d be all right, then came to my room, into the corner.”
I don’t know how Beep could have known that. None of the nurses were paying attention to me then, so he didn’t hear it from them.
“Then I floated through the wall out past the nurses’ station, where they were bringing that cart in, and went out, along the ceiling, to where Mom and Dad were sitting across from Rachel. Mom spilled everything in her purse. Dad was patting her arm, but he was scared, and Rachel started grabbing everything that dumped out, including a quarter that rolled into the corner.” Beep was quiet for a while. “I went up this long tunnel, and it was like I could see my whole life, in fast forward. I went toward this ball of light. Like a star, out in space, a ball of light in the darkness. Except it was alive. I think it was God.”
I lay there in the dark, in rapt attention.
“It was love. Complete love. The ball of light. And it felt so good. Like being home, but perfect. Like it loved me, even the bad parts. All of me. It was . . .” He trailed off. “Great. But hard to explain to people who haven’t seen it.”
Goosebumps. I shivered. If that was death, I guess I’d get there eventually. In the meantime, I’m not doing the original research, even for a make-up paper. Still, it felt holy, hearing about it.
“It asked, in my head, about whether I wanted to stay there, or go back. To my body.” Beep’s voice was quiet. “I thought about how you looked, and Mom and Dad and Rachel. I wasn’t ready to go. So I said I wanted to come back. Even though it would hurt. I was sad to leave, but then I whooshed away, and snapped back into my body. They were giving me that shock, and my heart started again.”
“Before that, you sat up. Said, ‘I’m not ready. I’m just twelve.’”
“I was talking to the ball of light. It was beautiful. And perfect. There.”
It might make Mom feel better to hear this. “Did you tell Mom?”
“Tried to. She changed the subject.”
“Go figure. Talking about her son dying.”
“Yeah,” Beep laughed. “Mom’s weird that way.” He paused. “Could you tell her?”
“She’ll try to shush me, too.”
“You don’t let people shush you. It’s not your deal.”
True enough. Even I couldn’t shush me. “Sure. I’ll try.”
14
The next morning, I didn’t have any school homework done, but I did start on one of my assignments from Beep. I got up in the dark, even before the 6 A.M. blood-draw lady came around. Instead of heading to school on my bike from the El Cerrito BART station, I pedaled home. Mom was off meeting house-buyer clients for coffee before the morning “brokers’ open” house tour, so I figured it would be a good time to ambush Rachel and ask her questions. About what was wrong.
I went through my list of suspicions. Rachel was off with her boyfriend all the time. When I said Evan might have kissed me on the top of the head, Rachel said we should have the “condom talk.” And mentioned my “pregnancy-preventing personality.” She was cranky in the morning, always insisting on getting into the bathroom by her appointed minute. Maybe because she was rushing in to throw up?
When I got upstairs, by then seriously worried, Rachel was in her room and had finished in the bathroom. It was still shower-steamy. I scuttled in to search for clues. I bent down and used the plastic hanger she left on the door to poke through the trash-can. There wasn’t any discarded stick from a pregnancy test kit, but even blonde Rachel probably wasn’t dumb enough to leave that evidence around. I looked at the toilet. If Rachel had thrown up in it, there’d probably still be that faint acid barf smell, even after a flush. I couldn’t smell anything from up here, so—eww—I knelt down by the bowl. The tiniest, gross experimental sniff. No vomit smell.
“What are you doing?”
I startled at the sound of Rachel’s voice and banged my head on the sink. “Ow. No idea.”
“Why are you here?” Her voice was sharp. “Why aren’t you on your way to school?”
I rubbed the back of my head, where I’d sink-smacked it. “I don’t have my assignment done for World History. So I’m skipping. I’ll try to get Mom to write me an excused absence.” Not that I’d probably have the assignment done tomorrow, either.
“Were you throwing up?” Her perfect eyebrows scrunched together. “Or sniffing the toilet?”
“Rachel, are you okay? I mean, is anything wrong? With you? I’m worried about you.” I was.
She crossed her arms. “I’m not the one snorting toilet seats.” But there was something uncertain about her expression. Like, if I asked about the right thing, she might open up.
“Like, for example, are you pregnant?”
Whatever the right question was, that wasn’t it. Her face closed and she pressed her lips into a
white line. “You’re the worst. Just because I have a boyfriend.” She sputtered to a stop and then blew out her breath in a disgusted snort.
“Well is there anything else?” I asked. “That you should say to someone?”
She looked from me to the toilet seat. “Yeah. Try not to be so weird and annoying, Kat. If you do donate bone marrow, I don’t want Beep catching that from you.”
She muttered all the way down the hall to her room.
But she never actually said she wasn’t pregnant.
• • •
I made it to school after first-period World History, and at least had lunch with Evan to look forward to. But that didn’t start well either. Evan, it turned out, had invited Elizabeth and Amber and Calley Rose to join us for lunch outside. They brought their lunch trays and all gushed endlessly about Evan’s show, which was, apparently, the most amazing experience in the history of sound. After his set, which was incredible, the hottest local band ever, Tranq Girl Reunion, played. (They’ve opened on tour with The Matches and for OZoNation. Yes, really.) Then, for their encore, TGR invited Evan back onstage, and he played two songs with them. Which makes him, officially, third-hand famous.
I apologized a bunch for missing the best gig ever, especially since Evan had dedicated his set to Beep. But mostly I sat there—not just a fifth wheel, but more like a pointless weather vane strapped to the top of a car. All the other wheels were moving the same way, pointed the same direction, going on about something impressive, while I wobbled silently, looking out of place.
“How was the night with Beep?” Evan finally asked.
I told them about Beep’s description of his near-death experience.
“Wow,” Evan said.
“Anywho—” Elizabeth tugged on his sleeve. “Back to the Gilman. What was it like being onstage with Tranq Girl? Are you going to play with them again?”
Evan raised his eyebrows at me, like he was asking if there was more.
Well, yeah. “Now Beep wants me to tell Mom everything he told me. Because when he tries to tell her, she keeps shushing him.”