Echo's Sister

by Paul Mosier

  “This student describes a scene where, for several pages, an adolescent girl lies motionless in bed, in a room lit by daylight. On and on it goes with no movement or action from the girl. Just the clock ticking, the sounds of cars and trucks going by outside, and a pigeon on the windowsill cooing and sharpening his claws on the ledge. As a reader I started to wonder whether the girl was dead or alive. But just when I began to wonder that, the narrator makes mention of the girl’s body temperature and pulse.”

  Mr. D laughs, and the pages shake in his hand. I switch hands in my nail-biting.

  “Then, finally, the girl’s phone buzzes. She rolls over, reaches for it, and ignores a text message from someone described as her last remaining friend. Then after a minute she gets up and goes to the bathroom. The narrator describes the pigeon looking through the window into the empty bedroom, tilting his head with curiosity.” Laughter from the class. “Then the girl shuffles back into the room and to the bed with an empty expression. She lies down and presumably goes back to sleep, or at least lies there motionless. After another two pages of inaction the scene ends abruptly and without resolution.”

  My jaw is clenched. I’m legitimately horrified.

  But Mr. D looks down at me, his eyes shining.

  “Well done, Miss El.” He drops the stapled pages on my desk. “Well done.”

  My face burns as I stare down at the 105 percent written in red ink.

  “How is that an expression of strong emotion?” It’s Sydney. She looks furious, like it’s a tremendous injustice that I’ve been given a high mark.

  Mr. D raises an eyebrow and looks to me. “El, would you like to respond to Sydney’s question?” I wouldn’t like to respond to Sydney’s question, and I don’t respond to it immediately, so he adds, “What emotion do you think is on display in your piece?”

  I don’t look up. “Grief.” I say it flatly. But I immediately regret saying it flatly and not looking up, because now I look like I’m the one suffering from grief. And I am the one suffering from grief.

  So now I’m the grief-stricken girl. That’s probably how all the kids will look at me. And that isn’t the look I’m going for.

  This is now officially the worst year ever. Of school, of my life. I wish I could go to sleep and wake up when it’s over.

  When the bell rings at the end of class my backpack is already zipped. I’m ready to turn away from it. But I hear Mr. D’s voice over my shoulder.

  “El, can I have a word with you?”

  I pretend not to hear. I know he’s going to ask me if everything’s okay.

  “El?”

  I disappear into the throng of students heading to the door. I glance in his direction as I leave the classroom. Sydney is standing directly in front of him, talking to him, keeping him away from me. He looks over her and meets my eyes just before I disappear.

  7

  UNFORTUNATELY I DON’T get to sleep through the school year, or my life. Instead it drags on, friendless and dreadful. I try to pour myself into the homework, because it’s the only part of my life where I have any control over the outcome.

  It’s now Wednesday, the twenty-second day since Echo went into the hospital. She’s been home for exactly two weeks. And by home I mean home. She can’t go to school because all the snotty, germy first-grade kids are a threat to her weakened immune system. Instead her teacher comes two or three evenings each week for a couple of hours to keep her caught up. The only places Echo goes are chemo appointments and the emergency room, where she’s gone twice when her temperature was too high. That’s the protocol.

  I’m at school, sitting alone in the cafeteria, eating a sandwich that I cannot taste. I don’t mind eating alone because it’s easier than pretending I’m happy.

  Next item, carrot sticks. My parents are even more crazy about nutrition since Echo got cancer, even though eating healthy didn’t do Echo a bit of good. We’ve always eaten healthy but she got cancer anyway.

  The bright gray light from the windows gets less bright, and I look up. Octavius is standing across the table from me, blocking the windows.

  “Hey,” he says.

  I would say hey back, with even less enthusiasm than he did, but my mouth is full of assorted lunch items that I’m trying to get down. So I give a little wave that looks like the windshield wipers of a car going across the window just once.

  He holds a tray of cafeteria food. He evidently eats whatever it is they’re serving. “So, I have a confession.”

