Chapter Thirteen
Mom and I spent the rest of the day in her bed. “Are you hanging in there, sweetie? We’ll get a second opinion. We’ll get through this, okay?”
All afternoon I’d stared out the window, or at the walls with my eyes out of focus, noticing how the pumping of my heart rocked my body back and forth ever so slightly. I’d never been still for long enough to notice.
The pillowcase rustled—sounds were extra loud today—and I turned to look at Mom. Her eyes were red and puffy. I found her hand and held it as cold stones churned in my gut. It killed me that she had to deal with this, too. That my leg had betrayed both of us. That my sickness was causing her so much pain.
I was spacey and out of it, and it was almost like I was in her mind instead of my own, like maybe we were so close we shared this energy field and I could hear and feel her thoughts. You bring a daughter into this world and give her everything you have, all your love. You pray every day for her to be safe and protected. You hold the fiercest hopes that she will have the best life possible. She’s been so good, has done so well, worked so hard, seems so healthy and—wham. Cancer. Your baby.
Mom squeezed my hand. “I’m giving us today to just be, and then tomorrow I’m doing all the research, calling all the doctors, and making all the plans.”
Squeezing her hand back, I stared back out the window.
I hadn’t told Jason exactly when I was getting my results, but Hana, Quinn, and Craig knew. I hoped they would give me a day without asking.
Mom took a deep breath and said, “You should call your father and let him know as soon as possible.”
I shook my head. Had our sheets always made this much noise? Quietly I said, “He’s still in Hawaii until tomorrow.” And then, adding the part I still couldn’t get over, “He kinda checked out from being my dad when he moved away my last year of high school. So, let him finish his vacation. I’ll still have cancer tomorrow.” The word practically caught in my throat, and I swallowed down a faint taste of bile.
Mom used her most gentle voice, which I’m sure was hard for her, because she was mad at Dad, too. “Ellie, your dad loves you, and he definitely cares. As for him going on vacation instead of being here for you, I don’t get it, of course, but he didn’t think it was going to be something so big. None of us did. As for him moving to Wisconsin, I know my words will never make it better, but I think he sees you growing up and no longer needing him. You’re busy with all your activities, you’re off to college next year, and his choice to follow Barb was his way of looking out for himself.”
I had nothing else to say about him, or to him, right now.
Mom’s face softened. “Do you want me to tell him?”
“Yes, please.”
Mom scooched in closer, nuzzling me into a hug. She smelled like apples and ginger and tissues. She planted her lips on top of my head in a long kiss, and we fell asleep like that, her soft breaths in my hair.
The sound of the apartment buzzer woke me. Mom moved first. “I’ll see who it is.”
Thank God, because there was zero possibility of me getting out of this bed. My friends were at the door, I was sure of it. My pulse quickened—I wasn’t ready, I didn’t have words, I couldn’t break more hearts right now.
Beep.
Click of the dead bolt.
Silence, waiting for the person, or persons, to get from the front entrance down the hall to our door.
I found a tissue and wiped my eyes and nose, tried to sit up in bed. It was something at least. It was effort.
Doorknob turns.
“Come on in.” Mom’s voice.
Whispers. Shuffling. Definitely more than one set of feet.
Our apartment is so small that it was only seconds before they were in Mom’s bedroom, surrounding me. I got this morbid image of me in a casket, them looming over me with the same expressions that were on their faces now.
I stared at them all, wishing I could pretend to be a corpse with the luxury of not having to speak.
Craig stood with his hands in his back pockets. “So, we’re assuming it’s bad. Cancer, then?”
I nodded.
Quinn made a choky gasp, kneeled by my bedside and grabbed my right hand, cupping it between both of hers. “We’re going to be by your side and do whatever we can,” Quinn said.
“Thanks, but there’s nothing you can do,” I mumbled.
Hana sat on the edge of the bed and put her hand on my leg. “I’m so sorry, Ellie.”
Craig blew out a puff of air. “I’m sorry, too, sis. What’s the kick-cancer’s-ass plan?”
“Tell us everything,” Quinn said.
“There’s no plan, yet.” I somehow managed to ramble off all the horrible words and outcomes Dr. Nichols gave us this morning. “I have to weigh the choices between my life and my leg, so…I’m not real eager to talk about it.”
Quinn’s porcelain white skin went a shade paler, her softly arched eyebrows knitted, and her little heart lips nearly disappeared into her mouth.
Hana’s voice turned to gravel as she said, “Oh, Ellie,” and her beautiful brown eyes dimmed with heartbreak.
“That is the roughs.” Craig kicked off his shoes and came around the other side of the bed and scooted in until he was next to me, hugging me. Hana and Quinn climbed in, too, until we were in not so much of a sandwich hug, but a pile-of-mashed-potatoes-and-gravy hug.
