Sick Kids In Love

by Hannah Moskowitz

  “I’ll ask Luna how,” she says. “Or Siobhan. Siobhan gives better advice.”

  I drag her inside and back to the kitchen and fill a cup with water.

  “Who’s gonna kiss me at midnight?” she says.

  “Literally anyone here will,” I say.

  “Will you ask them for me?” She giggles. She’s still crying a little. “It can be a question for your column.” Some guy jostles past me on the way to get his drink. I stumble and Maura catches me. “Oh, are you okay?” she says.

  “I’m fine.”

  She looks at my legs. “Poor knee.”

  “It’s fine. Drink your water.”

  “Okay.”

  Sasha comes in and leans against the doorway to the kitchen. “Hey, Maura,” he says. “Isabel, can I talk to you?”

  “Yeah.” I squeeze Maura’s arm and follow Sasha down the hall. We stop halfway between the living room and his bedroom, a couple feet from some couple I don’t know really going at it.

  “Is Maura okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah, she’s…drunk and single. She’ll be fine. What’s up?”

  He leans his head against the wall. “I think I need to go lie down for a while.”

  “I told you to sit down!”

  “I know.”

  I squeeze his hand. “Need me to come with?”

  “No, no, I’m fine. Can you just…” He gestures to the living room.

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t let me sleep through midnight, okay?”

  “You got it.”

  He hugs me, both arms around my head. “You’re amazing.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  He shuts himself in his room and I go check on Maura in the kitchen. “Where’s Sasha?” she says. “He was gonna help me be a lesbian.”

  I’m not even going to touch that one. “Have you been drinking your water?”

  She shows me the empty cup.

  “Good. Sasha went to rest for a little while.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine, he’s just tired.”

  She frowns. “That’s so sad. It’s his party and he has to go lie down.”

  “It’s not sad. More people should go lie down in the middle of parties. Come on, let’s get you some more water and then back to civilization.” I have a whole party to look after now. I can’t be stuck in the kitchen with Maura.

  “You know,” she says while I refill her cup. “You are such a good person.”

  “Thanks, Maura.”

  “I don’t think I could do it,” she says. “He’s so lucky to have you.”

  The cup is full. I turn the water off and just stand at the sink for a minute, because seriously, what the hell? Literally five minutes ago she was crying about how she was jealous of me for having a boyfriend, and now because he’s horizontal for a minute, all of a sudden I’m, what, a noble hospice worker? No, thank you, you should still be very jealous of me. Maura wants to know why she’s not in a relationship? This is why. Sasha and I have only been together for two weeks, and I’m still pretty sure that part of being in a relationship is putting up with bigger obstacles than whatever annoyances our chronic illnesses decide to throw at us. And this is nothing; even if you narrow it down to the category of chronic illness problems, this is barely a complication, and Maura’s still making it out to be some great sadness because she has no frame of reference for sick shit, and also because…she’s drunk, and there’s really no point in me getting pissed at her.

  It’s that she thinks she’s saying something nice. That’s what really bothers me. How much shit have I put up with from my friends in the past few years because I know they think they’re being nice when they’re really being offensive and shitty and boring?

  It just took me a really long time to recognize that. I hadn’t met an alternative.

  I hand her the cup and pat her on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go sit with Siobhan.”

  “Oh, I love Siobhan.”

  “See, there you go.”

  I drop her off on the couch with Siobhan, who’s half asleep herself, like she always gets when she drinks, and then I refill the chip bowls—again, these people need to check their blood pressure—and direct some stumbling girl to the bathroom. I wipe up scattered crumbs and spilled drinks in the kitchen and feel strangely triumphant when a girl asks me the address of the building and I know the answer.

  I’ve never really liked hosting duties before, but I like that Sasha trusted me. He’s lying down, and I’m taking over. I feel like I’m part of a team.

  A power couple. I smile to myself as I wipe down the sink.

  We’re closing in on midnight now. The TV’s on, and people are copying the moves of whatever singer is performing in Times Square, just a handful of blocks from here. There’s a countdown clock on the bottom of the screen. Four minutes to midnight. I make sure everyone’s settled with drinks and no one’s peeing on any furniture, credenza or otherwise, and then slip into Sasha’s room.

  He stirs and smiles at me when I lie down next to him on the bed. “Hi,” he says.

  “Hi.” I rest my head on his pillow.

  “Is it midnight?” he says.

  “Almost.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  I push his hair back. “Everything’s great.”

  He rolls over enough to settle his head in the space between my neck and my shoulder. He’s sleep-warm and a little sweaty, and I can’t even imagine getting up.

  “Do you want to go back out there?” he says. “I can get up.”

  “I’m fine right here,” I say.

  They start the countdown in the living room. Sasha and I shift around until we’re lying there facing each other.

  “Three! Two! One!” they chant. Sasha mouths it along with them.

  They cheer in the next room, and Sasha and I kiss, very softly.

  “Happy New Year,” he whispers.

  “Happy New Year.”

