“Let’s make some tea,” Dad says.
I want to run toward the road and try to flag down Mo and Chloe in the Tomato, but my legs won’t carry me that far. Instead, I resign myself to waiting until they come back. Dad and Suzanne offer me a “seat” in their “living room,” which is basically just one corner with a bunch of pillows strewn over the floor. I lower myself onto one of them, even though it sends a shooting pain up my spine.
She’s due right now. More than right now. Hence the acupuncture, she tells me earnestly, running a hand over her stomach.
“Your mother is a midwife now, isn’t she?” Suzanne asks brightly.
“Maxine’s been a midwife for years, Suze. You know that.” Dad sets two mugs of tea in front of us. I take mine and watch a few stray herbs float in the steaming water. Suzanne shoots him an irritated look, as though he’s blown her cover. Of course she knows; she’s just making small talk, perfectly normal, with her perfectly normal stepdaughter.
“Well, I have so much respect for midwives. I mean, the work they do! They’re goddesses, I mean seriously. You know, the midwives here will deliver babies who in regular hospitals would just be immediate cesareans. They’ll deliver breech babies, eleven pounders—I mean, they’re really wonderful. Childbirth has become so medicalized, you know. Giving birth isn’t a trauma. Or it doesn’t have to be, anyway. But you know that from your mother, I’m sure.”
She smiles at me. I don’t think she’s even thirty. Her skin is peachy and smooth and completely bare of makeup in a way that feels calculated more than accidental, as if she’s cultivated a look of not caring what she looks like, when in fact she knows she looks like perfection.
“My mother is a medical professional, not a goddess,” I say. “And she’s smart enough to know the difference.”
I push myself off the absurdly uncomfortable floor cushion—barely making it to vertical—and pull my phone out to call Mo as I make a beeline for the door.
Dad’s right behind me. “Astrid.” His face is flushed with irritation when he steps outside. “That wasn’t necessary.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“Told you—”
“About your replacement plan. One kid dies, add a fresh one.”
“You know that’s not what’s happening.”
“That’s exactly what’s happening, isn’t it? Or was Suzanne herself the replacement? She’s almost young enough.”
Dad laughs and shakes his head. A few strands of his man bun come loose. “Keep your voice down if you’re going to pitch a fit, Astrid.”
“What difference does it make? Do the neighbors not know? You haven’t told them about how your first kid is on her way out? Why not? Too embarrassed that we let the toxins of normal life get to us?”
“You’re my firstborn, Astrid. You always will be. No one and nothing could ever replace you. Your mother and I grew apart, and I have a different life now. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you and your brother still.”
My eyes sting with warm tears. “My cancer isn’t my fault. Or Mom’s.”
Dad lets out a long breath, and his face softens. “I know that, Astrid. That’s not what I meant by what I’ve said. I’m just worried about you, and I—”
“Well, don’t worry anymore. Just get over it. Lucky for you, once I’m gone, you’ll net the same number of offspring.”
The Tomato comes around the corner, crunching dirt and leaves under its wheels. Mo’s driving now, with Chloe in the front seat. When they pull to a stop, I see them both hesitate, wondering if they should get out or stay put.
“Bye, Dad. I’m sure Mom will call you to tell you when I’m dead.”
38.
My head aches worse than before, a low pulse behind my eyes that wraps around the back of my skull, which might be the influence of my brain tumor or my father, I can’t tell. I don’t want Mohit and Chloe to worry and certainly don’t want them to give my mother an update that I’m not doing well. So I tell them I need a nap.
I don’t know how long I’m out, but the sound of my own voice wakes me up. Which is a strange sensation, I might add, hearing your own voice as though you’re dreaming but then it turns out you’re not.
When my eyes adjust to the light in the Tomato, a black floater, a new one, enters my vision on the left side. I register that things hurt. And I see that the source of my voice is Chloe’s phone; she’s watching vlog footage on the seat across from me. I catch pieces of what I’m saying over the rumble of the engine and the road noise outside.
“More things I’ll miss … thin cheeseburgers…”
Chloe notices me waking up. “Hey! Why didn’t you tell me you were filming these little snippets? People are going to love these—they’re so personal.”
I lunge toward her and grab the phone. “You didn’t…?” But yes, there it is. The footage I filmed alone, in private moments, now open for public viewing on our vlog channel.
“This wasn’t meant for the vlog, Chloe!”
“What do you mean? You put it on camera, I just assumed that’s what it was for.”
I’d meant to email the videos to myself and then delete them from the camera, of course, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it, and then I forgot. It’s my own fault, but the violation stings. “Please take it down.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s private.” Frustrated, lazy tears well up in my eyes.
“What’s the matter?” Mohit asks from the driver’s seat, his eyes flicking toward us in the mirror.
“I want it down. Now.”
“Okay, okay, hold on a second.” Chloe takes the phone back from me. “I need to do it on my laptop.”
“Do it on your laptop, then.”
My heart is racing and I’m not even sure why. I’ve already opened myself for public consumption with these vlog episodes, haven’t I? I’ve already fed complete strangers on the internet a diet of dying teenager and her quirky hopes for the future. What is so private about these little musings on things I’m afraid to lose?
