Sick Kids In Love

by Hannah Moskowitz

  “They’re busy. They do a million of these a day, it’s going to happen.”

  “Who did it?” he says. I’ve never seen him this serious.

  “Sasha…”

  “Tell me? Please?”

  “Lindsey,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “She isn’t careful. I’ve always thought she isn’t careful. I’ll be right back.”

  “Please don’t be mean.”

  “I’m not going to be mean.”

  Lindsey comes in with a new tray before he has a chance to leave. “Hi there, Sasha,” she says. “All right, Isabel, let’s try this again.”

  Sasha says, “Is there another nurse on duty who can do this?”

  “It’s fine,” I say to Lindsey.

  Sasha says, “You know she’s the chief physician’s daughter, right?”

  “Sasha,” I say.

  He scrubs his mouth with the palm of his hand while he watches her put the IV in. Once she’s gone, he crouches down in front of me and holds the ice pack on my other arm.

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  “These can actually be really serious.” He isn’t looking at me.

  I never get mad, he told me. And it’s true that he doesn’t wear it like someone who’s used to it.

  I lay my hand on top of his on the ice pack, and he breathes out slowly through his mouth and bounces a little on his heels. He shakes himself like he’s trying to get the feelings off of him. “Shouldn’t have happened,” he mumbles.

  …

  I give him a cold three days after that. We both have terrible immune systems, him from his anemia and me from the drugs I take to keep my arthritis in control. I call him with a croaky voice when he’s still feeling fine and tell him he’s probably screwed.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. “Do you want me to come over?”

  “No, if there’s any chance you won’t get this, we should keep the hope alive.”

  There’s no chance, and the hope is good and dead. I end up with the same sinus and ear infection I get every time I get a cold, and I take a day off from school before I stumble back and fake my way through the day, like I usually do. Sasha, on the other hand, gets a fever of a hundred and three and lungs so congested they almost stop working. Which, I learn, is what happens every time he gets a cold.

  I try to visit him, but he says he doesn’t feel up to company, which is a pretty irritating thing to say, because it sounds like he thinks I expect him to entertain me or something. I think he just doesn’t want me to see him like this, and that’s frustrating because I didn’t think we were like that. If I were in his shoes, I would want him there.

  He calls me every night, anyway, when the fever gets high. He wheezes his way through conversations that weave and tangle, and I sit in bed and twist my quilt in my hands. “He’s bad at fevers,” Nadia says on the phone to me one night. “He always has been.” She sounds tired and a little sad but not scared.

  The night the fever breaks, he just cries and sounds like he’s choking, but I can hear his dad in the background.

  “Everything’s okay,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice as normal as possible, trying to be calm for him. “Everything’s okay, you’re doing great.”

  …

  He gives me a plastic shopping bag the week after. He knocks on my front door and I think my dad’s home early and forgot his key, but it’s Sasha, with a bag and a big smile.

  “Hey,” I say. “I told you I have to study tonight, right?”

  He kisses me. “I know, but I was at the game store and this was on sale. Look look look.”

  I open the bag. It’s a copy of a game called Situation: Revenant that I’ve definitely seen on his desk, and, judging from the art on the back, seen him playing when I wake up from napping at his place. “Don’t you have this already?” I say.

  “Yeah, it’s for you!”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “I know,” he says. “You don’t love video games, but this is my favorite one, and I thought we could play it together and it would be really fun. And it was on sale, so if you don’t like it, no big deal.”

  “I don’t have, like, a thing to play it on. A video game thing.”

  “No, it’s just on your computer,” he says.

  “I’m using my computer to study.”

  “Well, you take breaks, right?” He bounces a little. God, he’s cute. “I can wait till you’re taking a break and we can play a little. I won’t rush you or anything.”

