by Karen Rivers
“Mom,” I say, and she looks up and smiles.
“Good sleep?” she says, dropping her phone into her purse.
I shrug. I feel annoyed with her but I’m not sure why. For not just staring at me while I was sleeping? For not making sure I was still here?
“Not exactly,” I say. I want to tell her about the dreams and about how they all snap together like pieces of LEGO to make a bigger thing, but I don’t know what it is yet, or I won’t know until the last piece is done. I don’t know how to tell her that it feels more real than this. I touch my lips. Dumb. Stupid. No one kissed them. No one will ever kiss me. What if I die before I kiss a boy? I’m not even the kind of girl who thinks about stuff like that! Why am I thinking that now? It doesn’t make any sense! The Brussels sprout is confusing my ideas about love, that’s just a fact.
I guess I love you.
Nirgal loves me, in a Brussels sprout way. Without me, it’s nothing, right? Without me, Nirgal doesn’t exist. Or maybe I’m Nirgal. I rub my temples. I’m so confused. Stop thinking, I command myself. Thinking hurts.
Somewhere in the corner of the room, a big screen is showing the weather. A dark cloud is superimposed over all of Lake Ochoa on the map. “A hundred percent chance of significant rain,” the man is saying. Someone starts to clap and then someone else, and then, before you know it, there we are in the chemo room, all of us clapping, even the Minecraft kid, who has put down his controller just for a second.
But I can’t help thinking that if rain is the miracle, then maybe the only available miracle has been wasted, and it’s not going to be spent on my Brussels sprout! Not that miracles work like that, but I don’t really know how they do work. Or if I believe in them. And what if there are only so many to go around?
Mom gets up and rushes to the window and pulls back the drapes. “Look!” she says. “Look!” And just as she says it, the skies open up and rain starts to pour down, making the window a piece of art, rivulets of water everywhere; it makes it look like the glass is melting. The sound is deafening on the roof. I’d forgotten how loud rain could be, or maybe it’s because we’re all just quiet, staring at it, like it’s everything we’ve been waiting for, this whole time.
Chapter 15
After radiation, I get to go home. Radiation was easy, compared to chemo. I just lay there, very still. There was a humming sound, but it felt like nothing. I felt like nothing. I think I fell asleep. It hurt when they tattooed the targets onto my head, though, shaving tiny little spots on my scalp. I looked at my long red hair falling to the ground and I felt panicky, like I wanted to grab it and glue it back on. But once they were done, you couldn’t even see the places unless you looked for them. They were hidden by all my other hair. I guess it’s a good thing I have so much of it, after all.
“Are you sure?” I keep asking Mom. “Are you sure I can go home?” I feel like my Mars birthday wish came true! But it also feels wrong to leave the hospital with a Brussels sprout still in my brain. Shouldn’t I stay until it’s gone? I thought you got sent home from hospitals when you were better, not when you were really still the same, but itchier and queasier.
“I’m sure,” she says. “You’ll be fine at home. We come back for long chemo treatments once a week, and after school every day for radiation. If you want to go back to school, that is. Either way, radiation is every day.”
“I don’t want to go to school!” I say, quickly. “I can’t.”
“We can talk about it at home,” she says, but I know she means I don’t have to go. She’d probably let me do anything I want right now. I could say, “I want to go to Hawaii!” and she’d take me. But I don’t want to go to Hawaii. I feel too much like throwing up.
I roll up the big purple card and put my laptop into my backpack. I stuff the Ebola into the front pocket and the new copy of The Martian in with my computer. Mom already packed up my clothes and she’s brought me clean jeans and a white T-shirt and my orange coat. I wait for her to pull the curtain, and then I quickly change out of the gown. There’s a bandage on the back of my hand where they pulled the IV out. I can’t explain why, but it feels safer to stay in this ugly, smelly room.
I never used to be scared of stuff. I wasn’t even scared to go to Mars! But my hands are shaking now. I stuff them into my jeans pockets to hold them still. I’m brave! I’m the bravest! This is silly. I hold my head very still, trying to not roll the Brussels sprout around too much, like maybe all this movement is making the sprout nudge the “scared” center of my brain. Maybe it’s woken up all my fear at once. “I can’t be scared,” I say out loud. “I’m going to Mars.”
