Underneath the Sycamore Tree

by Celeste, B.

  So, I tell them both they can’t change my mind. What’s done is done. All the times I’ve been denied by professionals. Criticized by peers. Questioned by relatives. I’m not fighting anyone anymore.

  It’s too late, don’t you get it?

  Mama had to walk out. Her body shook so bad I thought she’d faint. Dad stayed in my room and just watched me in silence. He wants to say something, to argue, to make a point.

  He’s learned by now that there is none.

  He’s gotten to know me.

  He’s figured me out.

  Like when I tell Cam that asparagus sounds good for dinner, but then he sneakily slips it off my plate onto his when she’s not looking because he knows I don’t like it.

  Or when I scrunch my face at something he chooses to watch on TV at night and he switches it to something everyone would like.

  He asks about Kaiden.

  We’re friends. Best friends.

  Because it’s true.

  Kaiden Monroe made everything bearable. School. Home. He turned out to be the person I could trust enough to share my firsts. In my eyes, he was my only true ally. I lived thinking I wouldn’t experience what it felt like to be cherished because my body was too depleted by my health. Kaiden gave me everything I couldn’t think of asking for before moving to Exeter.

  Dad didn’t seem to buy it.

  But he didn’t question it either.

  Because he called me Mouse once.

  Now Kaiden is pushing me along the hall with Dad and Cam trailing behind. Mama and Grandma went to get food in the cafeteria, giving us time together as I stared at the rainbow and its pretty pastel colors.

  The dull ache in my body is tolerable because of the medicine they pumped through me first thing this morning. There’s feeling in my right side that seems promising in the grand scheme of things. I can process my words and talk without too much hassle. Despite the nurses giving me sympathetic smiles and Dr. Thorne asking me how I am every hour, I’m okay.

  Okay as I can be.

  Calm. Relaxed. Realistic.

  Much to the dismay of my parents, I convinced Kaiden to get me the rest of my schoolwork in order to finish junior year. After quiet arguments in between nurse and doctor check-ins, Dad relented and called the school asking if I could take my remaining exams in the hospital. The school, even the poor disorganized Principal Richman, knew they had no place to deny me a simple favor.

  How many other people wanted to spend their time in a hospital bed filling in bubble sheets and calculating statistics? I only knew about one statistic that mattered, and I’d accepted it. The answers I scrawled across my paper, while seemingly unimportant, allowed me the mundane normalcy I needed even now. Even considering…

  Everyone helped me when fogginess made me forget how to put together my words. Dad would put in numbers in his phone’s calculator app so I could write down the answer on my math exam. Mama would read aloud a poem so many times I’m sure the elderly lady next door could recite it by heart. Grandma would try helping me figure out a chemistry question based on the diagram, and Kaiden drew pictures on the notepad provided by Thorne. He said there’s no art final, but he wanted to cheer me up. So, every ten minutes I’d get a new image on my lap, distracting me from my homework. A mouse. A pill bottle with a penis drawn where the prescription would be—that one I hid from my parents though Grandma saw it and snickered.

  But my favorite was the one tucked into the hoodie Cam had brought me during one of her few trips home for different clothes. It was Kaiden and me leaning against a tree with a grave between us. A grave labeled with Lo’s name.

  He didn’t say a word. I didn’t either. I just reached into my pocket and touched the wrinkled paper when I needed a moment to collect myself.

  My eyelids want to droop and close from lack of sleep at this point, but I don’t tell Kaiden that, so we keep going down the hall. Besides some random ramblings, he’s been quiet almost the entire time. Once in a while he’ll make comments on the old photographs on the walls, making fun of the old portraits of patrons and founders. He teased me when I finished all my finals, calling me a nerd. A senior nerd. Since then, he’s barely spoken a peep.

  There’s a set of vending machines by the elevators at the end of the hall. Kaiden stops the chair right in front of one and pulls out his wallet. I watch carefully as he inserts a dollar and presses a couple buttons before a Reece’s falls out.

  “Split it with me?” he asks, knowing I won’t say no. He wheels me over to the closest lounge, where Dad and Cam give us space. They linger just up the hall, glancing between the window and us.

  I give a small wave to Dad.

  He tries to smile.

  When Kaiden unwraps the candy and passes me one of the peanut butter cups, I play with it until chocolate melts onto my fingers. “I used to get an Almond Joy all the time at the hospital back home. There were five vending machines lined up in a long hallway that led to the building across the street from underground. Lo and I used to pretend we were on an adventure. Dad would take us down there and feed us sugar before going back up to see Mama and leaving.”

  He watches me bite the chocolate-ridged sides of the cup off first, leaving only the middle left. “I know. I heard him telling Mom that once. You’d get angry when the machine would give you a Mounds because you hated them.”

  My lips part. “He…?” I shake my head, peeling the top layer of chocolate off. “I don’t like just plain coconut. The almonds make it taste way better. Did he really say that?”

  He nods, rubbing his lips together. “I didn’t hear about you often from him, but I don’t think it was because he didn’t think of you. It probably hurt him knowing he agreed to stay away when your mother asked him to. Anything I heard was something he told Cam. The Almond Joys, the days you went to work with your mom at the hospital…”

  For a moment, he stares at his untouched candy in contemplation. “I’ve been to your house before October break.”