  …

  We’re up early in the morning to clean the place up before his dad gets home. I’m out of Nadia’s dress and in sweatpants and a T-shirt Sasha lent me to sleep in. A lot of people have left, but a lot more are passed out in various spots—on the couch, on the living room floor, in the hallway, in that claw-foot bathtub.

  Sasha and I tiptoe around everyone, picking up all the empty cups. I drag a trash bag behind me like a train.

  It’s gonna be a good year.

  What’s the best thing anyone’s ever given you?

  This probably sounds dumb, but when I was seven my dad gave me one dollar and took me to the library on Greenpoint to get a library card. And it turns out library cards are free—there’s a one-dollar replacement fee if you lose it, so he got confused—so I had to give the dollar back to him. But I didn’t care, because I had a library card, and that was… I mean, that was the beginning of everything for me. I couldn’t believe that I could just pick out any of those books that I wanted. I loved the plastic around them. I loved the sound of the scanner the librarians used. Everything. It was life changing.

  —Siobhan O’Brian, 17, future NYU student

  You asked Siobhan? Ugh, I bet hers was really deep. Mine’s gonna sound stupid. But it was my aunt’s hand-me-down makeup, about a year after we moved here. I never wore makeup in Jamaica, but after I got here all my friends were wearing it, so I started messing around with it. And my aunt, she came to visit one time, and I had done my face up all nice, y’know. And then the next time she saw me, she came with this whole load of makeup. And it wasn’t the same stuff my friends had. Because my friends were white girls. And here comes my aunt, showing me stuff that’s actually made for me, and I put it on, and all of a sudden…I don’t look like I’m trying to be something else. My eyes are shining, my lips are deep, I don’t look like
a white little princess. I’m a queen. I know it’s just makeup, but it also wasn’t, y’know?

  —Luna Williams, 16, dancer

  The best thing anyone ever gave me was a piece of advice from my mother. I was fifteen, and we were trying to get into a restaurant in Manhattan on a busy night of the year. This other woman—not someone who worked there, just another woman who wanted our table—was trying to argue with us that we didn’t have the reservation that we knew we had. She wouldn’t stop yelling at us about it and yelling at the hostess about it, and finally my mom told her to cut it out, right before the hostess found our reservation and took us away to our table. As we were walking away, the woman whispered “Bitch” at my mom. I told my mom, “Mom, that woman just called you a bitch.” And she looked at me and she said, “You know what happens when a bitch calls you a bitch?” She licked her finger and swiped it in the air like she was making a tally mark. “You get a point.”

  —Claire Lennon, 16, dead and usually not the type to go to fancy restaurants but needed to hold a memory for someone

  Can I say enzyme replacement therapy? It’s not a funny answer, I know. But…okay, so the way my disease works is basically, my body doesn’t make this specific enzyme called glucocerebrosidase—which you do learn how to pronounce eventually—which really has one function, helping the cells of your body break down cells that are past their prime. So in most people, your cells gobble up the old cells and everything keeps trucking on. But since I don’t make the enzyme, my old cells just stick around, clogging everything up, taking up space, rattling around in my lungs or making my spleen the size of nine spleens or sitting around my bone marrow, keeping me from making red blood cells. There’s no cure, but I can get infusions of the enzyme that I’m missing, and that helps things stay at a certain balance. It’s still worse some times than others—right now, my spleen is just hanging out all enormous like it wants to get ruptured—and certain things still get to me. If I get sick or hurt, it’s like everything just gives up, but the ERT still keeps it more in check than I’d have any hope of it being otherwise. And I still remember the first time I got it when I was four, and I was so sick and had been so sick for my whole life, and that was just…even though I was crying at doctors all the time, I still kind of figured that was just what my life was going to feel like. And I remember them hooking up that IV and watching the liquid drip into me that everyone said was going to make me feel so much better. And it’s not as if it happened instantaneously. But I kept going, and I kept getting it, and eventually…yeah. I still remember the first morning I woke up and felt like I wasn’t drowning. You don’t forget that. And that’s the best thing anyone could ever give me.

  —Sasha Sverdlov-Deckler, 16, Sick Boy

  Six hundred dollars.

  —Gwen Partridge, 91, lifelong Queens resident

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sasha gives me a very small ceramic cat the week after New Year’s. He comes to meet me after school and drops it into my gloved hand as we’re walking to the subway. It’s white with bright blue eyes.

  “That means it’s deaf, probably,” Sasha says. “According to Nadia.”

  It’s stretched out with its tail all the way up in the air. It looks happy.

  “Nick found it in the snow,” he says. “Made me think of you.”

  I’m not really sure why it made him think of me, since I don’t own a lot of things I can’t use—or a cat—but it’s cute, and he thought of me. And it’s not like it will take up a lot of space. I kiss him on the cheek and slip it into my pocket.

  …

  I give him all the green Skittles every time I buy a pack. I get them a lot at the bodega on my block, and we’ll eat them on the subway or while we’re waiting in line at the movie theater or while we’re walking. Once I get to the end of the pack, I’ll hold out my hand, he holds out his, and I drop all the green Skittles into it, and he eats them one by one.

  …

  He gives me a hat halfway through January. It’s pink and blue and a little misshapen, like lumpy cotton candy. It’s incredibly soft.

