Sick Kids In Love

by Hannah Moskowitz

  —Ashley Baker, 17, future Snow Ball Queen through the power of positive thinking

  The G. HA. Just kidding. Can you imagine? I’ve taken the G once. Once. Do you know what happened? It flooded. A subway train flooded in the middle of the summer. I bet the G floods every day.

  —Mitchell Yarsburg, 14, math genius

  I’ve always been partial to the 1. The 7th Avenue express? In my younger days, I used to just get off at every stop and have a drink, get back on, new stop, new drink. Of course, that was when the subway was a dollar fifty a ride. And we used tokens! Kids these days, you’d never last with tokens. You don’t even have pockets.

  —Lucas Ursick, 48, Oncologist

  To be honest, I think I’m forgetting some of the specific lines and where they go. Do any of them take you out of the city?

  —Claire Lennon, 16, dead

  You’re going to think I’m just trying to suck up here, but I swear: it’s the 7. And I probably shouldn’t say that, as Manhattan-trash, and any self-respecting Manhattan-trash will claim they never go to Queens, but since I’ve been going to Queens every ten days since I was four…here we are. And honestly, Manhattanites should love the 7, because it’s the best view of Manhattan you can possibly get. When you’re at Court Square and the train finally breaks above ground, and BAM, there’s the skyline. There’s really no place like it. Tourists haul themselves to the top of the Empire State Building for that kind of view. You want to actually see the Empire State Building, you get on the 7. There’s no better view in the city that you don’t have to pay for. Well, except for one.

  —Sasha Sverdlov-Deckler, lopsided

  Chapter Seven

  Neither of us cancels. Sasha tells me to dress warm, and since it isn’t a date, I don’t have to worry about looking cute, so I go all out. Two pairs of socks, boots, fleece leggings, a huge sweater, my warmest gloves, a big hat. My joints are going to be so warm they’ll think they’re being toasted. They are going to behave.

  “Now, tell me again who this boy is?” my dad says as I circle the kitchen in search of a necklace I swear I saw in here. He’s on his minigrill, making something that smells so good it almost makes me want to stay home.

  “I told you,” I say. “He’s the boy I met at the hospital.”

  “With Gaucher.”

  “Mmhmm.”

  “What’s he like?”

  He jokes about everything, and his hair is like ink, and he sleeps a lot, and his wrists are skinny, and his eyes disappear when he smiles.

  “He’s nice.”

  “Is he sick?”

  I find the necklace and work on the clasp. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

  “I’m just looking out for you, Ibby. You know that.”

  “He’s not going to drop dead in the middle of our…whatever.”

  “Date.”

  “It’s not a date.”

  He sighs. “I knew this day would come. I knew having a daughter who didn’t date was too good to be true.”

  “We’re just hanging out,” I say. “It would be nice to have a friend who’s…”

  “A boy,” he says.

  “No. Who’s like me.”

  He looks at me. “What do you mean, like you?”

  And we just stare at each other, and I can’t tell if he’s honestly confused or if he’s playing dumb. I can’t read him.

  I know my dad doesn’t think of me as a sick person. Why should he? I’m out living life. I’m not coughing up blood or fainting. He’d acknowledge that I have pain, sure, but sick? Sick is a whole different thing. When he reads my column, he skips any mention of Sick Girl. He doesn’t get it, so he pretends it doesn’t exist, and we don’t talk about it anymore.

  And the thing is, it’s good. That he doesn’t think that of me. He’s a doctor, so there’s always the risk that he’d look at me and see me as a diagnosis instead of a person, and he doesn’t. He sees his daughter. He thinks I’m strong and don’t need to be insulated because I have a condition. And he spends his whole day around sick people, so he knows what sick looks like, so it’s not as if his opinion isn’t valid here. It’s just as valid as mine, and he doesn’t think I’m sick.

  It’s a good thing.

  But it puts me in a very awkward position if I ever accidentally say I’m sick in front of him.

  So I deflect.

  “Jewish,” I say. “None of my friends are Jewish.”

  “Well, far be it from me to argue with that. Come here, let me help you with that necklace.”

  “Thanks, Daddy.”

  …

  Sasha is waiting on the platform at my subway stop. He’s wearing a huge plaid scarf, a brown leather jacket, and thick gloves. He smiles when he sees me.

  “You look nice,” he says.

  I do a little twirl. “I look like an arctic explorer.”

  “The two aren’t mutually exclusive.” He looks to the right, toward Manhattan. “I love the view from this stop.”

  You can see the Empire State Building from here. It’s lit up blue tonight.

  “Where are we going?” I ask as the train comes in.

  “Huh?”

  I raise my voice. “Where are we going?”

  “Oh,” he says. We get on board. There are enough seats for both of us. Thank God for small favors. “I thought we’d go to LIC Landing.”

  I look at him.

  “In Long Island City?” he says. That’s a few subway stops from here—still in Queens, but closer to Manhattan.

  “I figured that’s what LIC stood for,” I say. “But I don’t know the place.”

