Love, Ish

by Karen Rivers

  I sit up. Then I go inside. I pour the last of the cereal into a big bowl and dump all of the milk on it. Then I take it outside and I start to eat. I eat and eat and eat until I feel more full than I ever have. Then I go to the hammock and climb in. The sun is like a blanket that covers me entirely. I fall asleep so deeply that this time, I don’t even dream at all, swinging back and forth in all that perfect, warm Earth-­morning light.

  Chapter 20

  If you want, I can cut it really short for you,” says Iris.

  I’m sitting in front of the bathroom mirror, brushing my hair. It’s not all coming out, but lots of it is. It’s weird, but I can’t stop doing it. I mean, I don’t want to be bald, but it’s sort of like poking a bruise. It’s a bad feeling that’s also good. Or not good, but compelling. I couldn’t stop if I wanted to! The brush pulls gently and my scalp sighs and releases. The sink is full of long red hair. It’s hard to believe there is any still on my head, but there is. Lots of it.

  “Shave it,” I say, trying to sound brave. I always used to hate my ugly red hair. Now I don’t, but it’s too late. That’s life, I guess. When I’m bald, I’ll look like cancer kid. But I am cancer kid. So.

  This afternoon, I have to go in for another treatment of chemo. Chemo that feels like metal is being poured into me, drop by drop by drop. I’m like the lake, only I’m being polluted on purpose. All the rainbow trout will die. Only the goldfish will be left, swimming around in a sad circle, wondering where everyone went. The goldfish is the smallest piece of me, but also the most important, I guess. I don’t know what I mean by that. The Brussels sprout is growing longer tendrils that are curling around all the things that used to make sense to me.

  “OK,” Iris says. She’s stroking my hair. Even as she does that, it’s slipping out and onto the floor, like tiny invisible hands are releasing it. I shiver. “Want me to do it?”

  “Leave me alone,” I say, which is the opposite of what I mean.

  Iris gasps and steps back. “I’m sorry,” she goes.

  “Whatever,” the me-­that-­is-­not-­me says as she leaves the room. “WHATEVER, OK?”

  This kind of thing is starting to happen. It isn’t me! I want to explain. There are tendrils!

  This morning, I (or a tendril!) sent Tig an email that said:

  Don’t be stupid, you don’t have to come here. You don’t have to pretend we are still friends just because you feel bad for me that I have cancer. You don’t have to say you love me. Go away.

  Love, Ish.

  After I sent it, I was super embarrassed. Who signs a “GO AWAY” note with “Love, Ish”? Only me. Dumb.

  But maybe it wasn’t me! Maybe it was the tendrils! Maybe the Brussels sprout is becoming the command center. Maybe I’m not in charge anymore.

  I shake my head at my reflection. “Rude,” I tell it. “There’s no excuse.”

  One of my doctors says that in order to fight it, I’ve got to think of the Brussels sprout as cancer instead of as a Brussels sprout. “Think real thoughts,” he says. “This is a real war you’re fighting.”

  I think he’s dumb. He’s never even had a Brussels sprout! What does he know? It doesn’t really matter what I think of it. It’s not a war. I can’t do anything about it. It’s still there, no matter whether I call it Nirgal or cancer or a Brussels sprout. It’s still growing. It’s taking over. Now I’m scared that it’s bigger than everything that I used to be. I’m a (dying) star; it’s a galaxy. Or maybe it’s a black hole that is pulling me in and I’m imploding into elements, but in slow motion, so slow that no one knows it is happening but me.

  I keep brushing and my hair keeps falling and I’m staring at myself in the mirror like I’m a show that I’m watching on TV. Brush, brush, fall, fall. Bald patches are shining through all over, like stars filling up the night sky.

  Not everything is about the stars, I tell myself. You’re so boring with all this celestial stuff. You aren’t a star, it’s not a black hole, and you’re annoying. It’s pretty interesting how it’s not even at all hard to hurt your own feelings if you try. I put the brush down and sit down on the floor. The tiles are bluish white and have a gray pattern that runs through them that reminds me of veins. Or tendrils. Or I don’t know what. I trace them with my pointer finger. The tiles are cool and solid. It makes me feel better, tracing those lines that go nowhere, ignoring the long strands of my red hair that block my path.