Every part of me was embraced, making my treacherous body momentarily safe. And in that glimmer of a moment, even with cancer, even with the future so bleak, I had something powerful, something to be grateful for, something not everyone gets in a lifetime, hugging me close.
After barely sleeping all night, the next morning I welcomed the distraction of school. At least I was out of our apartment, but I mostly zoned-out in my classes and tried to avoid everyone’s questions about my leg. My last period was my free one, and I crutched backstage for some peace. It was dark, with only enough light from the auditorium seeping in to catch the outline of the furniture and Harold’s bowl on a table next to the couch. Quinn had taken him last Friday after the second Mash-Up and promised to look after him, but I’d hated abandoning him. It was weird to think how my tumor was five times as long as Harold’s entire body.
I sat on the couch. “Hey, Harold, I don’t want to get your fins in a tizzy, but I have cancer.” This new word in my life was so much worse than tumor, but it was easier to tell a fish, because fish can’t cry. “For real, the actual capital C-word. So, you know what that means? I’m going to be, like, a gigantic bummer to hang out with. Fair warning, lil’ guy.” I inched closer. “You hungry?”
Turning on the small lamp by his bowl, I gasped. “No! Oh, Harold, no.”
He was floating, lifeless.
“My poor, sweet fish friend.” I put my hand on the bowl and sobbed. Goldfish don’t live long, but he’d been our mascot since before I joined Spontaneous Combustion. He was my good-luck fish, my confidante. And I’d become the grim reaper, darkness following me and causing pain to everyone around me. “I’m so sorry I dragged you around. It was too stressful for your little body.”
The tears dripped into his bowl as I said a prayer. “Dear Harold, thank you for being such a cheerful, bright spot in our lives. You were a good listener, a faithful companion, and the best mascot an improv group could ask for. You helped us have more funny scenes than sucky ones.” I sniffled and wiped my nose on my sleeve. “I’m…I’m not sure what awaits a goldfish after…after death…if anything. But may there be something for you, and may it be a magical temperate lake full of other fishy friends. Know your life brought joy to others.” My voice faltered, but I squeaked out the last words. “Rest in peace, lil’ guy.”
Turning off the lamp, the silence of the blackness, the aloneness, hit me. I have cancer and I killed Harold. Curling up into a ball on the old couch, I stared at the wood floor with its chipped paint, scuffmarks, and a random shellac of gum, wishing I could seep between the floorboards and disappear.
I have absolutely no control over anything.
That’s what I loved about the stage—it was the one place where I had the power to create anything. Real life was the hard part. Onstage I could be someone else, live in a pretend world for a while. I could make goldfish rise from the dead. I could fall in love…and it wouldn’t hurt anyone.
Holding my hand to my lips, I thought of Jason in the grove of trees outside of Porter. If only I could return to live in that moment forever. How was I going to tell him? What guy would want to be with a cancer-ridden girl he just met? Especially a guy who just lost his mom to the stupid disease a year ago?
I closed my eyes and clutched a couch pillow to me, wanting to rip it apart.
I’m sorry, Harold.
I woke up on the couch backstage to Craig shaking my arm and Hana saying, “Wake up before the couch-bugs bite.”
“We’re driving to Craig’s house for Las Palomas del Disco rehearsal,” Quinn said, doing a poorly exaggerated Spanish accent.
I sat up, groggy and not wanting to deal with their…cheery capableness. “I’m not doing that. Harold’s dead. And it’s my fault.”
“What? No,” Quinn said and rushed to his bowl, turning on the lamp to see his tiny orange body floating. “I promise I kept his water clean and fed him. Just this morning he was fine—maybe moving around slower than usual, but alive.”
“He looks peaceful,” Hana said. “It was his time. That goldfish lived longer than any goldfish should have. I was starting to wonder if he was supernatural.”
“Hana’s right. It’s not your fault.” Quinn hugged me.
Craig sat next to me and patted my good leg. “Harold was a mascot of the performing arts, Ellie. I think he’d want you to go to rehearsal so you can continue to bring joy to the masses through improv and disco.”
“Don’t make fun.” I shoved him. “Plus, I can’t dance, ya heard?” I kicked my leg up.
“We have an idea to solve that, and I’m ordering a ton of pizza on Barb’s card,” Craig said. “The alternative is hanging out with your sad mom at home and researching your sad options.”
“Well, when you put it like that.” I begrudgingly followed them out to their cars, not sure which was worse: that I had cancer…or that I’d eventually see Jason and somehow have to tell him that I had cancer. I mean, obviously one of them was fundamentally worse. But I seriously doubted my capacity for the other.
No way he’s gonna wanna stick around for the horror show that is my new life.