Dessert First

by Dean Gloster

  “Evan.” My headache was actually less, and I couldn’t feel any ankle or knee or wrist pain anymore. Instead I felt tingly. “I owe you a Massive Lifetime Favor. You can call it in anytime.”

  “Well—” he said.

  “For anything except making me write songs with you, before the end of your friend-probation.”

  He sighed, a long one. But he kept rubbing my temples. Then he started stroking my hair, running his hand over it, then combing through it with his fingers. Wow. Wow. Wow.

  I wanted to lie there forever like that. I wanted to push my head further into his hands. I shifted.

  “Relax. It’s part of the protocol.”

  I tried to. “It’s good I have a headache. Otherwise this would be too nice.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” It was hard to explain, even to myself. Because Beep had cancer. Because Evan might get dragged off again by some other girl. Because it didn’t fit my life. Because he flirted so much with Cipher online, I couldn’t trust him. Or because it could lead to other things, or all of the above. “But it’s mmmmmmmmm.” I snuggled toward him. The smell of baking brownies was filling the house, warm and wonderful.

  “I even make follow-up house calls.”

  I was silent, enjoying him stroking my hair. Then my mind went off in a different direction, worried about the transplant. “This is Beep’s last shot. What if it doesn’t work?”

  He stopped. I guess that was too serious for him, too. “You’ll know you did your best.”

  No. I’ll know my best wasn’t good enough. But I didn’t say that to Evan. I might suffer from depression, but I don’t want it to be contagious.

  Evan leaned over. He was moving his face toward mine.

  Skippy jumped up, landed on my chest, and started dog-licking me instead. I made a weird “Aack” noise. The oven buzzer went off.

  “Uh, brownies.” I’m so good with clever things to say. I felt nervous and warm, along with being achy. I sat up.

  Evan exhaled and went to get the brownies out of the oven.

  I pointed out a seat at our kitchen table, when the brownies were cool enough to eat. “Sit there.” Then I sat on the opposite side. I don’t completely know why. The steel scooper was slightly shaky in my hand, so I put it in the ice cream carton he brought. “So—here’s how you do it. We’re eating dessert first. And even before that, we take our ice cream in our bowls and mash it and stir it with our spoons so it’s creamy and perfect to go with warm brownies.”

  We did, and it was warm and wonderful, even with the aches, to sit with Evan, eating the brownies he made and the ice cream he brought. Then, while I lay down again with my little damp forehead compress, Evan rinsed the bowls and pan and spoons and put them in the dishwasher and cleaned up the counter, so there was no mess to annoy Mom.

  He started to pack up the eggs and milk.

  “Uh, could you leave some milk?” I was embarrassed. “For my cereal in the morning?”

  “You don’t have milk?”

  “Yeah, but like three weeks old. By now, it’s chunky style.”

  Evan pulled ours out of the fridge. Then, because he’s a guy, he opened the cartoon and sniffed it. “Eww.” He wrinkled his face and poured it down the sink, watching the slow gloppy splatter with fascinated horror. “That’s cottage cheese.” He sniffed again. “From dead goats. Zombie dead goats. It’s moving.” He washed it down the sink and ran the disposal and rinsed out the carton and put it in the composting. He put the good milk he’d brought into our fridge.

  “My hero. Saved me from a headache and boredom and zombie dead goat milk.”

  “You’re my hero,” he said. “Trying to save Beep.”

  “Only if it works. Not if it kills him instead.” It’s only in Beep’s shooter videogames you get to be a hero by killing people. I was being such a downer. I wanted to be friendly and fun and funny, but somehow my words all got stuck on honest.

  I stood up, and Evan walked over, until he was really close. He put his arms around me. I was looking right into those pretty brown eyes. He licked his lip, a quick nervous flick of the tongue. He leaned his face toward me with his lips slightly open. He looked scared. I could feel his breath on my skin. My heart was beating really fast. All I had to do was lean into it.