Mom takes my backpack and holds the door open for me. The corridor is empty and quiet, for a change. I stop at the nurses’ desk. “Good-bye,” I tell them. “Thank you.” I don’t actually recognize any of them. Maybe these are the wrong nurses. Maybe my nurses are all on their days off, at home, watching the rain fall on their dead grass.
They are nurses, though, so they are very kind even if they have no idea who I am. “Bye, sweetheart,” they say. Maybe if I don’t get to go to Mars, I’ll be a nurse instead. I’ll “sweetheart” everyone and “honey” them until they forget that they’re sick. My words will hold them up like a hug from someone who loves you.
I guess I love you, I want to say to them, but I don’t.
We’re just getting into the elevator when a woman comes rushing up, red hair flying, a stethoscope around her neck. “Hang on!” she says. “Are you Mischa?”
“Yes,” I say. For one fleeting second, I feel like she’s going to say, “I’m your real mother!” I guess because she has red hair. Not very many people around here do, except for me. Instead, she goes, “I’m Gav’s mother! We met, but you were asleep, I think.”
I nod because I’m not sure what to say.
“He was going to come and see you again tomorrow,” she says. “But you’re leaving.”
I nod again.
Mom must sense the awkwardness, because she jumps in. “He can come by the house!” she trills, like naturally I must be thrilled to my spine about the idea of Fish-boy coming to my house.
I try very hard to signal her with my eyes. Two blinks means no, obviously, right? Tick, tick. But she doesn’t seem to get it.
“We’d love to see him! You moved into the Munros’ old place, right? By Haven Lane?”
“Yes!” the woman says. “Oh, how rude, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Anastasia Klein.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Klein,” Mom says, forgetting to introduce herself back. “But we’ve got to get this one home to rest! Tell Gavriel we’ll see him tomorrow.”
I open my mouth to protest, but nothing comes out. It just opens and closes, like the goldfish that I am. “Glub, glub,” I say, but no one is listening.
In the car, I try to explain. “Mom, I hate Gavriel.”
“You do?” She turns the radio off. “Why?”
“Mom, you don’t understand anything.” I don’t want to tell her about the way he said, “Fish.” I don’t want to tell her how he said, “She’s wet her pants!” I can’t. It’s too humiliating. I reach over and turn the radio back on and then turn it up, loud. It hurts my head, but not as much as thinking about Gavriel coming to my house. Even if he’s a bit funny, I can’t forgive him for “Fish.” I can’t forgive him for “She’s wet her pants!” It’s unforgiveable. It’s two unforgiveable things that, together, equal “unforgiveable forever.”
“I just thought”—she turns the radio off again—“that it would be good for you to have another friend now that Tig is—”
I gasp, outraged. “You thought that because he’s a boy, he can just be Tig 2.0? You’re gross, Mom. I wasn’t friends with Tig BECAUSE he was a boy, I was just friends with him because we were friends! That’s all! Besides, we’re friends again now. He wrote to me. So there. So I don’t need a new friend. I don’t need some weird, mean boy coming over to stare at me while I’m throwing up into a bag.”
“But you don’t have any friends who are girls,” she forges on, grimly. “A new friend right now would probably be a good thing! I’m glad to hear that Tig wrote to you! What did he say? But still, more friends is never a bad thing. You and Gavriel can be friends as well as your being friends with Tig.”
“WE ARE NOT FRIENDS, PERIOD. And it’s none of your business what Tig said. It’s between me and Tig. So stop.” I turn the radio back on, but this time I keep my hand over the knob so she can’t turn it off again. The sun is blindingly bright and the sky is endless blue and the music gets into my headache and wraps around it like vines and squeezes. The one rain shower we had didn’t do any good at all. Everything out there is just as dry as before, nothing has changed. Except me.
I close my eyes. My stomach is churning, bubbling, rising.
“Mom,” I go. “Mom!” But I guess she doesn’t hear me over the sound of the loud music. I throw up all over my jeans and my white T-shirt, but luckily not on my NASA jacket. It’s way too hot for that here on Earth. It’s way too hot for everything.