  “OK,” says Iris, coming back into the room. Her eyes are pink, like she’s been crying. “I’m going to leave you alone. But call me if you need me.”

  I shrug, like I don’t care, when really I do. Come back! I want to say but don’t.

  I stand up and get back to brushing, staring at my own face. My eyes are really bright blue, like lakes. I blink my lakes. Slish, slosh, slish, slosh. I look into the center of my eyes for islands. Maybe a tree. Mars: 140 million miles (sometimes). I’m dizzy. My head feels thick. The sprout is in the gravy. Once we had a big earthquake and the lake shifted back and forth and the water rose and fell like when you purposely make waves in a bathtub. You could see it. I don’t know what made me think of that.

  I hear Iris walking away down the hallway and then hesitating before going down the stairs. I close the door and lock it but then Elliott is banging on it. “Let me in! I have to pee before school!”

  I grin. If she treats me normally, I feel more normal. Make sense? It’s like the more people (Iris) treat me like I’m going to break, the more I feel like I probably am.

  “Go away,” I yell back.

  “MOM,” she yells. “CAN I USE YOUR BATHROOM? ISH HAS LOCKED HERSELF IN. AGAIN.”

  I brush with longer and longer strokes that pull more and more hair out, pressing harder and harder, until my scalp stings like a million tiny bee stings. “Stop,” I tell myself, but I keep going.

  I put the brush down on the counter and use some toilet tissue to wipe the hair out of the sink. There is so much of it. Handfuls and handfuls. I put it in the garbage. My hair is still long, except for the bald patches, but it’s thin. It looks like the old people’s hair at Mom’s work. You can see all that scalp shining through. It really does shine. Why are scalps so shiny? There’s probably some reason that sounds like the punch line to a joke, but I can’t think of it. The only joke I can think of is this one: Q: What do you call a cow during an earthquake? A: Milkshake!

  Is that funny? I smile at myself in the mirror. I laugh. It looks weird. I look weird.

  Mom knocks on the door. “It’s time to go!” she says, in her fake-­bright voice.

  “OK, OK, OK,” I say, in a madder voice than I mean to use. “I’m coming.”

  I grab some of my Mars books from my room and I follow her down the stairs. I don’t want her to look at me. I don’t want her to see the truth about my cancer shining all over my skull. Look at me! it screams. I’m shining!

  I walk past Buzz Aldrin’s empty cage. It makes my stomach feel funny. I wonder where he ended up. I wonder if he died. I wonder if he minded that at all. I also wonder why no one has cleaned his cage and put it away in the basement. It’s still dirty with parrot droppings. His food bowl is still half-­full. He wasn’t finished! Not one person in my family got mad at me for letting him go. That’s pretty weird, if you think about it. He wasn’t just mine, he was part of the family. He belonged to all of us. Weren’t they mad? I guess no one can tell me they’re upset with me anymore. I guess they wouldn’t feel right doing that now that I’m sick and as breakable as glass. I run my hand along the cage bars, and it makes a sound like music.

  “We’re late!” Mom calls back to me.

  I can hear her trying to be patient. I can hear her working really hard at not doing any regular Mom-­yelling, any “GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW.”

  “Coming, Mom,” I singsong.

  It’s still hot outside. We open the car doors and a wave of hot air comes flowing out, like it’s been trapped (which it has, if you know anything about the greenhouse effect). I
n order to really live on Mars, we’ll have to re-­create the greenhouse effect. It shouldn’t be hard. Humans seem super good at that.

  Dad zooms by on his bike. “Good luck today!” he shouts, and then he’s off.

  We get into the car and slam the doors. I watch Dad pedaling. His legs are so strong that he’s up the hill before we are, his bike tip-­topping side to side from the effort. I close my eyes and pretend that I’m him, that I’m strong, feeling the hot air rushing by my face, feeling my heart speed up to carry me farther and faster, gulping down all that cold clear water from the always present water bottle clipped to the bike’s frame like it’s my full-­time job. Instead, I’m in a hot car, my weak body barely wanting to sit upright. I crank up the air conditioner, which blows even hotter air at our faces before cooling off the tiniest bit. I groan. The hot air makes me feel like throwing up.

