Dessert First

by Dean Gloster

  Tentacle hugs, Cipher

  Cipher—

  I agree. But with the boyfriend thing—you’re allowed to change your mind later.

  Your pal, Evan

  Skinnyboy—

  Of course. I may be invisible, but I’m a girl invisible friend. I’m always allowed to change my mind.

  Cipher

  (*Whose tentacles just changed color mysteriously, because she’s changeable, she is.*)

  The Cipher emails with Evan got me thinking. Maybe I could insist on self-protection rules with Hunter, too. I tried that an hour later, when Hunter and I were emailing back and forth, this time about other girls.

  K: Believe me. Once your guy parts start working again, the appeal of the cute girls in the short cheerleader skirts will be clearer.

  H: You got it wrong. Also, cheerleaders are too coordinated to fall over themselves going after bald cancer guy.

  K: Trust me. I know how romantic you are—cute senior boy fighting cancer.

  H: Says the girl who captured her guy’s heart with messages about barf. Figured you for a realist, not romantic.

  K: Ha. Goes to show what you know. Scratch a realist, and you find a scratched, hurting romantic. Plus, I’m a girl. We’re allowed to be complicated.

  H: Another reason I love you.

  That was the opening.

  K: We have new rules, shiny-head: (1) You don’t get to use the “L” word with me except “I loved what you wrote.” Seriously. You’re going to hurt me too much already. (2) No talk about us being together after you get well. It’s a fantasy. I know you’re just trying to keep up your morale, but it rips up my heart, a piece at a time. Got it?

  H: My girlfriend Kat, who talks her way past the 10 P.M. no-call curfew, says silly rules are to be broken.

  K: (*Crossing my arms over my small chest to protect myself, but then realizing that won’t help, so trying once more, by typing*) These are rules for my protection, DBF. So you don’t tear my heart out. I mean, even more. You have to follow them.

  H: Or what? You’ll disappear?

  I waited to respond, so he might worry that I’d disappeared already, even though I wouldn’t, then typed again.

  K: Don’t hurt me more than you have to. Please. On your way out. Or your way back. Either way, I’ll hurt a bunch. I do hurt. Okay?

  H: I’m sorry. Embarrassed. Ashamed. I wanted to not screw things up, but my brain barely works anymore, especially when I’m tired but pretending not to be. At least you know I’m not kissing other girls. With my ANC under 300, one little lip peck could kill me.

  That’s the one upside of a possibly dying boyfriend. Who needs trust when there’s rhinoviruses and drug-resistant pneumonia?

  K: Yeah. Especially after all those girls kissed the same phone. You’ve got one giant cross-contaminated female germ colony over at your school now. Plus—you forward one more picture a girl sends you of her nip slip, and maybe I’ll kill you. Joking. I think. Still—don’t be mean.

  H: You worry too much about girls at my school. Why?

  K: Oh, I don’t know: A school full of girls who’d love to nurse you back to health, with large chests to use for that? Who sent you prom pictures of those chests? Gosh. No idea.

  H: You have a self-image problem. And too much imagination, thinking about other girls’ breasts in my face. First, I’ve always preferred the streamlined, athletic types, like you. Second, remember the dying part in possibly DBF? So probably not an issue. They can’t even shove those chest pillows into my face in the casket, ’cause I’m getting cremated.

  K: You type the nicest, sweetest things.

  H: Back at you, Sarcasm Angel. (*kisses the computer screen, so Kat will know I say this with love and affection.*)

  K: Argh. Someone is not reading my messages carefully. Or at all. Behave, or I’ll tell Nurse Nancy to cut your morphine. Plus, don’t kiss your computer screen. It’s not hygienic.

  H: I read everything you write. Then go back and reread it with the other things you wrote. “Love and affection” means I love (among other things) what you write. Love (what you write) and xoxo, your DBF. Also, actual Love love.

  Argh.

  55

  “So,” Hunter said casually the next night, while we were Skyping. “I’ve got a DNR order now.”