  “Haven’t you lived in Queens your whole life?”

  “I don’t really…go anywhere,” I say.

  “Hey, that’s cool. I get to show you for the first time. Are you cold?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Good. It’s about a five-minute walk from Jackson Avenue, is that gonna be okay?”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Cool.”

  We’re quiet on the train. He stretches his legs out and crosses his feet at the ankles. The underside of the tongue of his boot says NADIA in scratchy pen.

  “Who’s Nadia?” I say.

  “My sister. A couple years ago she got mad at me and wrote her name on all my stuff.”

  “Are you the oldest?”

  “Mmhmm.” He holds out four fingers. “So there’s me, then Nadia, she’s thirteen. Then my parents got divorced and my dad got remarried, and they had Josh and Nick. They’re little. Seven and five.”

  “None of them are sick?”

  “Nope, just me.” The train slows to a stop at Court Square, and he pulls his legs in to make room as people enter. “My sister was already born before they figured out what was going on with me, but they tested her and she’s fine. And the boys’ mom didn’t have the gene. Both parents have to be carriers.”

  “And then he got divorced again?”

  “Yeah, and now he’s dating for, like, the first time. I don’t think he really dated when he met his second wife. He just kind of found a woman who seemed nice and married her.”

  “I guess that didn’t work out so well,” I say.

  “I dunno. The boys are cute.”

  We get off at Jackson Avenue and head west. It’s almost eight, so this time of year it’d be pitch black outside if not for the city lights and the twinkling Christmas garlands strung up between the lampposts.

  “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet,” he says.

  “You don’t like Christmas lights?”

  “I’m Jewish,” he says. “You’re Jewish!”

  “Lights are nondenominational.”

  “I bet you like Christmas music, too.”

  “I do. I really do.”

  He laughs. “So do
I. Doing okay?”

  “I’m fine. How’s your arm?”

  “Looks totally normal under the jacket and glove, right? You’d never know.”

  “Eh. You hold it kind of funny.”

  “Yeah, well, you walk kind of funny.”

  “Hey.”

  “I’m just saying,” he says. “We make a good pair.”

  “We are not a pair.”

  “So are you going to explain that to me?” he says. “Why you don’t date?”

  I carefully step over a crack in the sidewalk. “Well, it was part of what really got my column off the ground. My school newspaper is, like, weirdly selective, and colleges pay attention to it for journalism programs. It’s a good school.”

  “Where do you go?”

  “Markwood Academy? In Woodside.”

  “Sounds fancy.”

  “It’s small,” I say, which is what we always say to that, the same way people who go to Harvard say they go to school outside Boston. “So when I was pitching the column, I said, y’know, I’ll ask questions, I’ll get people’s answers, I’ll write up a summary of what those answers mean and how they all come together. And they said, okay, but why you, what makes your perspective interesting? And I had the Sick Girl thing, but they thought that sounded… I can’t remember the word they used. Like it would only be applicable in certain situations.”

  “I mean, I certainly find that being sick only affects me in really specific situations,” he says, and the relief of hearing someone call that out, of someone just grabbing that and pouncing on it and identifying it as the bullshit that it is… God, it’s like coming up for air.

  I clear my throat. “Yeah. But then I told them, well, I don’t date, so I have more of an objective perspective on dating-type questions. They thought that was kind of cool. Like I became kind of a sexless Dear Abby kind of person. It made me seem more adult, I guess. I’m the closest we get to a grownup giving advice, but I’m still a kid that people will listen to.”

  “And you don’t actually give advice.”

  “Oh, God no, I’m not going to be responsible for people’s decisions. I don’t even want to be responsible for my own decisions.”

  “So, what, if you started dating, they’d stop running your column?”

  “No, probably not,” I admit. “But it just… It’s just easier.”

  “Fair enough,” he says. “Here, check it out.”

  LIC Landing is, it turns out, a little waterfront park with café tables out on a dock. It’s right on the East River, and it feels like I can see all of Manhattan glowing and moving like something alive.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “This is my favorite view in New York,” he says. “Go sit down, I’ll get us some food. Do you like burgers?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Perfect. Sit tight.”

  I take a seat in one of the little metal chairs and watch him walk back toward the counter. He doesn’t walk like someone who’s worried about his bones breaking at a moment’s notice, I’ll tell you that. He has this long, loping walk on those skinny legs. It’s happy.

  I smile a little and look out at the water. I can just barely see the cars speeding around Manhattan, scurrying around like little animals.

  “Okay,” Sasha says, “here we go.” He plunks down a tray with two hamburgers, two milkshakes, and a ton of fries. “Truffle fries,” he says. “They’re amazing.”

  “You eat like a skinny person,” I say, grabbing some fries. “You are a skinny person.”

  “My limbs are skinny,” he says. “But I have an awesome distended stomach like a starving orphan because my spleen and liver are enormous. It’s super sexy.”

  “I bet,” I say.

  “I hate ordering food,” he says.

  I laugh. “What?”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, what?”