Mom pulls over, fast, cutting someone off. There’s a squeal of brakes and honking. I open the door and practically fall out, throwing up and throwing up and throwing up and throwing up. My barf runs into the dry, cracked earth like it’s the only thing that can save it, filling up all the crevices with everything that was ever inside me. Maybe I imagined the rain. Maybe it didn’t even happen.
“You’re welcome,” I tell the ground, when I’m done. Mom is rubbing my back. “Don’t touch me,” I say. “Please don’t.”
So she stops. Which makes me feel mad. Don’t stop when I say stop! I want to tell her, but how can I make that make sense?
We get into the car. We drive the rest of the way home with all the windows open, the smell of puke and death everywhere, and my mouth bitter with the taste of everything I’ve lost. Mom doesn’t turn the radio back on. She doesn’t sing. We just stare straight ahead. We both probably want to say all the right things, but we don’t know how, or what the right thing even is.
Chapter 16
Gavriel shows up ten whole days later. What a great “friend.” (Those are ironic air quotes, in case you didn’t guess that.) Ten days that I’d spent throwing up, getting radiated, sleeping dreamless days away. Ten days that I spent writing emails to Tig and not sending them. Ten days of hitting Send/Receive on my email only to get nothing back except junk mail and jokes from Iris that carefully avoid any mention of the C-word. Ten days of Elliott not asking me how I am. Ten whole days of crying and crying and crying. I’ve cried enough to refill the whole lake with my tears, for goodness’ sake. But the lake level is still super low and the weather is still too hot and Dad is still telling Dad-jokes and drinking water and ten days doesn’t change anything but it also changes everything. It’s pretty much erased how funny Gavriel was in the hospital. But it hasn’t erased “Fish.” It hasn’t erased “She’s wet her pants!”
Now he is standing in my bedroom doorway, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. I swallow acid and madness.
I have my sketch pad open on my lap, so I start to sketch him, just because. I draw arrows. “Ugly hair” I write, with an arrow. “Blank expression.” I use my best scientist/explorer handwriting. Perfect capital letters that look practically like a computer did them. I draw an arrow to his armpits. “Boy-smell,” I write, even though it isn’t true. I can’t smell him from here. He probably smells fine. It’s a metaphor, that’s all.
“Mom said I had to come,” he offers.
I’m on my bed, fully dressed. The curtains on my Mars pictures are moving a little in the hot breeze that’s blowing through the open (real) window. It makes it look even more real. I look at him looking at the wall of “windows.” I try to see if he thinks it’s dumb or not.
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
I’d feel bad for him if I wasn’t so mad. I shrug. I’m not sure what he’s sorry for. For not coming sooner? For looking at my wall? “You came,” I say. “Now you can go, I guess.”
He steps closer. Now I can smell him. He smells like water. That’s weird, but it’s true, so there you have it.
“I can’t,” he says quickly. “Mom said I have to stay for, like, at least an hour.”
“Are you on house arrest?” I go. “Is this your civic duty? Penance? What is with your mom and ‘an hour’?”
“I don’t know,” he says. He frowns. “She does sort of do that a lot. An hour of homework. An hour of reading before bed. I guess she likes hours for some reason.”
“What did you do?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“To be punished for an hour.”
He shrugs. “Nothing,” he says. Then he almost smiles. “Well, maybe some stuff.”
“Fine, don’t tell me, then.”
“OK, I won’t.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I like your room,” he says. “Mars, huh.”
“Yep,” I say. “Mars.”
“I’m pretty into that stuff, too,” he says. “I’ve been Googling since I read that book in your hospital room. Mars Now is a private project that’s going to go before NASA even. Have you heard of it?”
I give him the stink-eye. “Yeah,” I go. “I have.”
“Mars looks cool,” he says. “The way they talk about it being a new society and stuff. Terraforming. I think I’d be scared to go, though. You can’t come back very easily. You can’t change your mind. Anyway, I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up.”
“You probably would be scared,” I say. “But they need doctors on Mars, too.” I squint at him, remembering my dream. I don’t think it was a dream. I should stop being mad at him, because I think he’s going to be one of my best friends. I know that he’s going to go to Mars. I can’t tell him that, though! He’d think I was nutty.