  I watch him and wait but he’s apparently going to make me ask him. “What?” My question is half muffled by bread.

  “You know how the first week of school I said I wanted to get a bracelet—one like you were wearing—for my girlfriend?”

  I remember, but I shrug like I don’t.

  “Well,” he says, “I don’t actually have a girlfriend.”

  I swallow my bite. “Obviously.”

  He looks maybe a little bit hurt.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I just meant that I never saw you with one.”

  He nods. “Well, I’m glad that I have that cleared up. Enjoy your lunch.”

  He begins to turn away.

  “Wait—”

  He stops and looks back to me.

  I clear my throat. “I have a series of confessions to make.”

  He stands and waits. The smell of cafeteria food washes over me and makes me feel slightly ill.

  “One—you told me to enjoy my lunch, but I do not enjoy my lunch.”

  “The cafeteria food isn’t bad. You should try it.”

  “It’s not the food that keeps me from enjoying it.” I clear my throat again. “Two—my grandmother is not the person who was being treated at Midtown Children’s Hospital.”

  “That’s not much of a confession. Obviously they don’t treat grandmothers at Midtown Children’s Hospital. Unless it’s the nine-year-old grandmother I read about in the Global Inquisitor.”

  I almost smile. If I ever open up to anyone, it may as well be this boy, who’s almost funny. Maybe under different circumstances he’d be full-on funny. So I take a deep breath. “Three—my little sister, Echo, has cancer.”

  His expression changes, but just a little, like the clouds the sun is hiding behind got thicker and darker. This is the moment he decides he doesn’t want to be around the sad-case girl, the depressed girl, and turns and walks away so he can sit with happy kids.

  But he doesn’t turn away. “I knew it was cancer,” he says. “Your bracelet is a seventh-floor bracelet. That’s where the kids with compromised immune systems are.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which is almost always from chemotherapy.”

  “I know,” I say.

  He’s still standing there with his tray in his hands. The gravy on his chicken-fried steak is coagulating, wrinkling. “You need to stay positive. You need to be optimistic and surround yourself with people who are gonna make you believe that everything will turn out okay.”

  I can tell he’s going to say something more, so I wait.

  “You should stay away from me,” he says, and turns away again.

  “Wait!” I say it so loud this time, everyone in the cafeteria looks at me. Octavius comes back. “Just please sit with me,” I say. “Okay? You can’t make my reality worse than it already is just by sitting with me, because I already know the worst thing that can happen.” I feel like the whole cafeteria is listening to me, but I say it anyway. “I just want you to sit with me.”

  He lowers his tray and sits down across from me. I feel like maybe he’d smile if not for the miserable expression on my face. I wish I could tell him it’s okay if he wants to smile.

  “Thank you,” I say. Then my face comes apart as I eat the rest of my lunch, tears pouring into the corners of my mouth and sheeting off my cheeks, but I don’t look down. I don’t hide my face, my tears. I keep eating, because eating right is one of the tenets of the stupid slogan my dad made up. And because I’m used to crying by now, and
because Dad forgot to put a napkin in my lunch, so there’s nothing I can use to wipe the tears away. Last, I don’t hide my tears because I’ve just chosen this strangely charming boy as my confidante. And tears are nothing between confidantes.

  We don’t talk at all. He eats his disgusting cafeteria food and I eat my flavorless lunch. But it feels good to not be alone.

  Miss Numero Uno watches the class filing into seventh-hour art from a stool by the clay. She’s wearing high heels and skinny black jeans beneath a black sweater that’s partially covered by a paint-splattered apron. She’s drawn her eyebrows with what looks like an even thicker stick of charcoal, giving her a look of surprise.

  I take my seat on the stool at my usual table and look toward the window.

  “Today,” she says, and begins walking across my view of the outside world. Her heels click on the wooden plank floors. “Today you will show me sadness.”

  I’ve figured out that she has this way of trying to sound like she’s French or something by speaking English in sentences that sound incomplete. But her profile on the school website says she’s from Toledo, Ohio.

