Sick Kids In Love

by Hannah Moskowitz

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “And when you try to explain that to non-Jews, they look at you like you’re crazy, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay then.” He gives me my cup of tea and keeps his hands around mine when I take it. His cast is cold against my skin. “Why is it so ridiculous that you’d feel being sick deep down in you, then? It’s a part of who we are.”

  “But I wasn’t sick yet,” I say. “I was just a normal girl pretending.”

  “It’s not like RA is some contagious thing you happened to pick up when you were nine. Eight,” he corrects quickly. “It was always in you somewhere, right? Just hadn’t, y’know. Come out to play. Maybe it’s like…like converts. They were always Jewish, they just didn’t always know.”

  “Y’know, it’s probably blasphemous to talk about being sick like it’s a religion.”

  “Why?” he says.

  “Because…”

  “Because healthy people would think so.”

  I laugh a little. “Yeah.”

  He tilts his head to the side and looks at me. I just sip from the teacup.

  “And I don’t care about the other women in your family,” he says. “I mean, I care about them because they’ve been shitty to you and I want to yell at them, but what I mean is…I care about you and whether or not you’re horrible, and I think I know you pretty well at this point. And you’re way too self-deprecating to ever trick me, so I don’t think we need to worry about that. You’d sell yourself out instantly.”

  “That’s what my dad thought about my mom,” I say. “She had him tricked, too.”

  “Yeah, and I’m guessing she didn’t give him a whole speech about how she was scared she was going to hurt him.”

  “She might have. I don’t know.”

  I look down, and he touches his hand to my cheek until I look up at him.

  “This isn’t working,” he whispers. “You’re not scaring me away.”

  Just like that, everything straightens out.

  Fuck, Sasha.

  He says, “You think I’m going to think it’s weird that you dreamed about being sick? Honey, nobody took care of you. Why would you have dreamed about anything else?”

  I need a moment to collect myself. He lets me have it and pretends like it’s nothing. He drinks his tea, looks around the kitchen, has no idea how goddamn incredible he is.

  “Are you ready?” he says after a few minutes.

  I nod.

  “C’mon. Let’s go home.”

  “Okay.”

  He takes my hand on the way back to the subway.

  “So,” he says once we’re up on the platform, his voice light. “About that dance.”

  Should Sick Girl date Sick Boy?

  Are you two seriously not already dating? Because I think you’re basically already dating. You’ve already betrayed us by giving up the single life, Sick Girl! I’m just kidding. Yes, obviously, you should date him. You two are adorable together.

  —Luna Williams, 16, fangirl

  Listen to me, Isabel. Being in a great, supportive relationship is like… Okay. So before Luna, I dated some girls who were great on paper. And I felt totally amazing about myself because they wanted to date me. But then, now that I’m with her, I realize this is the only time I’ve felt amazing. Well, then, and when I was away from them. I’d always thought of relationships as this thing that you needed to, like, steel yourself against, y’know? You had to gather up all your power while you were alone to be able to stand the, like, chip chip chipping away of yourself that the other person was going to do to your self-esteem and your personality and your…you-ness, because that was all I’d ever been in. And now I’m with Luna, and I just… If you have any chance of feeling what I’m feeling, you have to feel it. You have to.

  —Siobhan O’Brian, 17, taken

  Noooo! Who is Sick Boy?? All I know is Sick Girl, who is supposed to be, like, smarter than the rest of us and not messing around with relationships. If you’re dating, what’s gonna make you, like, special? You’re just like everybody else.

  —Alicia Nichols, 15, some girl

  I don’t know. I’m still a little worried about that nuclear-winter thing. He is cute, though.

  —Ashley Baker, 17, still going to be Snow Ball queen, even if she doesn’t find a date

  Look at me. Girl. Look at me. Do not screw this up. No, I don’t know what not screwing it up means! But I know that you screw things up and you better not. We need a win, Isabel.

  —Claire Lennon, 16, dead

  Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking, and don’t kill me here, but isn’t it sort of… I mean, look, he seems really sweet, and if you like him then that’s all that matters. But a part of me wonders if like maybe it isn’t a little…convenient? Like, oh, you’ve got a thing, he’s got a thing, so you have to pair up. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to date him because, y’know, you’ve got that in common. Because you’re good enough for anyone that you want. And if that’s him, then fine! This isn’t coming out right. Don’t print this. Oh, I guess you’re probably not printing this question at all, are you? That’d be weird.

  —Maura Cho, 16, best friend

  Sick Boy? This is so demeaning. Can’t I be Sick Man?

  —Sasha Sverdlov-Deckler, 16, fully grown

  Chapter Twelve

  “What if it messes up our friendship?” I say.

  “It won’t,” Sasha says. He’s doing some really ineffectual job of cleaning his room while I lie on his bed with my existential panic. He rustles around in a box by his computer.

  “Oh, that’s your answer? It won’t?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know, you could be a little more reassuring.”

  “Well, you could help me clean my room, so there’s stuff we both could be doing.”

  “I’m not gonna clean your room! My room is clean.”