  I tilted my head down instead. Put my forehead on his shoulder. “I need a hug,” I said. “I’m scared.” And I was, actually shaking. If we kissed, right before I donated bone marrow to Beep, what if the donation didn’t go well and Beep got sick? Would I be afraid forever that it was because I got germs from Evan?

  Evan hugged me. “Scared about Beep?”

  “Yeah,” I said. That was one of the things I was scared about. We hugged each other, but awkwardly, because somehow our arms weren’t in the right place, like we needed more practice. The alarm went off on my phone, startling us both. Time to take more ibuprofen. And Mom would be home soon. Probably best if she didn’t find me wrapped around Evan. “I, uh. Probably time to go,” I said. But I didn’t stop hugging him, and he didn’t stop hugging me.

  Finally, I let go, and then he did, and I took a step back. My headache was back. I walked him to the door, looking down.

  When he left, I closed the screen door, and put my hand up on it. “Thanks.”

  Evan put his hand on the other side, so we were touching hands through the mesh. “My pleasure.” He kept his hand there. After a long, long pause, I finally dropped mine.

  “You have to keep being my friend.” I swallowed. “If my cells don’t work and Beep dies. Because I’ll really need you. And I might not be my friend anymore.”

  “Okay.” He looked somehow sad. “Always.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but didn’t, then gave me a little wave.

  I watched him go, and, with the headache building again, instead of thinking that was awesome, I felt more depressed, like I’d gotten in my own way and screwed things up that could have been even more awesome. Not quite good enough, Kat. I hoped it wasn’t a bad omen for the transplant.

  20

  Mom blew three and a half gaskets over Evan stopping by. Typical. But it was like she was speaking Sanskrit—her lips were moving, but only ancient nonsense came out. She was upset about “no supervision” with Evan here. Also, didn’t I know I shouldn’t get exposed to germs? And why had he come over? Another thing—brownies aren’t nutritious.

  I said I’d given Evan the health grilling before letting him in, and reminded her I wasn’t Rachel—so there was no making out involved—and added that, since I had to eat dinner with Tyler’s family once a week, I hung out a bunch at Tyler’s unsupervised, and Tyler was also technically a boy, even when his parents weren’t around.

  “That’s different,” Mom said.

  “How?” It hurt my head to raise my voice, but I did anyway. If stupidity was contagious, Mom would make me a moron right before I gave my dumb cells to Beep.

  “Tyler’s not Evan.”

  And I’m not Mom, which only made it harder to understand her insane babbling, especially since Evan studied with me at Tyler’s.

  “What?” I gave Mom my you’re-not-making-sense look and sat up, which made my headache worse. “Never mind. It was weird having Evan here—someone in our house who cared that I had a headache and who tried to do something about it, who even brought milk so I have something to put on cereal. Completely different. From everyone around here.”

  “I left you girls grocery money,” Mom said, ignoring the rest.

  “Rachel did the shopping. Remember? The vegan?” It was like talking to Dad, all of a sudden. “She bought almond milk.”

  “You could use that.”

  I snorted. “If God meant us to drink milk from almonds, he would have given nuts cow udders.” I looked at Mom. “It’s bad enough he lets nuts have daughters.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Mom’s you’re-out-of-line-young-lady voice doesn’t work on me. “It means I have a killer
headache and have to go lie down, to concentrate on growing blood cells for tomorrow’s ‘harvest.’ Because that’s all I am around here—a blood bag. So stop upsetting me, messing up my only usefulness.”

  I stormed off to my room and slammed the door, which, with my headache, bothered me more than it did Mom.

  But I left my sports bottle behind and was supposed to be drinking lots of water. After my brain-rattling door slam performance, I wasn’t slinking back downstairs to get it.

  Five minutes later, Mom came upstairs to bring me my sports bottle and also to explain or apologize, but I didn’t want to get into another fight, so I told her I’d just lie in the dark and maybe we could go through that some other time, when my head didn’t feel like it was mashed under a collapsed bridge.

  • • •

  After dinner, when my headache was pounding even worse, and my elbows and knees ached, Rachel knocked on my door. I couldn’t remember the last time that happened.

