Before I Die

by Jenny Downham

  Strangely, his knock at my door is early today. He hasn’t had his coffee or tidied up. What’s going on? I lie very still as he comes in, shuts the door quietly behind him and kicks his slippers off.

  ‘Shove up,’ he says. He lifts a corner of the duvet.

  ‘Dad! What’re you doing?’

  ‘Getting into bed with you.’

  ‘I don’t want you to!’

  He puts his arm around me and pins me there. His bones are hard. His socks rub against my bare feet.

  ‘Dad! Get out of my bed!’

  ‘No.’

  I push his arm off and sit up to look at him. He smells of stale smoke and beer and looks older than I remember. I can hear his heart too, which I don’t think is supposed to happen.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘You never talk to me, Tess.’

  ‘And you think this’ll help?’

  He shrugs. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Would you like it if I came into your bed when you were asleep?’

  ‘You used to when you were small. You said it was unfair that you had to sleep by yourself. Every night me and Mum let you in because you were lonely.’

  I’m sure this isn’t true because I don’t remember it. He may have gone mad.

  ‘Well, if you’re not getting out of my bed, then I will.’

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘I want you to.’

  ‘And you’re just going to stay there, are you?’

  He grins and snuggles down under the duvet. ‘It’s lovely and warm.’

  My legs feel weak. I didn’t eat much yesterday and it seems to have made me transparent. I clutch the bedpost, hobble over to the window and look out. It’s still early: the moon’s fading into a pale grey sky.

  Dad says, ‘You haven’t seen Zoey for a while.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What happened that night you went clubbing? Did you two fall out?’

  Down in the garden, Cal’s orange football looks like a deflated planet on the grass, and next door, that boy is out there again. I press my palms against the window. Every morning he’s outside doing something – raking or digging or fiddling about. Right now he’s hacking brambles from the fence and chucking them in a pile to make a bonfire.

  ‘Did you hear me, Tess?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m ignoring you.’

  ‘Perhaps you should think about going back to school. You’d see some of your other friends then.’

  I turn to look at him. ‘I don’t have any other friends – and before you suggest it, I don’t want to make any. I’m not interested in rubberneckers wanting to get to know me so they’ll get sympathy at my funeral.’

  He sighs, pulls the duvet close under his chin and shakes his head at me. ‘You shouldn’t talk that way. Cynicism is bad for you.’

  ‘Did you read that somewhere?’

  ‘Being positive strengthens the immune system.’

  ‘So it’s my fault I’m sick then, is it?’

  ‘You know I don’t think that.’

  ‘Well, you’re always acting as if everything I do is wrong.’

  He struggles to sit up. ‘I don’t!’

  ‘Yeah, you do. It’s like I’m not dying properly. You’re always coming in my room telling me to get out of bed or pull myself together. Now you’re telling me to go back to school. It’s ridiculous!’

  I stomp across the room, grab his slippers and shove my feet into them. They’re way too big, but I don’t care. Dad leans on his elbows to look at me. He looks as if I hit him.

  ‘Don’t go. Where are you going?’

  ‘Away from you.’

  I enjoy slamming the door. He can have my bed. Let him. He can lie there and rot.

  Eight

  The boy looks surprised when I stick my head over the fence and call him. He’s older than I thought, perhaps eighteen, with dark hair and the shadow of a beard.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Can I burn some things on your fire?’

  He shambles up the path towards me, wiping a hand across his forehead as if he’s hot. His fingernails are dirty and he has bits of leaf in his hair. He doesn’t smile.

  I lift up the two shoeboxes so he can see them. Zoey’s dress is draped across my shoulder like a flag.

  ‘What’s in them?’

  ‘Paper mostly. Can I bring them round?’

  He shrugs as if he doesn’t care either way, so I walk through our side gate and step over the low wall that separates the two houses, across his front garden and down the side of his house. He’s already there, holding the gate open for me. I hesitate.

  ‘I’m Tessa.’

  ‘Adam.’