  I say “Okay,” because what else can I say? He’s so excited. We go up to my room, and he lies on my bed and plays on his phone while I work at my desk. He’s true to his word and doesn’t say anything to rush me, but I’m still so aware that he’s behind me, that he’s wondering how much longer it’s going to be, that he’s wondering if I really need to study this much, because he doesn’t study and he does just fine, and why do I need to take everything so seriously? Plus, he’s still coughing more than usual, which isn’t his fault, but it does mean that even though he’s behind me I can’t forget he’s there for a second.

  After half an hour and two-thirds of one of the five chapters I need to review, I say, “Okay, I can take a short break now.”

  He hops up and pulls up my clothes hamper for an extra chair and sits down next to me at the desk. “Okay, so there’s kind of a practice round first, after you get past the opening exposition part.”

  “Okay.”

  The exposition part takes fifteen minutes. I don’t say anything, but I can tell he’s feeling it, too. “Sorry,” he says eventually. “I didn’t remember it being this long.”

  “It’s fine,” I say.

  We finally get to the part where I start killing ghosts or zombies or…revenants, I guess, whatever these things are, and I’m terrible at it because I’m terrible at video games. The game keeps telling me what keys I need to hit in what order, but I can’t remember them fast enough and I keep hitting the wrong thing and doing some kind of fancy swing move that really doesn’t seem to intimidate the revenants.

  Sasha coaches me patiently, but I’m just getting more and more frustrated the more times I die on this stupid practice round. “Do you want me to just take care of this round for you?” Sasha says.

  “Yeah.” I shove the keyboard over to him.

  So he plays the round, and then he tells me the next round is kind of tricky, so maybe he should do that one, too, and I should just watch, and I say okay. Eventually he stops talking and I stop watching and take my textbook onto my bed and try making the study guide by hand instead.

  He turns the game off after a while. “Sorry,” he says.

  I shrug.

  “I just thought it would be fun to do together.”

  “I told you I needed to study,” I say.

  “I know, I just thought, since I read that book…”

  “You wanted to read that book,” I say. “You asked me to. And you like books. I told you I don’t like video games.”

  He runs his hand through his hair. “I’ll just go.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  He takes the game with him. A week later, I try playing a round of it at his house. I still hate it. We don’t try it again.

  …

  I give him my mother’s recipe for pumpkin pie three months after Thanksgiving. “Do you think we could make it?” I ask him. “I’d ruin it if I tried it on my own.”

  “Of course,” he says.

  There’s no canned pumpkin at his bodega, so we have to go to Whole Foods. I stand on the lip of the shopping cart, and he pushes me around until he gets tired. He’s wearing this red sweater that makes his skin look yellow and delicate and beautiful, and he chews on his thumbnail while he searches for the right brand of shortening. He pays for the ingredients and winds one arm around my waist while he swipes t
he card, this casual little gesture like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it, and in this moment I feel so sure about him. It’s the first time I’ve felt sure in a while. Maybe since New Year’s Day.

  But God, look at him. Look at the way he smiles at me. The way he checks the eggs before he pays for them, making sure each one is perfect, like it’s the most important thing in the world. The way he takes my arm if I’m going to step on a slippery part of the sidewalk. How we’re baking and he has this long stripe of flour down his cheek and I don’t think he has any idea.

  So what if he annoys me sometimes? So what if there’s that throbbing feeling in my stomach, but but but—aren’t I used to feeling disjointed at this point of my life?

  When was the last time I felt sure about anything besides him? Ever?

  There’s no one else at home, and his apartment feels big and warm, almost like a third person. He stands behind me to crack eggs into the bowl, with my arms reached around his back and his under my shoulders like they’re mine. “You’re amazing,” he says as he cracks the eggs with one hand. “Incredible chef.” We turn music on while it’s baking and dance a little in the messy kitchen.

  I’m so happy, and I’m honestly not thinking about my mom at all, until the pie is cooled and I put that first bite in my mouth and Sasha asks if we got it right, and all of a sudden I’m seven years old at Thanksgiving and I still believe in love and staying together forever and people who don’t end up hating each other, and then it’s over, and I’m sobbing in the middle of his kitchen.