  “Brought you ibuprofen,” she said.

  “Thanks.” I was surprised. “How’d you know?”

  “You were moaning. Wimp.”

  “I was not.”

  “No,” she smiled. “I read about the side effects online. And saw your blog posts.”

  “Thanks.” It was almost time for another dose of ibuprofen. I washed them down with water out of my sports bottle. “What do I owe you?” I joked, not knowing what else to say about Rachel being nice.

  “Just—make Beep well, okay?”

  So: No pressure. I gave her a scared nod.

  • • •

  The next morning, at the Blood Centers of the Pacific donation site in San Francisco on Bush Street, a block from Dad’s office, I sat in a brown, one-armrest lounging couch for the three-hour “harvest,” while the regular blood donors came and went, because my donation took six times as long. A Filipina nurse named Norlissa in a white medical jacket supervised, and the apheresis machine clicked and whirred, separating what it was pulling out of my blood for saving Beep from the stuff it sent back. The only creepy parts were (1) the blood they put back into me came back in cold, so I could feel this long chilly line s-l-o-w-l-y moving up my left arm then through my chest toward my heart. I put my right hand on where it was coming back from the left side, and felt the cold advancing. Eww. And, of course (2) there was no guarantee my stem cells, parked in Beep, wouldn’t kill him.

  They gave me this little tape-wrapped gauze about the size of the cardboard center of a toilet paper roll, which I was supposed to roll around every five seconds in the hand of the arm they were taking the blood out of. While I twirled and squeezed it, I sent little messages to my stem cells. Make Beep well. Don’t get rejected. Make healthy blood cells, in your new home. Don’t kill my brother, guys. Be good for him. Kick leukemia’s ass. Save my brother. Please.

  • • •

  Beep was so zonked from the chemo, he didn’t even remember getting my transplant. When the docs put the drip in, he was way too out of it to remind the little cells of what to do, and those cells didn’t have any actual brains in their tiny selves. So I was worried they might already have forgotten my advice from a few hours before.

  Beep played nearly dead for a couple of days, then slowly started getting better.

  21

  Kat’s Make-Up Paper

  Philosophy of Life Part 1:

  Boys, and How to Impress Them: The Nineteen Names for Barf Dating Secret

  If you’re a straight high school girl who can’t seem to get along with other girls—like me, for example—your philosophy of life paper should probably include something about boys. Here is mine: Boys are different from girls. Deep, right? My first piece of evidence is their (generally) different attitude toward shooter videogames: Boys actually enjoy them. No wonder they’re less mature than girls: Their brains are bludgeoned into a late-developing stupor by the boredom of repetitive videogames—See enemy guy. Shoot. Repeat.

  Second, and even more profound: Our different attitude toward barf. Girls—correctly, I’m thinking—look at stomach content rebounds as disgusting and not to be discussed. Boys, though, think it’s funny. There’s the guy fascination with the gross plus their humor reaction to the uncomfortable. Like a movie where some dude gets kicked in the crotch: In a theater full of guys, the reaction is . . . laughter.

  I can’t explain it, but I know how to use it. To talk with boys, all you need to know is a little bit about shooter videogames. I used to grill Tyler Harris for tricks and tips at popular videogames, to pass on to Beep. So I actually speak Videogamese. As a result, I’ve had continuous conversations for several minutes with Tyler about a topic other than sports, something no other girl at our school (or, probably, on our planet) has managed.

  Even more impressive to boys is if you can talk to them about alternative names for the big spit: Despite spending their entire childhood wandering the World of Warcraft or playing Modern Warfare online, even gamer guys have a vague sense that girls are different, that we don’t go for the same level of grossness. So flip that stereotype: Meet their euphemism for barf and raise them two.

  I discovered this by accident, because my brother Beep got such a kick out of alternate names like high-volume hiccups, coughing for content, and liquid laughter—even when that was his life’s central unpleasant experience. Then I tested it on other guys in the PICU. They also cracked up. So I claim original research credit for this important discovery. I even used it to get a semi-actual boyfriend, chatting up a cute senior cancer kid named Hunter Lange online.