  We walk in silence down his garden path. I bet he thinks I’ve just been chucked by my boyfriend, that these are love letters. I bet he thinks, No wonder she got dumped, with that skeleton face and bald head.

  The fire is disappointing when we get there, just a smouldering pile of leaves and twigs, with a few hopeful flames licking at the edges.

  ‘The leaves were damp,’ he says. ‘Paper’ll get it going again.’

  I open one of the boxes and tip it upside down.

  From the day I noticed the first bruise on my spine, to the day only two months ago when the hospital officially gave up on me, I kept a diary. Four years of pathetic optimism burns well – look at it flare! All the get-well cards I ever received curl at the edges, crisp right up and flake to nothing. Over four long years you forget people’s names.

  There was a nurse who used to draw cartoons of the doctors and put them by the bed to make me laugh. I can’t remember her name either. Was it Louise? She was quite prolific. The fire spits, embers spark away into the trees.

  ‘I’m unburdening myself,’ I tell Adam.

  But I don’t think he’s listening. He’s dragging a clump of bramble across the grass towards the fire.

  It’s the next box I hate the most. Me and Dad used to trawl through it together, scattering photos over the hospital bed.

  ‘You will get well again,’ he’d tell me as he ran a finger over my eleven-year-old image, self-conscious in my school uniform, first day of secondary school. ‘Here’s one of you in Spain,’ he’d say. ‘Do you remember?’

  I looked thin and brown and hopeful. I was in remission for the first time. A boy whistled at me on the beach. My dad took a picture, said I’d never want to forget my first whistle.

  But I do.

  I have a sudden desire to rush back home and get more stuff. My clothes, my books.

  I say, ‘Next time you have a fire, can I come round again?’

  Adam stands on one end of the bramble with his boot and folds the other end into the fire. He says, ‘Why do you want to get rid of everything?’

  I squash Zoey’s dress into a tight ball; it feels small in my fist. I throw it at the fire and it seems to catch light before it even reaches the flames. Airborne and still, melting into plastic.

  ‘Dangerous dress,’ Adam says, and he looks right at me, as if he knows something.

  All matter is comprised of particles. The more solid something is, the closer the particles are held together. People are solid, but inside is liquid. I think perhaps standing too close to a fire can alter the particles of your body, because I feel strangely dizzy and light. I’m not quite sure what’s wrong with me – maybe it’s not eating properly – but I seem to not be grounded inside my body. The garden turns suddenly bright.

  Like the sparks from the fire, which drift down onto my hair and clothes, the law of gravity says that all falling bodies must fall to the ground.

  It surprises me to find myself lying on the grass, to be looking up at Adam’s pale face haloed by clouds. I can’t work it out for a minute.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he says. ‘I think you fainted.’

  I try and speak but my tongue feels slow and it’s so much easier to lie here.

  ‘Are you diabetic? Do you need sugar? I’ve got a can of Coke here if you want some.’

  He sits down
next to me, waits for me to lean up, then hands me the drink. My head buzzes as the sugar hits my brain. How light I feel, more ghostly than before, but so much better. We both look at the fire. The stuff from my boxes has all burned away; even the boxes themselves are just charred remains. The dress has turned to air. The ashes are still hot though, bright enough to attract a moth, a stupid moth dancing towards them. It crackles as its wings fizz and turn to dust. We both watch the space where it was.

  I say, ‘You do a lot of gardening, don’t you?’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘I watch you. Through my window, when you’re digging and stuff.’

  He looks startled. ‘Do you? Why?’

  ‘I like watching you.’

  He frowns, as if he’s trying to work that out, seems about to speak for a moment, but looks away instead, his eyes travelling the garden.

  ‘I’m planning a vegetable patch in that corner,’ he says. ‘Peas, cabbage, lettuce, runner beans. Everything really. It’s for my mum more than me.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugs, looks up at the house as if mentioning her might bring her to the window. ‘She likes gardens.’

  ‘What about your dad?’

  ‘No. It’s just me and my mum.’

  I notice a thin trickle of blood on the back of his hand. He sees me looking and wipes it away on his jeans.