  His voice is no more than a whisper that I think I mishear. “You…what?”

  He sits up straighter and meets my eyes hesitantly, shyly. “Not long after your Dad moved in, I was trying to figure out how to get him out. It seemed like he was running from something, but he’d barely talk about his old life. He moved hours away, I knew that much, and used to be married. Mom mentioned that he had kids, a girl around my age, but that was the extent of the information they offered me.

  “I got some information on the town you lived in and searched for his old address. Honestly wasn’t too hard to do, which should probably alarm people. Anyway, I skipped school one day and drove there. I’m not sure what I planned on doing or saying if anyone was home. It seemed safe considering it was the middle of the week. But…”

  My breathing hitches just knowing he was there, fitting himself into my life long before we ever officially met.

  “I saw your grandmother through the front window first. She was holding a bowl of something and talking to someone, and when I moved to the other side of the house, I saw you on the couch with a blanket over you. The one with the blue birds on the edges.”

  “Grandma made that,” I whisper.

  He takes a deep breath. “Anyway, I saw you there smiling at her like you didn’t care that you dad was gone. You seemed happy. I walked around the town for a little bit before coming back to your house and couldn’t knock on the door or ask anyone about you guys. So, I walked around the side until I found you under the sycamore tree talking to someone. I didn’t realize it was your sister’s grave until I’d come back during break last year.”

  I let every word he speaks seep into me, as I play with my peanut butter cup. The chocolate is all over my fingers, so I pop what’s left in my mouth and lick off my fingertips.

  “Your grandmother caught me,” he admits, sinking back into his chair.

  My eyes widen.

  He has a small smile on his face. “When I was trying to sneak back to my car parked down the ro
ad, she stopped me and asked what I was doing there. I lied and said I was lost and wandering around, but she saw through me. She noticed you out by your sister’s grave and then looked at me like she was connecting the dots.”

  Grandma never said anything to me about a random boy showing up, and not once during break had she outed him. “Did she say something to you last year?”

  His smile turns into a grin. “She told me that I was full of shit, but she already sensed that about me. The first morning she made breakfast she asked why I’d bothered coming.”

  I wait for him to continue, wondering why he showed up the first time and wasted time saving me before I realized I needed it the second time around.

  He shrugs, staring at the floor. “I’m not sure I have an answer, even now. Sometimes you just know when you’re needed, even if nobody says they need you. That’s why I came there for break. I had plenty of shit I could have done, but I wanted to be there with you.”

  We sit in silence for a long while, finishing off the candy bar. He throws the wrappers away in the garbage can in the corner of the lounge before gesturing towards our waiting family.

  I hear Mama and Grandma talking, which means they must have finished breakfast already. Both of them give me smiles when they see Kaiden wheel me over to them.

  Grandma winks at him.

  Mama reaches out to hold my hand.

  Dad and Cam squeeze Kaiden’s arm.

  I look at Mama, then glance at everyone else. “Can we have some time alone? I just want…” I just want Mama. “I’d like to be with Mama for a while.”

  Everyone nods except Kaiden, who hasn’t let go of the wheelchair. Cam puts her hand on his shoulder and gives him an encouraging nod.

  He lets go and kneels in front of me. “I expect you to be at every game, Mouse.” His voice cracking has my heart doing the same, a big split right down the middle. “Best friends support each other. They’re there for each other.”

  The smile I grace him with is genuine. “I promise I’ll be at every single one.”

  He wets his lips and nods once before standing, stepping back into Cam’s hold. Mama smiles down at me, Grandma brushes my hair behind my ear, and Dad offers me a single head bob like Kaiden.

  It seems so final. Yet not final at all.

  A beginning.

  Kaiden will go to college.

  Dad and Cam may have a child.

  Mama could be happy. Date. Get remarried. Have more children.

  There’s nothing that would hold them back. No excuse or emergency would cause them from living their lives, and the thought calms me completely until my body sinks lazily into the chair that Mama pushes.

  Mama wheels me back to my room, greeting the nurses that say hello and ask if we need anything.

  Mama. That’s all I need.

  Once the nurses are done checking my vitals and it’s just Mama and me, she tells me about the friends she’s making. The understanding she’s accepting about how it all went wrong…and in many ways right.

  “I’m sorry, Emery,” she whispers, stroking my hand with her thumb.

  Sorry for shutting down.

  Sorry for abandoning me.

  Sorry for not realizing it sooner…

  “It’s okay,” I tell her honestly.

  Mama brought me to Dad. To Cam. To Kaiden. Her understanding that she couldn’t take care of me the way I needed brought back my father and more family that I had no clue I needed. She gave me a best friend when I lost the only one I ever knew, and an innocent love that I would have never felt otherwise.

  I love Kaiden.

  Like a friend. My best friend.

  Like family.

  I move over and slowly pat the empty spot beside me. “You gave me so much, Mama. We can’t change what’s happened and I don’t want to. Everything happens for a reason, right?”