  DNR means “do not resuscitate.” If heart or breathing stops, no chest compressions, electric paddles, or breathing machines to bring him back. I didn’t say anything. It felt like the world’s biggest chest compression hit me. No. Not yet.

  “Your DBF is DNR.” He went on. He must have seen my reaction in the video window on his computer. “No, it’s cool. Now if I hold my breath and an alarm goes off, there’s no big fuss. So far, I don’t miss the extra attention. You’ll have to pay more attention to me to make up for it—like maybe come out in person?”

  I couldn’t say anything. The words stuck in my throat.

  “Really, it’s okay—just doing my part to save electricity.”

  “I’m not ready for you to go.” My voice broke.

  “I know.”

  But he didn’t say he wasn’t ready.

  56

  Kat’s Make-Up Paper

  Philosophy of Life Part 3:

  The Role of Hope II: A Fire?

  Hope isn’t just a weed. It’s also a pain. It burns, like the most caustic chemo through a drip that’s already oozing and infected. Because hope comes with its evil twin: disappointment, the flip side of the spinning coin that sometimes comes up tails, once a kid has AML and a third course of chemo with no remission.

  You fight anyway, like you play soccer when you’re two goals down with a minute left. Not because you’re probably going to win. But because there’s at least some hope. Someone’s going to come back three times from infections, from teetering right at the ragged edge of death. Into remission and into five years cancer-free and then a whole, long life.

  Even when there’s only a twenty percent chance of survival, someone will be that one in five kids who walks out of the hospital, leaning on a parent, hair starting to grow in again, stepping back, blinking, into the bright outside light of life.

  Hope doesn’t guarantee survival. I wish. Then they’d sell it, along with the silver helium-filled balloons, in the hospital gift store. But you use it, like you use the drugs and the radiation. Because that’s the only way to play, when you’re two goals down, without much time.

  If you disagree, teachers, and complain I haven’t provided two separate supporting evidence paragraphs, then it’s your education that’s incomplete. Spend a couple of months of your summer vacation at the ICU, which—on a bad night in a bad week—is a high-tech warehouse for the might-soon-be dead. You’ll see how to play, two goals down, in life. Only then come back and hassle me about “needs citations for assertion.”

  57

  I typed to Hunter late that night. After the part of my brain that stops the rest of my brain from blurting out the truth had gotten too tired to stop me.

  K: Can I send you one message? Then have us both forget about it and never talk about it again?

  H: OK (*her DBF is a little curious and maybe afraid*) ’Sup?

  K: I’m not sure I can handle your dying. Or be there for you. I like you way too much. I thought I was stronger, but I’m broken inside. Even thinking about it. Even when I’m not thinking about it. Maybe I’m just broken.

  H: Is this the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech? Are you breaking up with me?

  K: No. No. No. No!

  H: OK. Cool. (Actually, yay!) Then—what?

  K: I don’t know. It’s that I pretend to be together. I mean together as a person. Not just as a couple. Tough, been-there cancer sib. Maybe, compared to people who don’t know anything about blood counts, I do know something. But I’m only me. Kat. Who can’t get her homework done. I’m not sure I can do this.

  H: Nobody can do more than they can. Just do what you can, Sarcasm Angel.

  K: At least I’m usi
ng my awesome sarcasm powers for good, to entertain you.

  H: See—that’s enough. It’s more than enough. It’s one of the best things I’ve got left. You’re up there way above ice cream. Or anything.

  K: (*Kat’s heart cracks. It will be broken later.*)

  H: Then it’s good you won my heart in an online bet—a spare!

  K: Not sure it works that way.

  H: Sure it does. Just imagine it that way. Like the taste of ice cream.

  I was almost empty. I talked Beep through it. I couldn’t do that again. Too soon. But that’s not what I typed.

  K: I’ll try. But don’t expect much. I’m. Just. Me. And kind of broken. P.S. This conversation never happened. (*Kat snaps her fingers. 3000 miles away, her DBF begins to forget…*)

  H: What conversation? Depending on the day, I’m so spacey I can’t remember anything.