  He asks me what’s wrong about twenty times, going from worried to frantic to resigned, before he gives up and just holds me silently. I pound my fists against his red sweater, very, very gently, and cling on.

  …

  He gets me a flower on the first day of March.

  “I think the snow’s finally starting to melt,” he says.

  I bury my nose in the flower.

  His eyes are hopeful. And sad. “I think it’s going to get easier now,” he says. “I really do.”

  Who do you trust?

  That’s kind of a dark question, isn’t it? I mean, who don’t I trust would be a lot easier to answer, because…I guess I trust everyone until they give me a reason not to. I mean…okay, maybe not. If I’m alone in a subway car at night and a man gets on with me, I don’t trust him. I take my earbuds out, I put my keys between my fingers…so I guess I trust women?

  —Maura Cho, 16, lacrosse player

  Nobody. Or at least, I don’t trust them as much as I trust myself. Why should I? Teachers tell us what they’re supposed to. Our parents tell us what their parents told them. Boyfriends tell you whatever they think will make you happy or will make some, like, image of a girl they have happy. Your friends tell you what they’d want to hear if they were you. You can’t trust anyone.

  —Ashley Baker, 17, single again

  So there’s this comics magazine called Heavy Metal run by a man named Kevin Eastman. It’s been in print for a while, since the late seventies, I think. I’d never read it before… I’m not really much of a comics person, which might be surprising. Sure, I like colorful ones with cute monsters and things like that, but this is described as a mix between erotica and dark fantasy, so…I don’t know. It takes all types to make a world, as my mother would say. Anyway, there’s a specific issue from 1990 that I read about, and then read. It’s about Donald Trump rising to power. Yeah, the very same. And what does he do? Builds a wall. And what happens? Rallies. With lots of…well. Arm-in-the-air salutes, let’s call it. And no, I don’t know what this has to do with dark fantasy, either, except in terms of being very depressing, and I certainly don’t get the erotica, but what I do know is that Kevin Eastman seems to be a soothsayer, so I guess now I have to go back and read every issue of Heavy Metal, so I suppose I trust him. Oh, whatever. I can’t keep this up. I’m tired. I trust my dad. I trust my sister. I don’t trust my brothers because they’re little shits who know nothing about the world, but that’s their job. I trust my doctors. I trust my moms. And I trust you, Ibby Garfinkel. To the end of the world, if Kevin Eastman tells us that’s coming. If it hasn’t already. I mean, Donald fucking Trump.

  —Sasha Sverdlov-Deckler, 16, insomniac

  Nobody, really, but not in that edgy look-at-me Ashley way. But…look at Sasha’s list, for example. Who on that list are you supposed to trust? Let’s go through it point by point. Your dad: yeah, he’ll definitely try to do his best, but he doesn’t know who you are or what you need. He’s doing what’s best for some hypothetical child that even he probably doesn’t believe he has at this point. Your sister: she’s in prison, and you haven’t talked to her in two and a half years. You don’t have any brothers. Your doctors told you nothing was wrong with you, and when you try to tell them you’re still not feeling well, they talk over you about reducing your meds because they’re very strong for such a young woman. You don’t even have one decent mother, let alone two. And…Ibby Garfinkel? You’re supposed to trust yourself? That’s maybe the most ridiculous one of all, isn’t it? Has he met you?

  —Claire Lennon, 17, dead

  You should come to schul more often.

  —Tamara Shapiro, 58, surgical nurse at Linefield and West Memorial Hospital

  Chapter Sixteen

  Once a month, our school cafeteria has breakfast for lunch. We all get unreasonably excited. You’d think it was our only chance to eat breakfast food. We load up our plates with pancakes and scrambled eggs and bacon—for them—and hash browns and French toast sticks.