He clears his throat. “Can I sit down or something? I feel, um, weird just standing here.”
I give him the stink-eye until I’m sure he’s noticed that I’m doing it. Being so mad is exhausting, it’s like always being clenched like a fist, but inside. I sigh. “Fine.”
Iris is coming home tonight. I wanted to be getting ready for Iris, but I didn’t know what to do to get ready except stop throwing up. When Gavriel showed up, I was sipping tiny amounts of ice water. If I gulped, I barfed. It had to be such a small amount that it barely wet my mouth. My room probably stinks like throw-up, I realize. I look at him to see if he’s making a face. I would. What is he doing here? Who is he to me? I don’t have friends. He isn’t my friend. I have Tig! I guess I love you.
“So,” he says. “You’re not missing anything at school.”
“I know,” I say. “I don’t care, anyway. I don’t have to go. My mom said. Having cancer trumps school, it turns out. So I win. Ha-ha.” It’s a fake laugh. I actually say the ha and the ha. Obviously, cancer is not funny.
“Oh,” he says. “I guess you do? In a weird kind of way. Anyway, Kaitlyn and Bea got into this huge fight, like with fists and stuff. Now the whole class is either Team Kaitlyn or Team Bea.”
“Wow,” I say.
“Want to know what it was about?”
“Nope.”
“I’m Team Bea,” he says. “I don’t really know either of them, but she was kind of right.”
I shrug. “OK.” I think about Kaitlyn’s hee-haw laugh. “I guess I’d be Kaitlyn,” I say. But then I remember how Bea was crying when I had my seizure. She’s probably a better person than Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn definitely hee-hawed when I wet my pants. “I don’t care about those girls.”
“How come you don’t have a best friend?” he says. “Why do you hate everyone? No one says bad stuff about you. They all want to make things for you. Raise money to buy you, like, a pony or a trip to Disneyland or a cure or something.”
Instead of answering him, I stare right through him. I make his molecules disappear with my eyes. I take a tiny tiny tiny sip of water, the amount a bird w
ould take in its tiny beak. An Angry Bird. Just enough. Through the wall between my room and Elliott’s, I can hear the beat of her music, which she’s listening to on headphones. She’ll probably be deaf before she grows up. Sad. But not really, because she’s Elliott.
Gavriel breathes too loud. His breathing fills up the whole room.
Downstairs, I can hear Buzz Aldrin squawking. Sometimes he gets going and doesn’t seem to remember how to stop. Or maybe he just suddenly realizes he’s in a cage, he’s always been in a cage, and he’s pretty much trapped forever. Maybe Buzz Aldrin has the equivalent of what Mom’s dementia patients have. Maybe he’s yelling, “I left something burning back at the nest!” Maybe he thinks he’s just waiting for a ride back to the Amazon rain forest or wherever he came from, right after he gets out of that cage.
Fish-boy tips back in my desk chair and then rights himself and then he does it again. And again. He’s probably going to break it. I take another tiny, microscopic sip of water. The chair falls over and crashes to the ground and he hits the floor hard. I try not to laugh, but I do anyway.
“Not funny,” he says from the floor, but he’s grinning.
“I’m tired,” I go. “You can stay here, but I’m going to sleep.”
He shrugs. “OK,” he says. “Can I read your book again?”
“Fine,” I say. I take it out from under my pillow and pass it to him. I read it again last night, instead of sleeping, and this time it was different to me. It made me feel sad. It made me feel lonely. It made me not want to go to Mars. I can’t tell Gavriel that, though. He probably wouldn’t get it.
I lie back on my bed and close my eyes. Ever since I started chemo, my Mars dreams have gotten even weirder and more intense. Mom says I talk in my sleep. I don’t think Gav would tell—he’s always super nice on Mars—but I don’t want to give him anything to take back to the class to say about me, just in case. I picture them all laughing, heads bent together. I’m so mad at them for all being healthy. It isn’t fair. Plus, I’m mad at them for being nice to me when I don’t think I deserve it. I’m mad for every reason.