  “Yep, because you’ve gotta be perrrrrfect.” He spills a box everywhere and coughs.

  “I don’t have to be perfect,” I say.

  He gets the coughing under control. “You’re gonna feel really bad about not helping when I get, like, a mouthful of dust and my lungs stop working.”

  “Maybe you should clean more than once every ten years.”

  “See? How could we possibly mess up our friendship? We’re already jerks to each other. And you do, by the way, have to be perfect.”

  “No I don’t. My dad just likes a neat house.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. Do you want this?”

  I sit up. He’s holding some kind of cord. “What is it?” I ask.

  “It’s an HDMI cable.”

  “What does it do?”

  “It’s for like…hooking your computer up to a different monitor. So if yours isn’t working or if you want to play a game on your TV screen or something.”

  I stare at him. “Why…why would I want that?”

  “I don’t know!” He holds up one in his other hand. “I have two! I thought I’d offer you one! Tikkun olam!” He coughs into his elbow.

  “Could you cut that out and come give your lungs a break, please.”

  He grumbles and clambers onto the bed next to me. “C’mere,” he says, and he slings one arm up over my head. I scoot closer to him and rest my cheek against his chest.

  “You could try taking me seriously,” I say. “I’m wrestling with a major decision here.”

  “I’ve used up all the seriously I have for this issue over the past month and a half. I’m at capacity.”

  “I don’t have to be perfect,” I say.

  I listen to him laugh, feel his scratchy breathing under my ear. “You asked people if you should date me,” he says. “And you do it for everything! You don’t do anything without asking twenty
billion people first to make sure the way you feel is normal. You are so afraid of making the wrong choice. Why don’t you just trust yourself? What do you want?”

  “What I want isn’t the point,” I say.

  “Do you even hear yourself?”

  “No, because like…” I sit up. “What if I’m wrong? What if I do what I want and…”

  “Lungs rested,” he announces. He gets up and goes over to his closet and starts rearranging boxes on top. “And you know, not that I support the practice, but most of the people you asked did say you should date me, so if you’re going to make it your method…”

  “Going with what I want could be a bad idea,” I say. “What I want could mess everything up.”

  He turns around and faces me, his hands braced on the top frame of the closet. He says, “If I’m reading between the lines correctly, what you want is to go to the dance together.”

  “Okay, yes, but—”

  He holds out a hand. “Just, just stop, right there. Think about how great it would to just stop at yes. I know I would enjoy it, personally.”

  “It could be a mistake,” I say.

  “So what!” he says. “Is the world going to end if we go to the dance together and have a terrible time? Or if we date for a while and then break up? We would still be friends.”

  “Everyone says they’ll still be friends,” I say.

  He shrugs. “Everyone isn’t us.”

  I sigh.

  He pulls a box down and sorts through it, pulling out a bunch of what look like…Happy Meal toys, why does he save this shit? “Let me ask you something,” he says. “When’s the last time you made a mistake? Did something you knew might not end up well. Something reckless.”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know! Isabel, come on. That is no way to live and you know it.”

  “Garfinkels don’t make mistakes,” I say. “We make decisions.”

  He barks out a laugh. “What is that, a motto? Is that on your family crest?”

  I flop back on the bed. “Shut up.”

  “Fine,” he says. “Maybe Garfinkels don’t make mistakes. But you know what Sverdlov-Decklers do? Mistakes. Lots of ’em. Accidental babies, runaway trips to Africa, dating girls they meet at bars when they could be home with their lovely children, having the aforementioned lovely children without any kind of genetic testing, not cleaning their room for ten years… Just mistake after mistake. And since you’ve been basically living here for the past month, some of that must have rubbed off on you.”

  I groan as loudly as I can. I hear him put the box down and walk over, and the next thing I know he’s gently pulling me up by both hands, his fingers carefully supporting my wrists.

  “It would probably be a pretty major mistake to date the emotionally stunted goofball with the debilitating chronic illness,” he says. “I mean, I think that’d be a decent way to make up for lost time.”

  I say, “You know that’s not why I’m… The Sick Boy thing was just an alias to, like, go with mine, it doesn’t mean—”

  He cuts me off. “You think I think you don’t want to date me because I’m sick? C’mon, we don’t have to do the thing.”

  “Okay. Thank you.” I close my eyes. “I love your voice.”

  He chuckles.

  Oh God. I’m doing it. I’m doing it. “Okay,” I say.

  “Okay?”

  “But this isn’t… It’s just a dance, okay? I’m not promising anything after that. We can just see how the dance goes.”

  He scrunches up his face. “That’s what okay means? All this buildup, and that’s how you’re asking me? This is the longed-for moment? No no no.”

  I breathe out through my teeth and say, as quickly as I can, “Sasha, will you go to the Snow Ball with me?”

  “Oh, sure, I guess,” he says, and then he pulls me up in his arms and spins me around.

  What would you do if it was your last night in New York?

  I would take my wonderful daughter, get on the subway—no, it’s our last day, we’re taking a cab—and go to Yankee Stadium. We’d get hot dogs and nachos and watch the Yankees. Maybe she’d actually watch instead of playing on her phone like when she was little! Since it’s our last night and everything.

