The Sun Is Also a Star

by Nicola Yoon

  PROPERTY OF: Madeline Whittier

  I don’t know why I do this. There’s no one else here except my mother, who never reads, and my nurse, Carla, who has no time to read because she spends all her time watching me breathe. I rarely have visitors, and so there’s no one to lend my books to. There’s no one who needs reminding that the forgotten book on his or her shelf belongs to me.

  REWARD IF FOUND (Check all that apply):

  This is the section that takes me the longest time, and I vary it with each book. Sometimes the rewards are fanciful:

  ⁰ Picnic with me (Madeline) in a pollen-filled field of poppies, lilies, and endless man-in-the-moon marigolds under a clear blue summer sky.

  ⁰ Drink tea with me (Madeline) in a lighthouse in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of a hurricane.

  ⁰ Snorkel with me (Madeline) off Molokini to spot the Hawaiian state fish—the humuhumunukunukuapuaa.

  Sometimes the rewards are not so fanciful:

  ⁰ A visit with me (Madeline) to a used bookstore.

  ⁰ A walk outside with me (Madeline), just down the block and back.

  ⁰ A short conversation with me (Madeline), discussing anything you want, on my white couch, in my white bedroom.

  Sometimes the reward is just:

  ⁰ Me (Madeline).

  MY DISEASE IS as rare as it is famous. It’s a form of Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, but you know it as “bubble baby disease.”

  Basically, I’m allergic to the world. Anything can trigger a bout of sickness. It could be the chemicals in the cleaner used to wipe the table that I just touched. It could be someone’s perfume. It could be the exotic spice in the food I just ate. It could be one, or all, or none of these things, or something else entirely. No one knows the triggers, but everyone knows the consequences. According to my mom I almost died as an infant. And so I stay on SCID row. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years.

  “MOVIE NIGHT OR Honor Pictionary or Book Club?” my mom asks while inflating a blood pressure cuff around my arm. She doesn’t mention her favorite of all our post-dinner activities—Phonetic Scrabble. I look up to see that her eyes are already laughing at me.

  “Phonetic,” I say.

  She stops inflating the cuff. Ordinarily Carla, my full-time nurse, would be taking my blood pressure and filling out my daily health log, but my mom’s given her the day off. It’s my birthday and we always spend the day together, just the two of us.

  She puts on her stethoscope so that she can listen to my heartbeat. Her smile fades and is replaced by her more serious doctor’s face. This is the face her patients most often see—slightly distant, professional, and concerned. I wonder if they find it comforting.

  Impulsively I give her a quick kiss on the forehead to remind her that it’s just me, her favorite patient, her daughter.

  She opens her eyes, smiles, and caresses my cheek. I guess if you’re going to be born with an illness that requires constant care, then it’s good to have your mom as your doctor.

  A few seconds later she gives me her best I’m-the-doctor-and-I’m-afraid-I-have-some-bad-news-for-you face. “It’s your big day. Why don’t we play something you have an actual chance of winning? Honor Pictionary?”

  Since regular Pictionary can’t really be played with two people, we invented Honor Pictionary. One person draws and the other person is on her honor to make her best guess. If you guess correctly, the other person scores.

  I narrow my eyes at her. “We’re playing Phonetic, and I’m winning this time,” I say confidently, though I have no chance of winning. In all our years of playing Phonetic Scrabble, or Fonetik Skrabbl, I’ve never beaten her at it. The last time we played I came close. But then she devastated me on the final word, playing JEENZ on a triple word score.

  “OK.” She shakes her head with mock pity. “Anything you want.” She closes her laughing eyes to listen to the stethoscope.

  —

  We spend the rest of the morning baking my traditional birthday cake of vanilla sponge with vanilla cream frosting. After it’s cooled, I apply an unreasonably thin layer of frosting, just enough to cover the cake. We are, both of us, cake people, not frosting people. For decoration, I draw eighteen frosted daisies with white petals and a white center across the top. On the sides I fashion draped white curtains.

  “Perfect.” My mom peers over my shoulders as I finish up. “Just like you.”

  I turn to face her. She’s smiling a wide, proud smile at me, but her eyes are bright with tears.

  “You. Are. Tragic,” I say, and squirt a dollop of frosting on her nose, which only makes her laugh and cry some more. Really, she’s not usually this emotional, but something about my birthday always makes her both weepy and joyful at the same time. And if she’s weepy and joyful, then I’m weepy and joyful, too.