I don’t know. But it feels like one of those dreams where you find yourself naked in math class. I feel exposed and mortified, like I can’t cover myself quickly enough.
“Hey, friend.” Chloe puts a hand on my knee. “I’m sorry I posted these. I thought that’s what they were for.”
I shake my head. “I shouldn’t have used the camera. I’ve been keeping this list on my phone, and then one night the battery was dead and I just … I didn’t think. It wasn’t meant to be part of the vlog. It was just for me. To keep track.”
“But look,” she says tentatively. “These little clips are already getting more views than the longer episodes. More views means more donations, right? Which means getting closer to your goal. I’m just saying.”
I know that the internet is not a place where you can both ask for help and maintain some semblance of privacy. But the idea of more and more strangers watching me—real strangers, not just kids at school, and not just watching but thinking they know me—makes my skin buzz with nerves.
“You can take them down if you’re uncomfortable, babe,” Mohit says from the driver’s side. “It’s not permanent.”
“Okay,” Chloe says. “I can take them down, but you know everything on the internet is permanent to some extent. And, Astrid, people are on your side. They’re giving you support. And money. They’re saying they hope you find what you’re looking for, stuff like that. Trust me. This is a good thing.”
What I’m looking for. I press my head against the cool of the Tomato’s window and let my vision blur as the road speeds by. Outside, the road cuts straight through the red earth. The landscape is dotted with shrubbery and shadowed by mountains in the distance. The sun is starting to set, and the sky is a watercolor of deep orange and purple, colors that hardly seem possible.
When I close my eyes against the light, I can see Older Mohit playing the saxophone, his longish hair now flecked with a few strands of silver. I see mysel
f tapping my foot against a table leg. There’s an expensive cocktail in front of me. (Would it be a martini? I don’t even know.) Mo opens his eyes briefly—he always plays with them closed when he’s not reading music—and smiles across the room, smiling only with his eyes; they crinkle in the corners, just for me.
Will I find what I’m looking for on the other end of this road trip? Or anywhere? It’s getting harder and harder to know.
“Let me see the comments,” I say, reaching for Chloe’s phone.
She snatches it out of my reach. “Oh,” she says. “You shouldn’t read the comments. On anything. Have you seen people on the internet these days?”
“I thought you said they were supportive.”
“Well, yeah, but there’s always someone—”
I grab the phone from her anyway and refresh the page. It’s my vlog “channel,” the one she set up for me with our collection of videos. My intro video, the one we filmed in my bedroom when this road trip was just a crazy idea, is pinned at the top. The others are in a neat row underneath, each accompanied by a thumbnail of my absurd-looking “vlog face”—the one where I look like a super-awkward, exhausted cancer patient with blue hair, trying to be a cool model. I cringe and scroll quickly past the images of myself.
The first few comments are perfectly friendly, if grammatically questionable. Some are from people whose names I recognize.
Astrid we’ll miss you but we are pulling for you. Love from your junior class council.
XOXO
Go Astrid go!
And gradually strangers start weighing in.
Good luck in ur journey! Hope science comes thru for u.
Everyone deserves a chance to make a wish and hope for the best. This girl is no different. I hope she finds peace with her decision.
Bravo for you, thank you for sharing your story. I hope you raise money to freeze yourself!!
God is great. May He bless her and keep her safe in this life and the next.
God rest her soul.
Okay, I’m not dead yet. Geez.
My heart starts racing as I scroll farther down, through these strangers’ condolences and best wishes and prayers and blessings and all the rest. I’ve looked at countless comment threads on the internet—I mean, who hasn’t—but the experience of reading comments that are meant for me personally is completely, entirely different. The ones that express pity make my stomach turn sour, like I’m somehow duping the commenters into feeling bad for me when they shouldn’t really (though I guess they should, to be fair, since the whole death-by-brain-tumor-at-sixteen thing isn’t great). The religious ones make me want to roll my eyes—God has done very little good in this situation so far, let’s be honest—except I know Mohit would tell me I’m being judgy and I should just accept people’s different ways of offering support.
And then there are the ones Chloe and Mo probably don’t want me reading.
Give me money please so I don’t have to die? Aww poor baby LOL.
Another example of dumbass rich people thinking they can get whatever they want. Why don’t her rich parents just pay for it LOL.
God doesn’t make mistakes. Obviously this girl is dying for a reason.
Dumb b*@$# deserves whatever she gets.
Poor thing! 2 young 2 die. Stop criticizing when u don’t know what ur talking about. Let her be.
I stop there and look up. Chloe’s face is resting against the back of the passenger seat, watching me.
I feel my cheeks burn. “It’s what I thought,” I say, handing the phone back to her. “It’s just internet comments.”
“I told you not to read them. Look, there’s always some jerk who wants to use an anonymous comment feed to get out his aggression.” She takes the phone from me. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” I lie back down and stare at the silver of the Tomato’s domed ceiling, trying to steady my breath. “I’m not nuts, though, am I? To even consider this?”
“Astrid,” Mo says. “You can’t listen to strangers on the internet.”