  Everything makes me feel like throwing up.

  Iris is in the backseat. The plan is that she is going to hang out with me at chemo because Mom has to work. She’s taken off too much time already, they’ve said. She can’t use it all at once. The old people need her. Besides, she might need more time later. (That means “when I get sicker” if you read between the lines, which I try not to do.) I don’t appreciate their pessimism but I can see where they’re coming from. I mean, I guess if I die, she’ll need a whole bunch of time to cry and to remember how I was.

  What will she say at my funeral? “All Ish wanted to do was not be on Earth.” Well, I guess if it’s my funeral, then I must have got my wish, after all. If I’m dead, I won’t be on Earth anymore, if you think about it that way.

  I blink back some tears. Do not cry, I tell myself firmly. I’m a machine, OK?

  “What?” says Iris. “Did you just say that you’re a machine?”

  “No,” I go. “Why would I say that? Lame.”

  “Sorry,” she says.

  I want to tell her that it’s OK. It’s not her, it’s me! I don’t know what’s wrong with me! Except I do know what’s wrong with me. What’s wrong with me is cancer. There, I said it. Now it can go away.

  I squish my eyes shut tightly and will it away. Go away cancer go away cancer go away cancer go away cancer you are cancer not a Brussels sprout so now you can go away.

  Nothing happens. I open my eyes. We pass the ice cream shop, which is still shut, only someone has smashed the front window so it looks like a face, the mouth wide open in an O.

  “Are you sure you know where to go?” Iris looks nervous.

  “It’s not hidden. It’s on Four North. There are signs. You can’t get lost. And it’s no big deal,” I tell her. “It’s just a row of chairs and a bunch of people getting medicine and playing Xbox. It’s sort of like being at a bad party. The worst party.”

  “OK,” she says. “I’m just nervous.” Poor Iris. She should be in New York! She should be winning her competition! Her weird clothes that she makes are crazy beautiful, even if they don’t have anything to do with Mars. I don’t say it to her or anything, but it’s totally a stretch to call it “Mars fashion.” On Mars, “fashion” is going to be space suits. Practical things. It’s like un-­fashion. She’s made Mars into the worst of what Earth has to offer. All sparkly and shiny and too much. Like in her Mars world, everything has feathers: white ones, iridescent ones.

  “I found them at the flea market,” Iris told me. “Boxes and boxes of them. It was like magic, finding those. Like you’d never think that you could say to yourself, I need some iridescent feathers! and then walk out of your apartment and find someone selling ten boxes of exactly what you want.” I nodded, but what I was thinking was that of course that would happen to Iris, of course there were ten boxes of shiny feathers exactly when and where she needed them. Iris would never grow a vegetable in her brain. It wouldn’t occur to the vegetable to grow there, period. Iris would only go to Mars if it was shiny and feathery and silly. I hate her for making Mars silly.

  I snap my seat back, fast, right into her, bashing her knees.

  “Hey!” Iris says, now. “Ouch.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “The lever-­thingy slipped.” But that isn’t true, not even a bit.

  I don’t know who I’m turning into. Someone who isn’t any good. Maybe if I’m awful enough, though, they won’t be sad when I die. If I die.

  Maybe they wouldn’t be anyway.

  Who is going to miss me? I know Mom and Dad will. But Elliott won’t. Tig won’t. The kids at school won’t. I’ll just be the dead cancer kid, I won’t be who I was waiting to become: I was going to be someone important! I was going to matter!

  But they won’t know that. They’ll just remember that I was never really friends with them and I was kind of mean.

  Great.

  Mom drops us at the front door and I drag myself out into a wave of hot air. The heat wobbling on the pavement makes me feel dizzy, like I might faint. I lean on Iris so I don’t fall. The hospital air conditioning is a welcome relief.

  Iris makes chitchat all the way up. “Oh, the view is so pretty!” “Wow, what a nice room!” “Whoa! Look at that vending machine!” I give her a look and we both giggle. It’s true that the vending machine is pretty impressive. It takes up the whole wall of one hallway. You can buy anything in there. You can even buy socks. They are four dollars, in case you are curious. I’ve never seen anyone buy them, but suddenly I really want them. I didn’t bring any money, though.