  “I know,” she says, throwing her hands helplessly up in the air. “I’m totally pathetic.” She pulls me into a hug and squeezes. Frosting gets into my hair.

  —

  My birthday is the one day of the year that we’re both most acutely aware of my illness. It’s the acknowledging of the passage of time that does it. Another whole year of being sick, no hope for a cure on the horizon. Another year of missing all the normal teenagery things—learner’s permit, first kiss, prom, first heartbreak, first fender bender. Another year of my mom doing nothing but working and taking care of me. Every other day these omissions are easy—easier, at least—to ignore.

  This year is a little harder than the previous. Maybe it’s because I’m eighteen now. Technically, I’m an adult. I should be leaving home, going off to college. My mom should be dreading empty-nest syndrome. But because of SCID, I’m not going anywhere.

  —

  Later, after dinner, she gives me a beautiful set of watercolor pencils that had been on my wish list for months. We go into the living room and sit cross-legged in front of the coffee table. This is also part of our birthday ritual: She lights a single candle in the center of the cake. I close my eyes and make a wish. I blow the candle out.

  “What did you wish for?” she asks as soon as I open my eyes.

  Really there’s only one thing to wish for—a magical cure that will allow me to run free outside like a wild animal. But I never make that wish because it’s impossible. It’s like wishing that mermaids and dragons and unicorns were real. Instead I wish for something more likely than a cure. Something less likely to make us both sad.

  “World peace,” I say.

  —

  Three slices of cake later, we begin a game of Fonetik. I do not win. I don’t even come close.

  She uses all seven letters and puts down POKALIP next to an S. POKALIPS.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Apocalypse,” she says, eyes dancing.

  “No, Mom. No way. I can’t give that to you.”

  “Yes,” is all she says.

  “Mom, you need an extra A. No way.”

  “Pokalips,” she says for effect, gesturing at the letters. “It totally works.”

  I shake my head.

  “P O K A L I P S,” she insists, slowly dragging out the word.

  “Oh my God, you’re relentless,” I say, throwing my hands up. “OK, OK, I’ll allow it.”

  “Yesssss.” She pumps her fist and laughs at me and marks down her now-insurmountable score. “You’ve never really understood this game,” she says. “It’s a game of persuasion.”

  I slice myself another piece of cake. “That was not persuasion,” I say. “That was cheating.”

  “Same same,” she says, and we both laugh.

  “You can beat me at Honor Pictionary tomorrow,” she says.

  After I lose, we go to the couch and watch our favorite movie, Young Frankenstein. Watching it is also part of our birthday ritual. I put my head in her lap, and she strokes my hair, and we laugh at the same jokes in the same way that we’ve been laughing at them for years. All in all, not a bad way
to spend your eighteenth birthday.

  I’M READING ON my white couch when Carla comes in the next morning.

  “Feliz cumpleaños,” she sings out.

  I lower my book. “Gracias.”

  “How was the birthday?” She begins unpacking her medical bag.

  “We had fun.”

  “Vanilla cake and vanilla frosting?” she asks.

  “Of course.”

  “Young Frankenstein?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you lost at that game?” she asks.

  “We’re pretty predictable, huh?”

  “Don’t mind me,” she says, laughing. “I’m just jealous of how sweet you and your mama are.”

  She picks up my health log from yesterday, quickly reviews my mom’s measurements and adds a new sheet to the clipboard. “These days Rosa can’t even be bothered to give me the time of day.”

  Rosa is Carla’s seventeen-year-old daughter. According to Carla they were really close until hormones and boys took over. I can’t imagine that happening to my mom and me.

  Carla sits next to me on the couch, and I hold out my hand for the blood pressure cuff. Her eyes drop to my book.

  “Flowers for Algernon again?” she asks. “Doesn’t that book always make you cry?”

  “One day it won’t,” I say. “I want to be sure to be reading it on that day.”

  She rolls her eyes at me and takes my hand.

  It is kind of a flip answer, but then I wonder if it’s true.

  Maybe I’m holding out hope that one day, someday, things will change.

  FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON BY DANIEL KEYES

  Spoiler alert: Algernon is a mouse. The mouse dies.

  I’M UP TO the part where Charlie realizes that the mouse’s fate may be his own when I hear a loud rumbling noise outside. Immediately my mind goes to outer space. I picture a giant mother ship hovering in the skies above us.

  The house trembles and my books vibrate on the shelves. A steady beeping joins the rumbling and I know what it is. A truck. Probably just lost, I tell myself, to stave off disappointment. Probably just made a wrong turn on their way to someplace else.