“I’m not asking strangers on the internet. I’m asking the two of you. Am I being completely absurd? Do you secretly think this is an unbelievably terrible, idiotic idea, and you’re just going along with me because I’m dying and you love me and you feel sorry for me?”
Neither of them responds for a moment.
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” Mohit says, finally breaking the silence in the Tomato. “I feel sorry for me. And Chloe. We’re the ones left behind. So I think I speak for both of us when I say we’ll do whatever it takes for the possibility of not losing you forever. If that makes me the absurd one … oh well. I guess I am.”
I swallow back a rush of tears. “Fine. You can leave the videos up.”
No one says anything else; we just drive on to our final motel, a squat white block from the 1970s. A perfectly still, blue kidney-shaped pool, ringed with white lounge chairs, beckons us from the parking lot. As usual, the motel boasts AC, cable, and bad wallpaper. Only this time, with four days of highway and kitsch between us and Boston, we’re five minutes down the road from my possible future home.
39.
From the outside, the American Institute for Cryonics Research looks just like the pictures online: a pile of concrete with not a lot of windows. The only thing marking it as different from the usual office park is that it’s fenced on all sides and has what appears to be an impressive security system guarding the front entrance.
It’s also smack in the middle of the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. Sedona is a huge expanse of red desert, lined with steep canyons, tall rock formations, and pine trees (news to me in a desert, but what do I know?). As we pull up, I crack a window and breathe in dry, crystal-clear air.
Mohit maneuvers the Tomato toward the security gate and rolls down the driver’s-side window. A woman in an olive-green uniform looks up from her cell phone.
“Can I help you?”
“We’re here to see … What’s his name, Astrid?”
I lean over from the passenger seat. “Dr. Fitzspelt. He’s expecting us.”
“Name?”
“Astrid Ayeroff.”
The woman picks up a landline phone. I can’t hear what she says, but as she hangs up, the electronic gate in front of us peels apart. “Straight ahead, parking’s on the left.”
Now that we’re here, I feel like I’ve been half expecting that this place didn’t even exist, that we’d pull up and there’d be a sign in an empty parking lot: HA-HA, SUCKERS! Or nothing at all.
But it’s a real place, just a building where science happens. And I’m here to—maybe, somehow—be part of it. There are so many things I’ll miss out on, and even if I go ahead with becoming a corpsicle, I’ll still probably miss out on all those things because, let’s be honest, the likelihood of me waking up and walking out of that freezer one day is, I mean, not good.
But at least I won’t miss out on being part of science.
It sends a shiver up and down my spine, just thinking about it.
* * *
In real life, Dr. Fitzspelt is a wiry little man with crazy eyebrows, almost bald but with a ring of white hair around the back of his head. I’d been picturing a Dumbledore-type character, but he’s more like a scientifically inclined Smeagol, before he turns into Gollum. He’s waiting for us in the lobby when we come in. I lean on Mohit for support as I walk, trying to make my limp less obvious to everyone, including myself.
“Astrid Ayeroff! Wonderful to finally meet you in the flesh, my dear.” He shakes my hand and then, as introductions go around, Mohit’s and Chloe’s.
“Thanks for having us.”
“Delighted! Delighted! Right this way. I’ll give you a tour of the facility, and then we have plenty of time for you to ask questions.”
Inside the building, it still feels disappointingly normal: a waiting area with a few pieces of drab leather furniture, a coffee table with a pile of outdated magazines, a water cooler. It could be a
walk-in health clinic, the first floor of the kind of law firm that advertises on the subway, you name it. The only sign of anything sleek and modern in the slightest is a flat-screen television on one wall playing a video of a family of four prancing to upbeat, tinny music through a field of yellow flowers. I see nothing about death, dying, or freezing your body, but the children are very blond and the couple looks happy in an aggressively heteronormative kind of way, and I think we’re supposed to get the message that you, too, could choose this life—a life without loss, where the things you have now that you love so much could be waiting for you on the other side of what you’ve always believed would be the end of everything.
As we follow him, Dr. Fitzspelt is muttering something about new advances even since the symposium. At the elevator, he hits the down button and turns to us, finally quiet. When he smiles, his lips stick together ever so slightly at the edges, and a fine thread of spit keeps them connected when he opens his mouth again to talk.
“Any questions straightaway?” he asks.
I watch the thread of spit, waiting for it to break. It doesn’t. I shake my head. So many questions, actually, but none I’m ready to ask.
The elevator takes us down what must be at least three levels underground. On the way, I have a suddenly very urgent feeling like we’re trapped in Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory, riding the glass elevator in the wrong direction. There’s something Wonka-ish about Fitzspelt, too, now that I’m thinking of it: the spark in his eyes as he prepares to show off his life’s work, the eagerness to draw us all into his world. It’s contagious, a little bit. And at the same time, chilling.
When we step off the elevator, we’re met with undecorated concrete corridors and jarring artificial light. Dr. Fitzspelt leads us through a rambling hallway so circuitous it occurs to me that we should be leaving bread crumbs along it if we ever want to find our way back.
Mo slips his hand into mine and catches my eye, asking silently if I’m ready for this, if I’m okay, if I want to turn around and run. The answer to all of those, impossibly, is yes.
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