  22

  The weeks while Beep and my bone marrow were still deciding how much to fight with each other, I had trouble sleeping. Way across the country in his hospital room, Hunter was so wired on prednisone that sleep wasn’t a regular option for him. Instead, we spent hours in the darkness, shooting messages back and forth. He said I helped distract him from his situation, and I needed something to take my mind off the growing ache of worry for Beep. One night in late November, we exchanged complaints about school.

  H: Was supposed to escape high school for good in June, but even if I get well fast they’ll make me repeat at least a semester, cuz I missed so much.

  K: (*Shudder*) Since I haven’t done any of the assignments, they might make me repeat a whole grade. The student equivalent of being regurgitated. They’ll feed me the same b.s. homework over again, to make me hurl. A whole year of making street pizza and eating lunch to match my shoes.

  H: LOL. But don’t get me started—I know lots more words for barfing than you.

  K: Dream on, shiny head. I’m a cancer sib. I entertain my cancer kid brother with names for the big spit. I’ve forgotten more ways to say yak than you know.

  H: Wanna bet?

  K: Sure. My bone marrow against your heart. (With chemo, your liver and kidneys, probably not so good.) I should warn, though—it’s not clear yet if my bone marrow is so great either.

  H: No prob. Last girl I gave my heart to threw it back, bruised. And any bone marrow is better than mine. You’re on: Hurling, horking, heaving. Hacking up a hairball.

  Hmmn. Upping the degree of difficulty by starting with the same letter? Easy.

  K: Barfing. Booting. Blowing gravy. Big spit. Bouncing breakfast. Burping biscuits. Barking chow.

  H: Spitting up. Spaghetti speech. Stomach acid shoe shine.

  That was a new one to me.

  K: Tossing cookies. Talking to Ralph on the round white phone. Throwing up. Tossing a street pizza. Tonsil-tickle tossup. Technicolor yawn.

  After half a dozen more messages back and forth, Hunter conceded.

  H: Wow. You win.

  The poor guy never had a chance. He’d never heard of the power burp, let alone anti-gravity gargling. I dazzled him with my synonym skills.

  H: Where do you want the heart delivered?

  K: I’ll get back to you on that. Take good care of it in the meantime, so when I claim it, it’s cancer free.

  H: I’ll do my best.
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  That’s when Hunter started calling himself my “possibly DBF,” for possibly Dying BoyFriend. I had this weird pang, because I thought about Evan, but I played along anyway. Hunter was 3000 miles away, and a senior, and would either bounce back to the healthy world and leave me behind or be dead in a few months. Also leaving me behind. I figured it was like, when you’re a girl getting a haircut, why not play-flirt with the totally gay late-20s guy hairdresser? You both know it won’t go anywhere, but it’s fun, maybe good practice for later in life, and basically harmless.

  I wish.

  • • •

  That week, Drowningirl disappeared on me. Or, technically, disappeared on her online friend Cipher, but I was the one who felt bad about it. There were two last heartbreaking poems and a final message.

  My House 1

  I was born in a smoldering house

  And watched it slowly burn.

  My brother left for a hospital bed

  Now where can I turn?

  My House 2

  Crazy lives in the master suite;

  Cancer, one door down.

  Love was here once, long ago

  But can’t get to my room.

  Too little left. Too many stairs.

  It’s a simple floor plan, our house.

  But I’m lost. Again.

  D: Too much gravity here. I’m too crushed to type anymore. Going to use all my energy pretending to cope. I’m turning over a new leaf, and will only email when I have something cheerful to type. If ever. Love and good-bye. Thank you. Be well.

  I sat there, stunned. I was worried about her, but also feeling abandoned. How could she do that? I was mostly there for her, but if things got worse for me, I figured she’d be there for me, a helpful expert on how to keep slogging through misery. And even if she was trying to protect me from her bumming me out more, didn’t she know that it helped me to be needed somewhere? I’d never told her how much our connection meant.