  —John Garfinkel, 49, Physician in Chief at Linefield and West Memorial Hospital

  I mean, am I dying, or am I leaving the city? Or is the city about to be ravaged by some Godzilla-type monster? It’s kind of an important distinction… No? I have to pick on my own? I need more guidance than this. I am lost in the West Village with no guide. Save me, Isabel.

  —Ashley Baker, 17, found a date

  That’s a pretty morbid question. Plus, I think I’ve told you before. My mom held me while I died, we watched TV, blah blah. What are you wearing to the dance?

  —Claire Lennon, 16, dead

  So in SoHo, there’s this apartment building, and if you ring the buzzer, someone lets you up to the second floor. You go up, and it’s this entire apartment—like, a big apartment, like a three-thousand-square-foot apartment—and it’s completely filled with dirt. Up to your knees in all directions, just dirt. They water it down so it stays in place. So you can go up there, and you can just…look at the dirt. I went there when I was a kid—my mom took me there. She loves it. And I pretended to get it because I love my mother and I love getting things, but…I’m going to be honest with you, Isabel, what I saw was a wasted three-thousand-square-foot apartment in SoHo, even as a seven-year-old. So if it was my last night in New York, I would go back to The New York Earth Room—that’s what it’s called. I want to see if I’ve learned anything, if it’s really this meditative place like people say it is, or if seven-year-old Sasha was just good at seeing through the bullshit of dressing up a room full of dirt and calling it the earth. And hopefully you would come with me. Though I hope it’s not your last night in New York. You should stay.

  —Sasha Sverdlov-Deckler, 16, owns a suit

  I have a bunch of people I need to tell to fuck off, I’ll tell you that.

  —Louise Kern, 82, works at my bagelry

  Chapter Thirteen

  I was going to get ready with the girls, but my dad’s actually home the night of the dance and wants to meet Sasha first, and honestly our “getting ready” parties usually leave me too tired for whatever we were getting ready for, so it’s probably for the best.

  Dad knocks on my door as I’m finishing up my makeup. “Need help with anything?” he says. He has a dishtowel between his hands and is trying very hard to look casual.

  “Yeah, could you look at my earring rack and find the silver ones that are like…spiral-y?”

  He picks the rack up and scans it with his eyes narrowed, like he’s studying an X-ray. I turn back to my mirror and make sure my highlight sparkles the way I want it to. This is a winter dance. I’m going to look like I’m covered in glittery snow, or I’m not going to bother to show up.

  “I like your dress,” he says.

  It’s light-blue cotton with spaghetti straps, a full skirt, and a low back. It ends just above my knees. “Thanks,” I say. “It’s the one I got for Dr. Leonard’s daughter’s bat mitzvah.”

  “Oh, right, right. You’re going to be cold, though.”

  “The dance is actually inside.”

  He snorts. “Smart-ass. Here they are.”

  I slip the earrings on, which I hope to God is the last thing I’m going to have to do tonight that requires fine motor skills, because putting my hair in a French twist and packing on all this eye shadow has done a number on my hands. I hope Sasha isn’t expecting me to wear heels. I have sparkly silver flats and that’s as far away from my Birkenstocks as my feet are gonna let me go.

  My dad sighs. “You know it’s going to happen someday, but still…”

  “Dad.”<
br />
  “I suppose I should be thankful it took this long.”

  “It’s a dance,” I say. “It’s not like I’m getting married.”

  “Well, I should hope not. Would have thought I’d have met the boy before now if you were getting married.”

  “I’ve been hanging out with him for like two months. Maybe you should be around more often.”

  He doesn’t say anything. Honestly, I can’t believe I said anything.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “You know I try, Isabel.”

  “I know. It’s fine.”

  Dad sits on the foot of my bed. “So tell me about him! Is he nice?”

  “He’s very nice,” I say.

  “He’s responsible?”

  “He’s, uh…yeah, he’s responsible.” The doorbell rings. “And he’s here.”

  “All right, get your coat. I’ll let him in.”

  I put my shoes on and take my coat off my desk chair and shove my gloves and a scarf in the pockets, but I didn’t put this dress on for Sasha to see me in the same coat he’s seen a dozen times. I drape it over my arm and head down the stairs. I can hear them talking in the kitchen. Sasha’s answering basic questions about himself and sounds nervous.

  “Hi,” I say when I’m halfway down the stairs.

  He’s wearing a suit. I can’t believe it. I’ve never seen him in anything but either five layers of sweaters or a ridiculously oversized T-shirt to try to hide the way his stomach sticks out. But this is a nice suit, tailored, with a jacket lapel that shines in my crappy kitchen lighting. He has a black overcoat on top of it that might be my favorite item of clothing I’ve ever seen, and he’s probably going to lose it to me like he lost his scarf. He’s not wearing a tie, and the neck of his shirt is open enough to show a bit of his throat, and he has a white silk scarf draped around his neck. He can keep that one. That little touch is all him.

  His cast is sticking out of the left sleeve and his hair is still a goddamn mess. I’m so happy.