  ‘I should probably get on,’ he says. ‘Will you be all right? You can keep the Coke if you want.’

  He walks next to me as I make my way slowly up the path. I’m very happy that my photos and diary are burned, that Zoey’s dress has gone. It feels as if different things will happen.

  I turn to Adam at the gate.

  I say, ‘Thank you for helping.’

  He says, ‘Any time.’

  He has his hands in his pockets. He smiles, then looks away, down at his boots. But I know he sees me.

  Nine

  ‘I don’t know why they’ve sent you here,’ the receptionist says.

  ‘We were asked to come,’ Dad tells her. ‘Dr Ryan’s secretary phoned and asked us to come.’

  ‘Not here,’ she says. ‘Not today.’

  ‘Yes, here,’ he tells her. ‘Yes, today.’

  She huffs at him, turns to her computer and scrolls down. ‘Is it for a lumbar puncture?’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ Dad sounds increasingly pissed off. ‘Is Dr Ryan even running a clinic today?’

  I sit down in the waiting area and let them get on with it. The usual suspects are here – the hat gang in the corner plugged into their portable chemo and talking about diarrhoea and vomiting; a boy clutching his mum’s hand, his fragile new hair at the same stage as mine; and a girl with no eyebrows pretending to read a book. She’s pencilled fake eyebrows in above the line of her glasses. She sees me staring and smiles, but I’m not having any of that. It’s a rule of mine not to get involved with dying people. They’re bad news. I made friends with a girl here once. Her name was Angela and we e-mailed each other every day, then one day she stopped. Eventually her mum phoned my dad and told him Angela had died. Dead. Just like that, without even telling me. I decided not to bother with anyone else.

  I pick up a magazine, but don’t even have time to open it before Dad taps me on the shoulder. ‘Vindicated!’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We were right, she was wrong.’ He waves cheerily at the receptionist as he helps me stand up. ‘Stupid woman doesn’t know her arse from her elbow. Apparently we’re now allowed straight through to the great man’s office!’

  Dr Ryan has a splash of something red on his chin. I can’t help staring at it as we sit opposite him at his desk. I wonder – is it pasta sauce, or soup? Did he just finish an operation? Maybe it’s raw meat.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ he says, and he shuffles his hands on his lap.

  Dad edges his chair closer to me and presses his knee against mine. I swallow hard, fight the impulse to get up and walk out. If I don’t listen, then I won’t know what he’s going to say, and maybe then it won’t be true.

  But Dr Ryan doesn’t hesitate, and his voice is very firm. ‘Tessa,’ he says, ‘it’s not good news, I’m afraid. Your recent lumbar puncture shows us that your cancer has spread to your spinal fluid.’

  ‘Is that bad?’ I ask, making a little joke.

  He doesn’t laugh. ‘It’s very bad, Tessa. It means you’ve relapsed in your central nervous system. I know this is very difficult to hear, but things are progressing more quickly than we first thought.’

  I look at him. ‘Things?’

  He shifts on his chair. ‘You’ve moved further along the line, Tessa.’

  There’s a big window behind his desk, and out of it I can see the tops of two trees. I can see their branches, their drying leaves, and a bit of sky.

  ‘How much further along the line have I moved?’

  ‘I can only ask you how you’re feeling, Tessa. Are you more tired, or nauseous? Do you have any leg pain?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘I can’t judge it, but I’d encourage you to do the things you want to do.’

  He has some slides with him to prove the point, passes them round like holiday snaps, pointing out little splashes of darkness, lesions, sticky blasts floating loose. It’s as if a child with a brush and too much enthusiasm has been set free with a tin of black paint inside me.

  Dad’s trying unsuccessfully not to cry. ‘What happens now?’ he asks, and big silent tears fall out of his eyes and plonk onto his lap. The doctor hands him a tissue.

  Outside the window, the first rain of the day spatters against the glass. A leaf caught by a gust of wind rips, then flares red and gold as it falls.