  “Ugh, I don’t know. Ordering food, making phone calls, anything that feels like I’m making demands of people, I get so anxious.”

  “I get like that with, like, complaining to doctors,” I say. “I have it in my mind what I’m going to say to my doctor, but as soon as I get there, I’m like nope I’m great everything’s fine don’t worry about me.”

  “Oh, I’m good at that,” he says. “If it’s illness-related, I will squeaky wheel like it’s my job. When I was little, before I was diagnosed, they thought I must have had leukemia because my white count was high and I told them all I was dying.”

  “Mmm, before I was diagnosed they told me there was nothing wrong with me.”

  He sips his milkshake. “Not really the same, huh.”

  “Nope. Must be nice to be a boy.”

  “It is,” he says. “I recommend it.”

  “Maybe next time.”

  “But you can do other stuff?” he says. “Order food?”

  “I mean, you can do it,” I say. “You just did it.”

  He holds out his gloved hand for me to see. It’s shaking.

  “You should have had me do it!” I say.

  “I was trying to be impressive! By doing something it turns out was totally unimpressive to you!”

  I laugh. “I don’t know. I’m not scared of talking to people. When I was little, I was basically raised by a committee at the hospital, so I was bothering doctors to play with me before I knew how completely inappropriate that was, and I guess I never fully learned, because I still go up to random people and ask them questions for my column all the time.”

  “Okay,” he says. “So like…” He points to a couple eating a few tables away from us. “You would walk up to those people right now and ask them your question of the week. The subway-line one.”

  “Sure.”

  He stares at me with wide eyes.

  “What?”

  “I am so scared of you,” he says.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Do it. Do it right now.”

  “You talked to me the first day in the drip room,” I say. “Explain that.”

  “Uh, you talked to me first. I was prepared to sit there the whole time pretending I didn’t notice the pretty girl sitting next to me. And what did I even say? I babbled to you about some kid and his trucks.”

  “I thought it was charming,” I say.

  “And that’s very lucky for me. Go ask them.”

  “This is how you learn things, y’know? By gathering opinions. I don’t know how you learn anything.”

  “Books,” he says. “Go ask them. I want to see.”

  “I don’t want to be too spooky for you.”

  “It’s too late. I’m terrified. Do it.”

  I roll my eyes, stuff a few more fries in my mouth, and go over to interrogate some people on their favorite subway lines (the 3 and, inexplicably, the 6). I come back to Sasha triumphantly.

  “You didn’t type anything,” he says.

  “I recorded them; I’ll write it down later. It’s actually easier for me to write by hand than type on my phone. Oh God, your nose is bleeding.”

  “Oh.” He grabs some napkins and leans forward. “Don’t worry, this happens all the time.”

  “Promise?”

  “Like a few times a week,” he says. “Seriously. It’s gonna take a while, though, so get comfortable.”

  “Can I, like, eat?”

  “Totally, yeah.”

  I take a bite of my burger. “Feels kind of rude when you’re just sitting there with your nose open.”

  He laughs, then groans. “Don’t make me laugh. It makes it worse.”

  “That’s gonna be hard. It’s pretty easy to make you laugh.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Maybe that’s why you have so many nosebleeds,” I say. “Laugh too damn much.”

  “Isabel.”

  �
�All right, all right, should I shut up?”

  He shifts around, still bent over. It’s easier for me to talk when I don’t have to look at that face. He could go on thinking I’m witty and fun forever if he has nosebleeds this often. That could work.

  “No, don’t shut up,” he says. “Just tell me something definitively not-funny.”

  “Um…okay, I’m thinking.” I fiddle with my phone while I think, putting my interviews with the couple in the folder where I keep my column stuff, and that gives me an idea. “I have a dead imaginary friend,” I say. “And I ask her all the questions I do for my column.”

  “What,” he says, and it reminds me of how I answered him the very first time he talked to me, when he told me about the boy with leukemia and his renegade trucks. When he was scared. That feels like a long time ago. I try not to laugh so he won’t.

  “Her name’s Claire, and she died when she was sixteen, and she’s imaginary. She always died when she was the same age I am, so when I first thought of her, she was dying when she was thirteen, then fourteen…and every time I think of a question for my column, I ask her, too. I don’t turn her answer in to my editor or anything, it’s just for me.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Some autoimmune disease. She would have lived, but she didn’t have health insurance.”

  “Wow. That sucks.”

  “Yep.” A pigeon lands on our table, so I give it a french fry. “Her parents were really great, though. Held her while she died and all that crap.”

  “You’re right. This is extremely not-funny.”

  “She’s not real,” I say. “Just remember that part.”

  “Someone named Claire has probably died because they didn’t have health insurance,” he says.

  “Oh, sure, but this isn’t just some stand-in person. She’s fully formed. I know her middle name and her birthday and, y’know, her answers to all sorts of random questions.”

  “So what’s her favorite subway line?”

  “New Jersey Transit.”

  He shakes his head sadly. “Claire.”

  “I know, but we can’t blame her. She’s a ghost. She doesn’t care about crowds.”