  “Did you make this?” I say.

  He ducks his head. “Is it that obvious?”

  I bat it lightly from hand to hand. “I didn’t know you knit.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been doing it forever, but I kind of go in phases. I won’t touch it for a year, then all I want to do is knit for two weeks… The cycle continues. I made this one at school between classes so you wouldn’t see. Try it on?”

  I pull it over my head and go to his mirror to look. It’s baggy and warm and so adorable.

  “Do you like it?” he asks.

  “I love it.” I wear it every day for the rest of winter.

  …

  I get him gelato the last week of January when he’s had a rough week at school. He doesn’t want to talk about it, but he’s been calling me every day after school to hang out and then he’s just sad and clingy once I get there. I drag him out of his apartment and a few blocks over to the Gelateria on 9th.

  “It’s January,” he says.

  “So? British people drink tea when it’s hot. We can’t eat ice cream when it’s cold?”

  “Technically this is gelato,” he says.

  “We’re Americans! We call it what we want and we eat it when we want!” I stick my arm up in the air.

  “You tell ’em,” he says to me.

  I hug him around the waist. “So do you.”

  …

  He gives me a smallish but very heavy present for my birthday. We’re at this hole-in-the-wall pasta restaurant on 7th Avenue in Manhattan that’s the only place I’ll willingly climb stairs for. It’s me, Sasha, the girls, and my dad, who actually got the night off. Dad gives me sterling-silver earrings that glitter in the restaurant’s overbright lighting. The girls and I always exchange lots of little things, so I get nail polish and lip gloss, which I’ll get a ton of use out of, and cookie cutters and stickers, which I won’t, but I give them the same stuff on their birthdays, so I can’t exactly complain. Plus, as I learned from Sasha and the ceramic cat, it’s the thought that counts, and I’m ready to appreciate whatever little thing Sasha gets me, too, and I’m secretly hoping it’s a scarf to go with my hat.

  But then he hands me this, and I unwrap a medical textbook from 1923. With illustrations.

  “What is it?” Maura asks.

  “It’s a creepy old book,” Sasha says.

  Ashley looks over my shoulder at the illustrations. “Oh, gross.”

  “I’ll take it if you don’t want it,” my dad says.

  I close it long enough to hug it to my chest. “No way.” I trap Sasha’s foot under the table, and he gives me the biggest smile.

  I read half of it that same night.

  “How did you know?” I ask him on the phone.

  “You have a dead-girl imaginary friend,” he says.

  “That’s a good point.”

  “You’re just as much of a freak as I am,” he says. “You just hide it better.”

  I stop reading and close my eyes and just listen to him. “Yeah.”

  “What does she think of it?” he says.

  “Claire?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She loves it,” I say.

  “Does she want a lecture about 1920s medicine as a bedtime story?” he says.

  “Yes,” I say, and I put my phone on speaker and listen to the quiet rasp of his voice as I fall asleep.

  …

  I give Nadia more books after she finishes all the ones I gave her. She and Sasha come over, and I have her go through my shelf and pick out what looks good.

  “I recommend the 1920s medical textbook,” Sasha says. He’s lying on my bed, flipping through my old yearbooks. He just got his cast off, and it’s still kind of jarring. I got so used to it.

  I po
int at him. “Shut your mouth.”

  “Ashley really shouldn’t have gotten bangs,” he says, squinting at an old picture.

  “I know. We told her.”

  “What about this one?” Nadia says.

  “That one’s really good and you have to read it because none of my friends will read it and I need to talk about it with someone.”

  “Why haven’t you made me read it?” Sasha says.

  I look at the book, then him, and tilt my head. “I don’t know. I didn’t think you’d like it.”

  “Why wouldn’t I like something you like?” he says nonchalantly, turning a page in the yearbook. “We like all the same things.”

  I like that he thinks that, even though I’m not sure why he does. “Okay,” I say. “You read it, too.”

  Honestly, I don’t expect to hear about it from him again, but three nights later I open my email and there’s a whole book report written up. I curl up with a mug of hot chocolate and read what he thought of my favorite book.

  He loved it, but he hated all the characters I love and loved all the ones I hate. His favorite parts are the parts I thought were boring, and my favorite parts are the ones he thought were forced.

  I reply back, refuting every single one of his points, and he responds almost instantly, defending his just as hard. We stay up until four a.m. arguing about it, and I never stop smiling. Even when I’m typing furiously and whispering, “Fuck you, Sasha Sverdlov-Deckler.” Smiling.

  …

  He gives the nurses shit when he comes to pick me up after my February infusion and it turns out I haven’t even started it yet, and I’m sitting in one of the chairs in the drip room, holding an ice pack to the inside of my elbow.

  He zeroes in on it immediately. “What happened?”

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “They blew the vein,” I say. “It’s no big deal. They’re gonna try the other arm, they’re just getting a new tray.”

  “Why did they blow the vein?”

  “I don’t know. It just happens sometimes, right?”

  “It doesn’t just happen,” he says. “It never needs to happen. It’s always because they did something wrong. Who did it?”