  K: Always remember someone here is thinking about you.

  H: Some nights that by itself is enough.

  58

  Evan changed the subject when I mentioned Hunter, and I almost never talked to Evan about him anyway.

  Dr. Anne kept suggesting, in that therapist-asking-a-question way, that I was bug nuts crazy, for being involved with Hunter, so soon after Beep died. (She didn’t actually use the words “bug nuts” or “crazy,” but her eyebrows crawled into her hairline every time I mentioned him.) She had this weird notion that since I was in treatment for depression and anger issues, what with my brother dying and my flunking out, it might not be ideal to pile a long-distance dying sort-of boyfriend onto the heap. Apparently, they cover common sense in Ph.D. school.

  Rachel got annoyed with how my next door clickety-click late-night typing to Hunter supposedly came through the wall to her bedroom and kept her awake. Also, she didn’t quite get it, because what’s the point of a boyfriend if you can’t use him to collect neck hickeys?

  Mom was the worst. After fluttering around for months like a giant moth, bumping over and over again into the topic of why I spent all my time messaging a sick boy instead of typing my massive make-up paper, she crashed into the walls for weeks in general Mom freak-out mode, which Rachel enjoyed. Little sis Kat was finally getting Mom meltdown-over-boy action, without even one little lip kiss. Story of my life. Mom finally tried a full-on intervention. She cornered me in my room, before another Skype-and-email night with Hunter.

  She was, she made clear, way not okay with the DBF.

  “Relax,” I said. There wasn’t much chance of pregnancy or Other Terrible Things, because of how Hunter was (1) infertile, because of chemo and radiation; (2) probably without fully-working guy parts, because he was so sick; and (3) oh, 3000 miles away. “He’ll probably be dead in a few weeks anyway.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. How will you be, when he dies?”

  “Sad,” I said. “I have practice.”

  “You know, honey—you can always talk to me about it. If you’re feeling overwhelmed.”

  I looked up at the ceiling and wrinkled my forehead into a worried-about-your-nonexistent-sanity look. Mom’s scale of 1 to 10 freak-out meter was permanently stuck at 15. She’s not who you talk to about difficult stuff.

  She looked forlorn. “Or at least talk it over with Dr. Anne.”

  “I do.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry, Kat. We haven’t really been . . . With Beep sick . . .” She trailed off and tugged her hair. “I haven’t been a good Mom to you. Not through this whole—”

  “You’ve been fine. Good. It’s been hard on everybody.”

  “Is this Hunter thing really about Beep?” she asked. “To keep Beep alive?”

  It’s nice, after Mom manages to make sense for a whole minute, that she veers back into nonsense land, to remind me she’s Mom. “No. That’s not what this is about. Beep’s dead. That’s why we keep his ashes in the urn. In case we get confused.”

  • • •

  I Skyped with Hunter about it that night. “On the plus side, even my Mom thinks it’s a bad idea to hang out online with you. So it couldn’t be completely crazy. Everyone is worried, though, like I’ll completely crack up when you die.”

  “Will you?”

  “Maybe. Or I’ve bottomed out already. How about you get well, so we don’t find out?”

  Hunter was quiet. He bit his lip.

  “Unless, I mean,” I said, “that would interfere with your summer job, collecting the life insurance.”

  He laughed, but it was a nervous one, not a ha-ha funny one. “I’d like you to stick around. If you can. Until I can’t.”

  “Sure. I can do anything, if it involves not doing homework.”

  As if.

  59

  “We’re stopping,” Hunter said at the end of that week. “No more dialysis or transfusions. I get to go home. If there’s a problem, I won’t come back.”

  That meant hospice. Beyond do not resuscitate. No more intervention. Dying. “Oh, God.”

  “My only hope left is a miracle,” the smile was in his voice. “And you’re taking God’s name in vain?”

  It probably was in vain, even if that counted as a prayer. “I’ve got no pull with God. It’s been tested. If I did, I’d still have a brother.”