  I get my favorite chair, which is good. It’s at the end of the row, so you can look out over the town through the window. It’s still warm from when the last kid was sitting here. I wonder who it was. I wonder if he/she has cancer in their brain or somewhere else. I wonder if he/she has a better cancer.

  Through the window, I can see the school. I guess the cafeteria is finished being painted, because even when I’m here at lunchtime, I don’t see kids outside anymore. I feel an ache in my chest because I hate that dumb school but I’d do anything to be there again, hating it, watching the hands drag around on the clock while Mr. Wall teaches something pointless to a bunch of sweating, bored seventh graders. I never did find out what happened to the coyote! I want to know!

  “Want to play Xbox?” says Iris.

  She looks hopeful, so I say yes even though video games make my head hurt more than ever because of all that movement and noise and flashing. She starts it up and the Brussels sprout pulses like the light on the side of my laptop, like breathing.

  The technician comes over and smiles at me. “Can’t stay away, can you, Ish?” he says. He reaches into his pocket. “Pick a color,” he says.

  “Um, brown,” I say, to try to make it impossible.

  He reaches in and pulls out a brown lollipop.

  “How did you know I’d say that?”

  “I’m psychic,” he says, winking.

  I put the sucker into my mouth. Root beer. I love root beer, but it makes my stomach lurch. I take it out and put it back in its wrapper. “I’ll have it after,” I say. “Thanks.”

  He pats my shoulder. “See you in a couple of hours.”

  He hooks me up to the tubes and the hot metal taste floods my mouth. The medicine pours all through me like I’m a sieve, and it just flows through everything: bone, muscle, organs, hair. My eyes feel soft, like they’re melting. It’s such a sad, terrible feeling and I want to cry, but we’re playing a racing game so I can’t even blink or I’ll be off the track, spinning out of control. We play for an hour before Iris goes, “You look sleepy! Have a nap, I’ll just do some drawings!”

  “I’m not,” I say, but I put the controller down. Right away, the freckled kid’s mom grabs it, like she’s been waiting for us to stop hogging it. I stick out my tongue, but she doesn’t see it. If she had seen me, I would have explained about how that’s “Hi!” in Tibet. The freckled kid is the worst. He drives everyone crazy. He’s so hyper that they have to strap him to the seat or else he ends up jumping up when something exciting happens in his game. He’s pulled his IV out abou
t twenty times since this whole dumb thing started. I shoot him a sympathetic look, but he’s not looking at me, he’s already firing up Minecraft. At least when he’s playing Minecraft, he’s calm. He gets quiet.

  I sit for a while in a half-­sleep, half-­not-­sleep state and watch Iris draw. My head is itchy, but I’m scared that if I scratch it, the rest of my hair will come out. If that happens here, I’ll die. I’ll have to ask someone to throw it away for me. I wonder if somewhere in the back, there is a garbage can where they put all our hair. I’ll shave it off later. It’s better to let it go when I want to, not when it decides to do it by itself.

  I really want ice cream. I open my mouth to ask Iris, but it’s like my voice is part of the half of me that’s sleeping. Maybe when we leave I can get Iris to stop for ice cream with me, but I guess there isn’t anywhere to get it. I forgot for a second that the ice cream place is closed. My feet are cold, so I reach down and rub them, but that makes them itchy, so I stop. I am so tired that I nearly fall asleep like that, bent over, scratching my foot.

  I’m still curved down like that when I hear a big ruckus in the hallway. I look up. Even Freckles puts down his Minecraft remote. Is it an earthquake? My heart starts beating harder. Then the door swings open and Mr. Wall comes through. He has the entire class with him and they are all staring at me.

  I blink. Then blink again. Tick, tick, tick. My eyes are as dry and soft as marshmallows.

  Am I asleep? I honestly can’t tell. The kids are all wearing masks. Visitors have to. Those dumb paper masks protect us from all their germs, although I don’t know how. What germ in its right mind can’t figure out how to just go out the side?