  Now she’s parading before the windows so we can see her skinny figure.

  “Today you will show me pain. You will show me fear.” She turns quickly to face the class. “But not some dime-store representation of pain! Not some greeting-card image of sadness! Not some matinee horror-movie fear!”

  She turns away and gazes out the windows. She speaks again with her back to the class. “You will show me something real. Something terrible. Something you fear will destroy you.”

  Around me my classmates are rolling their eyes and exchanging glances demonstrating how ridiculous they think the assignment—and the teacher—are. But I’m looking past Miss Numero Uno, through the windows.

  “You will do this on newsprint with the oil pastel. You will begin this as I stare out the windows and consider my own demons.”

  The room falls silent in the absence of her instructions.

  Then it’s filled with the sounds of pastel on paper as everyone gets to work.

  Everyone except me. I sit and stare at the big sheet of newsprint and the little tray of broken oil pastels.

  I’m thinking of how the year isn’t going how it was supposed to go. I’m thinking of making a list in my tiny journal of things I can’t control, but I’m thinking I don’t want to think of them at all.

  Then I remember I threw my tiny journal into the garbage at the hospital. It failed me. It will never work again.

  I’m still staring at the newsprint when Miss Numero Uno finally turns from the windows ten minutes later. I pick up a black pastel and begin working quickly as she slowly moves among the tables.

  “Frankenstein? Are you serious?”

  Her heels click rapidly on the floor, then stop. “What is this? Adolescent heartbreak? If I wished to vomit I would ride the Ferris wheel!”

  Miss Numero Uno works up a sweat storming around the room, shaking her head and delivering scathing critiques.

  Finally she stands beside my table. I glance up to her face. She looks surprised, but then I realize it’s only her drawn-on eyebrows.

  “I am surprised,” she says. I guess she really was surprised. “I did not think you had it in you.”

  I look down at my drawing. It’s a hastily rendered sketch of a bald little girl with an intravenous fluids bag, labeled with a skull and crossbones, dripping into a hole in her chest. The drawing looks angry, as if I did it to demonstrate how mad I am at the universe. Suddenly I realize I’m breathing hard, like I was fighting a beast instead of drawing a picture. It feels good to have fought the beast. This is what it’s all about.

  Miss Numero Uno bends lower.

  “I know about your sister,” she whispers. She sounds almost sad. “I follow your father on the Facebook.”

  She draws away and walks toward the windows again, where all her serious musings occur.

  “Today, only one of my students was able to express the darkness that threatens to consume her!” She points to me with a dramatic arm, from her shoulder to her fingertip, so that everyone will know I’m the girl about to be consumed by darkness.

  Great.

  “Honor and distinction to the work of El!” she says dramatically.

  As if on cue, the light on the ceiling above me flickers and goes out.

  Later we’re having dinner, the four of us. All for one, all four one. We’re having brussels sprouts and pomegranate seeds, and tofu laced with turmeric spice. It’s typical of the disgusting meals we’ve been having where everything either supposedly fights cancer or builds Echo’s blood cells, which the chemo is destroying.

  Echo actually likes brussels sprouts, but they make me gag. I remind myself not to complain. All for one, all four one. Even though Echo is the only person getting chemo and she actually likes brussels sprouts, so it would make perfect sense if she got to eat all of them and I was spared the nausea. Dad can’t get enough of the tofu, but I think it’s pretty much been ruined by the turmeric. In a perfect system I’d get the pomegranate seeds, Echo would get the brussels sprouts, Dad the tofu ruined with turmeric, and Mom could just eat the leftovers or something.

  I’m trying to choke down one of the aforementioned brussels sprouts when Echo, out of nowhere, pulls a tuft of hair from her head. She has bald spots everywhere, shining in the lamplight.

  “Look!” she says.

  I turn away. “Mom! Could you make her stop?”

  “It’s like cotton candy,” Echo says. I can tell she’s pulling more from her head, but I’m not gonna watch.