  “My uncle sent me some article about how I have arthritis because I eat too many carbs,” I say as we’re sitting down.

  Luna squints at me. “What?”

  “Do you?” Maura says.

  “No, it’s just pseudoscience bullshit.”

  “Speaking of bullshit,” Ashley says, so I guess we’re done talking about that. “Lucas canceled on me for this weekend. I’m completely done with boys at this school.”

  “What a tool,” Maura says, her mouth full of bacon.

  “Let’s make the most of it,” Siobhan says. “Let’s do something.”

  “Do you guys want to go to Coney Island?” I say. “Sasha and I are gonna go, he’s never been before.”

  “He’s never been to Coney Island?” Ashley says.

  I say, “I know, finally a New York attraction I’ve been to that he hasn’t. I’m reveling. He said I should invite you guys.”

  “I’m in,” Siobhan says, and Luna is of course in because there’s a part of Coney Island called Luna Park and she never misses an excuse to remind us and to go there and take selfies with all the signs. Maura loves roller coasters, so she’s an obvious yes.

  We look at Ashley.

  “Yeah, I’m in,” she says. “Do you ever wonder, though, like… What about Sasha’s friends?”

  “What?” I say.

  “He’s always doing stuff with us,” Ashley says. “And don’t get me wrong, I like Sasha a lot. But do you ever hang out with his friends?”

  I shrug and cut into my waffle. “He always suggests doing stuff with you guys.”

  “And you’re not…concerned about that?” Ashley says.

  I say, “What would I be concerned about? Isn’t it a good thing that my boyfriend likes my friends?”

  “I think it’s a good thing,” Maura says.

  “Me, too,” Luna says, feeding Siobhan a minipancake.

  “You always had to force Justin to do stuff with our group instead of his,” I say. “Isn’t this an improvement?”

  I can tell by the way Ashley looks at me over her orange juice that I’ve crossed some kind of line. I thought the rule that we had to act like Ashley and Justin were God’s gift to high school couples had evaporated when they broke up, but apparently not. The power couple aura torch stays on even if the couple doesn’t, a
nd Ashley is not passing it.

  No one else says a word.

  “Justin wanted me to spend time with his friends,” Ashley says. “He wanted his friends to like me, too.”

  “Of course,” I say.

  “Doesn’t Sasha care if his friends like you?” she asks.

  I don’t say anything.

  Ashley shrugs. “I mean, I guess not, if you haven’t even met them.”

  Luna says, “It is… I mean, it is a little…concerning. That he hasn’t even introduced you.”

  “Concerning of what?” I say.

  “Like maybe he knows they’re not good guys,” Luna says. “You know what they always say about guys like, letting stuff go with their friends even if they know it’s bad, because they don’t want to call their friends out. Maybe he’s ashamed of them and doesn’t want you to see them.”

  “Or maybe,” Ashley says, “they don’t know you exist.”

  Siobhan says, “Why wouldn’t they know she exists?”

  “Maybe he has some other girlfriend at his school,” Ashley says. She sips her juice. “Or maybe his friends aren’t the one he’s ashamed of.”

  …

  Okay, so 90 percent of Ashley’s points are bullshit pettiness. It takes me a few hours to get over myself enough to recognize how painfully obvious that is, but I get there eventually. Sasha is not ashamed of me. He thinks I hang the damn moon, as my father would say. He does not have some second girlfriend, because he spends literally all of his free time with me, and this is not an eighties movie where I’m supposed to leave my cheating high school boyfriend for the mysterious boy who’s going to pull up on a motorcycle. No one even has motorcycles in New York City. And as for Luna’s points, I mean, I guess it’s possible, but it’s hard to imagine Sasha letting people get away with shit like that. He might drive me crazy not taking my studying seriously, but just because he doesn’t get angry doesn’t mean he doesn’t stay up until two a.m. arguing with people online about sexism; it just means he somehow schools men’s rights activists without getting emotionally involved.