  But then the engine cuts off. Doors open and close. A moment passes, and then another, and then a woman’s voice sings out, “Welcome to our new home, everybody!”

  Carla stares at me hard for a few seconds. I know what she’s thinking.

  It’s happening again.

  “CARLA,” I SAY, “it won’t be like last time.” I’m not eight years old anymore.

  “I want you to promise—” she begins, but I’m already at the window, sweeping the curtains aside.

  I am not prepared for the bright California sun. I’m not prepared for the sight of it, high and blazing hot and white against the washed-out white sky. I am blind. But then the white haze over my vision begins to clear. Everything is haloed.

  I see the truck and the silhouette of an older woman twirling—the mother. I see an older man at the back of the truck—the father. I see a girl maybe a little younger than me—the daughter.

  Then I see him. He’s tall, lean, and wearing all black: black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He’s white with a pale honey tan and his face is starkly angular. He jumps down from his perch at the back of the truck and glides across the driveway, moving as if gravity affects him differently than it does the rest of us. He stops, cocks his head to one side, and stares up at his new house as if it were a puzzle.

  After a few seconds he begins bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. Suddenly he takes off at a sprint and runs literally six feet up the front wall. He grabs a windowsill and dangles from it for a second or two and then drops back down into a crouch.

  “Nice, Olly,” says his mother.

  “Didn’t I tell you to quit doing that stuff?” his father growls.

  He ignores them both and remains in his crouch.

  I press my open palm against the glass, breathless as if I’d done that crazy stunt myself. I look from him to the wall to the windowsill and back to him again. He’s no longer crouched. He’s staring up at me. Our eyes meet. Vaguely I wonder what he sees in my window—strange girl in white with wide staring eyes. He grins at me and his face is no longer stark, no longer severe. I try to smile back, but I’m so flustered that I frown at him instead.

  THAT NIGHT, I dream that the house breathes with me. I exhale and the walls contract like a pinpricked balloon, crushing me as it deflates. I inhale and the walls expand. A single breath more and my life will finally, finally explode.

  HIS MOM’S SCHEDULE

  6:35 AM - Arrives on porch with a steaming cup of something hot. Coffee?

  6:36 AM - Stares off into empty lot across the way while sipping her drink. Tea?

  7:00 AM - Reenters the house.

  7:15 AM - Back on porch. Kisses husband good-bye. Watches as his car drives away.

  9:30 AM - Gardens. Looks for, finds, and discards cigarette butts.

  1:00 PM - Leaves house in car. Errands?

  5:00 PM - Pleads with Kara and Olly to begin chores “before your father gets home.”

  KARA’S (SISTER) SCHEDULE

  10:00 AM - Stomps outside wearing black boots and a fuzzy brown bathrobe.

  10:01 AM - Checks cell phone messages. She gets a lot of messages.

  10:06 AM - Smokes three cigarettes in the garden between our two houses.

  10:20 AM - Digs a hole with the toe of her boots and buries cigarette carcasses.

  10:25 AM–5:00 PM - Texts or talks on the phone.

  5:25 PM - Chores.

  HIS DAD’S SCHEDULE

  7:15 AM - Leaves for work.

  6:00 PM - Arrives home from work.

  6:20 PM - Sits on porch with drink #1.

  6:30 PM - Reenters the house for dinner.

  7:00 PM - Back on porch with drink #2.

  7:25 PM - Drink #3.

  7:45 PM - Yelling at family begins.

  10:35 PM - Yelling at family subsides.

  OLLY’S SCHEDULE

  Unpredictable.

  HIS FAMILY CALLS him Olly. Well, his sister and his mom call him Olly. His dad calls him Oliver. He’s the one I watch the most. His bedroom is on the second floor and almost directly across from mine and his blinds are almost always open.

  Some mornings he sleeps in until noon. Others, he’s gone from his room before I wake to begin my surveillance. Most mornings, though, he wakes at 9 a.m., climbs out of his bedroom, and makes his way, Spider-Man-style, to the roof using the siding. He stays up there for about an hour before swinging, legs first, back into his room. No matter how much I try, I haven’t been able to see what he does when he’s up there.

  His room is empty but for a bed and a chest of drawers. A few boxes from the move remain unpacked and stacked by the doorway. There are no decorations except for a single poster for a movie called Jump London. I looked it up and it’s about parkour, which is a kind of street gymnastics, which explains how he’s able to do all the crazy stuff that he does. The more I watch, the more I want to know.

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