  The doctor says, ‘Tessa may respond to intensive intrathecal medication. I would suggest methotrexate and hydrocortisone for four weeks. If it’s successful, her symptoms should improve and we can continue with a maintenance programme.’

  The doctor keeps talking and Dad keeps listening, but I stop hearing any of it.

  It’s really going to happen. They said it would, but this is quicker than anyone thought. I really won’t ever go back to school. Not ever. I’ll never be famous or leave anything worthwhile behind. I’ll never go to college or have a job. I won’t see my brother grow up. I won’t travel, never earn money, never drive, never fall in love or leave home or get my own house.

  It’s really, really true.

  A thought stabs up, growing from my toes and ripping through me, until it stifles everything else and becomes the only thing I’m thinking. It fills me up, like a silent scream. I’ve been ill for so long, puffed up and sick, with patchy skin, flaky fingernails, disappearing hair and a feeling of nausea that permeates to my bones. It’s not fair. I don’t want to die like this, not before I’ve even lived properly. It seems so clear to me. I feel almost hopeful, which is mad. I want to live before I die. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

  That’s when the room comes sharply back into focus.

  The doctor’s going on about drug trials now, how they probably won’t help me, but might help others. Dad’s still quietly crying, and I stare out the window and wonder why the light seems to be fading so quickly. How late is it? How long have we been sitting here? I look at my watch – three thirty and the day is almost ending. It’s October. All those kids recently returned to classrooms with new bags and pencil cases will be looking forward to half term already. How quickly it goes. Halloween soon, then firework night. Christmas. Spring. Easter. Then there’s my birthday in May. I’ll be seventeen.

  How long can I stave it off? I don’t know. All I know is that I have two choices – stay wrapped in blankets and get on with dying, or get the list back together and get on with living.

  Ten

  Dad says, ‘Hey, you’re up!’ Then he notices the mini-dress I’m wearing and his lips tighten. ‘Let me guess. You’re seeing Zoey?’

  ‘Anything wrong with that?’

  He pushes my vitamins to me across th
e kitchen table. ‘Don’t forget these.’ Usually he brings them up on a tray, but he won’t have to bother today. You’d think that’d make him happy, but he just sits there watching me swallow pill after pill.

  Vitamin E helps the body recover from post-irradiation anaemia. Vitamin A counters the effects radiation has on the intestine. Slippery elm replaces the mucous material lining all the hollow tubes in my body. Silica strengthens the bones. Potassium, iron and copper build up the immune system. Aloe vera is for general healing. And garlic – well, Dad read somewhere that the properties of garlic are not yet properly understood. He calls it vitamin X. All washed down with unprocessed orange juice and a teaspoon of unrefined honey. Yum, yum.

  I slide the tray back in Dad’s direction with a smile. He stands up, takes it to the sink and clunks it down. ‘I thought,’ he says, turning on the tap and swirling water round the bowl, ‘that you were feeling some nausea and pain yesterday.’

  ‘I’m fine. Nothing hurts today.’

  ‘Don’t you think it might be wise to rest?’

  Which is dangerous territory, so I change the subject rapidly and turn my attention to Cal, who is mashing his cornflakes into a soggy pile. He looks just as glum as Dad.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I say.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It’s Saturday! Aren’t you supposed to be glad about that?’

  He looks fiercely at me. ‘You don’t remember, do you?’

  ‘Remember what?’

  ‘You said you’d take me shopping in half term. You said you’d bring your credit card.’ He closes his eyes very tightly. ‘I knew you bloody wouldn’t!’

  ‘Calm down!’ Dad says in that warning voice he uses when Cal begins to lose it.

  ‘I did say that, Cal, but I can’t today.’

  He looks at me furiously. ‘I want you to!’

  So then I have to, because it’s in the rules. Number two on my list is simple. I must say yes to everything for one whole day. Whatever it is and whoever asks it of me.

  I look down at Cal’s hopeful face as we step out through the gate and suddenly feel a lurch of fear.

  ‘I’m going to text Zoey,’ I tell him. ‘Tell her we’re on our way.’