  She swallows. “Yeah, Sunshine. It does.”

  Mama curls up in bed beside me, wrapping her arms around my body, careful not to tug on the wires and tubes. Her face is wet, matching my own damp cheeks. Her head rests on the same pillow mine does.

  Sometimes words aren’t enough.

  Sometimes nothing has to be said at all.

  Mama opens her lips…and starts singing.

  You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,

  You make me happy, when skies are gray.

  You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you…

  Her words become suffocated by fragmented shards of emotion that slice the open air between us as the machines make pitiful noises.

  “Please don’t take my sunshine away.”

  Epilogue

  Kaiden

  Three fucking days. She lasted three days after being admitted before her mother’s wails chimed louder than the flat lining machines. It was long enough for her to submit finals from her hospital room and be considered a senior in high school for the new school year.

  All she wanted was to finish junior year.

  Security had to escort me out when I put my fist through the wall, and Mom didn’t talk to me until I calmed down outside.

  Emery wore a fucking UM sweatshirt before she fell asleep on that too-tiny bed, and sure enough there was a makeshift patch with my name on the very back. Her eyes never opened back up though.

  She never officially said goodbye.

  I promise I’ll be at every single game.

  She lied.

  *One Year Later*

  Rain nearly cancels our biggest game of the year, which half the upperclassman bitched about considering it was their last one before graduating from the University of Maryland. We worked our asses off in practice, and won almost every game against the other college teams. I could see their disgruntlement.

  Then it happens.

  The fucking sunshine.

  The dispersing clouds.

  The rainbow.

  Once upon a time, I’d been told by a girl full of hope that her twin sister looked down at her from the sky. I thought it was bullshit. As much bullshit as the damn song she loved listening to that I can’t stand hearing when it comes on.

  But there it is.

  The weather report told us we were done for since we woke up. Ninety-nine percent chance of thunderstorms and rain showers. High winds.

  We were fucked.

  We were supposed to be fucked.

  Someone slaps my back. “Is that a miracle, or what?”

  Murphy was a dipshit who spent more time high than sober, but he was still one of my closest friends. He left me be when I got moody and distracted me with pot and girls when I sulked for too long.

  He also kicked ass on the field.

  I stare up at the sun. “Yeah. A miracle.”

  I think about the two matching headstones underneath the sycamore tree in Bakersfield all while staring up at the sun beaming down on my teammates.

  “Let’s kick some ass,” Murphy shouts, getting equal enthusiastic yells from everyone around us.

  *Two Years Later*

  There’s a knock at my apartment door that peels my eyes off the football game on the screen. Setting my beer down, I smack a half-drunken Murphy and shuffle over to see if our other friend Spencer decided to show up.

  I don’t expect to see a tiny little redhead on the other side of the door.

  “You’re not Spencer.”

  Her eyes widen. It’s dark, but the porch light makes the color staring up at me an eerie tone of crystal blue.

  “Uh…no. I’m Piper.” She shifts something in her hands to jab behind her. “I live next door with my friend. Anyway, this was delivered to our place. It has your address on it.”

  Shoving the box toward me, my face scrunches when I see my name on the flap. Mom must have sent another care package and wanted to surprise me.

  “Thanks,” I murmur, putting it under my arm and grabbing the door to close it. “Well…”

  Nodding, she steps back and tugs on the oversized UM sweatshirt she’s wearing. It’s the same one
Emery wore when she…

  I clear my throat. “Bye.”

  Her lips part when I close the door, not thinking about much except what’s inside the parcel. Setting it on the coffee table and taking another swig of my beer, I rip off the tape and open the flaps.

  Murphy mumbles before passing back out, half draped on the couch and half hanging off. Rolling my eyes, I pick up a glass jar full of…paper?

  “What the…?”

  At closer glance, I recognize some of the colorful post-its inside. When I unscrew the top and pull one out, my jaw grinds.

  They’re the post-its I left for Em.

  Stupid pictures of cartoon objects and animals with sayings only she’d get. Insults. Taunts. Nicknames.

  She saved them all?

  Pulling a few more out, I notice some that aren’t mine. The drawings aren’t very good, and half of them are smudged like she kept running her hand across the ink.

  I can still tell what they are.

  A lacrosse stick.

  The UM emblem.

  Sunshine.

  One of them has words.

  If you don’t go to UM, I’ll haunt you.

  A choked laugh escapes me and Murphy jerks up, falling off the couch. He lands with a loud thud on the floor before groaning. I snort and nudge his leg with my foot.

  “You good down there?”

  He mumbles something unintelligent.

  I nod, going back to the post-its.

  The very first mouse I drew for her is resting in front of me. Brushing my fingers against the aged paper, I manage to smile before clearing my throat and putting all of them back into the jar.

  There’s a note from Mom.

  Henry found these in Emery’s room. He said you’d want them.

  Palming my face, I take the jar to my room and place it on my dresser. The Valentine’s card I got for her is resting there too, something I grabbed before I moved.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, I stare at the new addition to my space before grabbing my phone and typing out a text to Mom. She responds almost instantaneously.

  Mom:

  Love you too, baby boy. And your little sister says hi.