  “You do still have a brother. He’s just dead.” He paused. “You know, if I die, you still get to call me your DBF. ‘Dead’ and ‘Dying’ both start with D.”

  He was trying to cheer us up. But that was my job, and both of us were failing. He paused for a while, then kept his voice light. “You think you could fly out here in the next week? To say hi—bye. In person? Get to meet?” I was silent for so long, stretching to seconds, he jumped back in. “Look—sorry. Silly idea. I know it’s—I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “No, it’s a really sweet idea. A nice idea.” Nice except for Mom’s limitless freakout, over my flying alone out to the East Coast—to visit a guy I met online. Or, more likely, Mom coming with me, which would mean flying cross-country with her whacked-out self and anxiety disorder. Way fun. How would I pay for it? What did plane tickets even cost? And I’m not sure I could do it. Seeing Hunter might rip my heart out of my chest. “But I don’t think so. I don’t think . . . I can.”

  It was his turn for a long silence. “Okay.” He tried to make his voice cheerful. It sounded like an effort. “Well, think about it. If something could magically work out.”

  “If I get one bit of magic, I’m making you well.”

  “You said it yourself: You work miracles, but they don’t let you pick which ones.”

  “Well, if I get a vote. How long?”

  “Maybe days. Couple weeks. A month. Depends on my liver. And whether I get pneumonia. But probably before the cancer messes up my brain. So I’ll still be me.”

  “Well there’s a relief.” That had to be last-place finish for the silver lining award. “That’s good.”

  He laughed. “I’m okay with it. Really. You know, finally.”

  I wanted to come up with something positive, but the best I could do was edgy. “If you don’t get a miracle, Hunter, this death thing better work out for you, or I’ll kick your dead grandmother’s ass so hard she craps dentures for eternity.”

  Hunter laughed, bless his kind soul, but the sound couldn’t carry over the crash and splat of my breaking heart.

  60

  While Mom was chopping endless vegetables for Rachel that night, to make some dish that looked like the farmer’s market compost bin, I asked whether I could go see Hunter before he died. She made a sour small mouth expression, like she swallowed spoiled milk. Or vegan imitation milk.

  “Not appropriate,” she started, putting down the knife. Which was good, because she waved her arms once she got wound up. Mom covered loud topics ranging from no way to never, to not possible, to hell no, to not when hell freezes over, starting with why sixteen-year-old girls did not fly across country to visit boys they’d never met, to the cost, to how if I couldn’t even do my homework she wasn’t rewarding me with an expe
nse-paid trip.

  Rachel was smirking, enjoying that for once someone else was getting a hard time for wanting to go pretty far in the boy department.

  “So,” I cut in, when Mom paused for a breath. “I take that as no.”

  Mom was winding up for more. “Another thing—”

  “Got it, Mom. It’s no. I understand: No way. Ever.”

  She wanted to keep going, but I walked out.

  I typed an email to Hunter that I’d asked about coming to see him, but my Mom said no.

  What I didn’t mention was an awful true thing: I was relieved. But at the same time felt, for letting Hunter down, like a screw-up and a bad person. As usual.

  That night I wandered down to borrow Beep off the mantle, thinking that hanging out with his remains would leave me feeling slightly less awful and alone. But Rachel had the living room fully occupied, sitting in the chair closest to Beep-in-a-bottle on the mantle, reading The Sun Also Rises for her English class. The only reason Rachel hung out in the living room was to be near Beep, even though she pretended that wasn’t. So I didn’t have the heart to steal him. Instead, I sat down in the other chair.

  She looked up, like she was going to skewer me with an icy Rachel glare, but when she saw my haircut struggling back toward normalcy, I guess she decided to have pity on me instead. She nose-exhaled a long sigh, and then said, “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Probably not. I’m flunking out and a total screw-up.” Now I was even disappointing a dying guy 3000 miles away. Maybe I was bad for cancer patients. Rachel, by comparison, was getting straight-As and—in a new personal record—was still together with Brian, after six months. She looked almost infinitely sad, though, her mouth turned down and her eyes desolate.