  “Echo, please don’t do that at the table,” Mom says, sounding a little choked up. “We don’t want to accidentally get hair in our food.”

  “She should wear a hairnet or something, like the cafeteria ladies.” As soon as I say it I feel terrible.

  Dad clears his throat. He doesn’t say anything.

  But Mom does. “Echo, maybe after dinner we could shave your head like we were talking about.”

  I give Mom a horrified look.

  “The pixie haircut was a good look for you,” Mom says. It’s been eight days since Mom’s stylist cut it short. It looked cute at first, but now it just looks sad. “A nice transition,” Mom continues. “But I think the pixie is ready to say good-bye.”

  Echo puts her face in her palms. “Ugh! I don’t wanna be bald.”

  Dad wipes his mouth with a napkin. “Think of it as your hair going on holiday. A few months of rest.”

  “A sabbatical,” Mom offers.

  “A hiatus,” says Dad.

  I glare at them. “She doesn’t know what any of that means!”

  “Yes I do, El!”

  “Unlike my hair,” Dad says, putting his hand to his thinning scalp, “when your hair goes, it has a round-trip ticket. It’ll be back after you’re done with chemotherapy.”

  Echo scowls. “Okay.”

  “What? Just like that?” I hear myself say it, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why it matters to me so much.

  “Shave it!” Echo shouts, wearing her crazy face. “Shave it off! It looks terrible!”

  I look to Mom. “Why don’t we just let it fall out on its own? Maybe if she doesn’t pull it then it won’t come out so fast.”

  “Echo is being very brave,” Mom says. “Let’s support her decision to go forward with shaving her head.”

  Maybe I think she ought to put up more of a fight about losing her hair. I guess it’s a fight she can’t win, but at least she could act more upset.

  After dinner, after homework and stories, Echo goes into the bathroom with Mom. I need to pee but I have to wait for Echo to do her mouth care. I stand in the hallway waiting my turn, and then I hear the click of a switch and the hum of the hair trimmers.

  I turn away and go into our bedroom. I don’t get up on my bunk, but stand there waiting, listening. I hear the buzzing, and the sounds of their voices, Mom and Echo, bouncing off all the cerami
cs of the tile and the tub and the sink and the toilet bowl. It’s another opportunity for them to bond and get closer while I’m left on the outside.

  I bite my nails. Then I turn to the mirror hung over the desk Echo and I share, see myself looking horrified, and look away. The voices in the bathroom don’t sound sad, but my whole body is tense. I peek out the door through the hall and into the living room, where Dad is pretending to be interested in a book.

  Finally the buzzing stops. I hear the sink faucet, and the toilet flushing. Echo laughs. “I wanna show El!”

  I back into the bedroom to get away.

  The bathroom door opens.

  “Ta-da!” she shouts. I hear her little feet pound the floorboards as she runs into the living room.

  “Cute!” Dad says.

  “Feel my head! It’s smooth!”

  There’s a brief pause.

  “Ooh,” Dad coos. “That is so smooth. You wear it well.”

  “Where’s El?” Echo’s footsteps turn my way.

  I take another step back.

  “El!” she shrieks, entering the bedroom, standing before me. “I’m bald!”

  Her expressive face looks even more expressive without hair. Her crazy face is crazier, her funny face is funnier. And her pretty face makes her look like a little glamour model.

  “Feel it!” she shouts. “It’s smooth!”

  She pushes her head against me. Looking down at the pale skin, there are dark bits of stubble and areas that are completely bare. I touch it, and it’s waxy like an apple from the grocery.

  “I’m bald!” she repeats.

  “I see,” I say.

  “Is it cute?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t wanna be bald!” She says it with her trademark exasperated voice.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “It’ll grow back.”

  “I know it’ll grow back. I want a drink of water!” She runs from the room and I hear her footsteps beat a path to the kitchen, and the refrigerator opening.

  Mom stands in the doorway of our bedroom. Her eyes are teary, but she’s smiling. She gives me a thumbs-up.

  “That’s it?” I ask.

  “She took it well.”