Love, Ish

by Karen Rivers

  I nod to Freckles, a nod that is meant to transmit “They are with me! I’m sorry but also not sorry because I’m kind of impressed that this many people want to visit me! Go back to your game!” I hope none of their germs sneak out the side gaps and kill Freckles, but I can’t help smiling, even though I’m worried.

  Then suddenly they are all singing. They’re singing “Happy Birthday.” I forgot it was my birthday! Who forgets their own birthday? There are Mom and Dad and even Elliott. She’s carrying a balloon, which is red. On the balloon, she has written “THE RED PLANET WISHES YOU A HAPPY BIRTHDAY.” Then I’m crying because I forgot it was my birthday and because Elliott is being nice to me and all these people seem to like me even though I’ve always had secret mean thoughts about them and because I have cancer and the chemo is turning my veins into melted metal and because I’m so tired and because because because reasons.

  I’m thirteen! Thirteen.

  I’m a teenager!

  I don’t feel any different except for all the ways in which I do feel different, mostly to do with the Brussels sprout. I’m crying so hard now that I’m doing that hitching-­breath thing that little kids do when they can’t stop crying, but I’m not even that embarrassed. Maybe a little bit.

  They finish singing and then they all clap for some reason, then everyone is clapping, except that one kid who is asleep. I feel this weird feeling, this heavy rush of love for every single person in the room.

  I guess I love you, Tig said. But then he never came. I told him not to and he didn’t. That’s not love.

  I cry a little bit more because my hair is falling out and they’re all staring at me and pretending not to and I love them but I can’t tell them that and then they are passing me cards and the weird metal hot taste in my mouth from the chemo is leaking out of me like a cloud. I hope they can’t smell it.

  They only stay for a few minutes, and then they are gone again, all of them, just me and Iris and the freckled kid and his mom and the cake and the other kid who is asleep still, like nothing happened.

  “That was weird, wasn’t it?” I go to Iris, and she shakes her head.

  “No, Ish,” she says. “It was really nice.”

  I frown. I feel confused. But mostly I feel sleepy.

  “When I fall asleep, I dream that I’m on Mars,” I tell her. “Well, sometimes. Not every time. But I try to.” I can’t explain to her what I mean, which is that more and more, lately, I’ve been having regular dreams. Dreams where I try to make a phone call to call for help but I can’t press the buttons. Dreams where I’m on Lunch Island and waves come up and I’m trapped. Dreams where I’m at school and there’s a test and I didn’t study. Normal-­person dreams. I want to have the Mars dreams so bad, but they only come when they want to come, and they are different. They really are. Like in a regular dream, you can be walking with a dog on a leash and suddenly the dog isn’t a dog anymore, it’s a tiger or something, and you take that in stride because it’s a dream, and you can walk on water and fly and do anything. My Mars dreams don’t have tigers. “Don’t have tigers,” I manage to get out.

  Iris smiles at me. “Are you falling asleep? What about the tigers?”

  Her teeth are big and white and even, like they’ve been carved from those white stones you find at the beach sometimes and make wishes on. The real beach. The ocean beach. Not the lake beach, which isn’t really a beach at all.

  “That’s great, Ish. I know you love Mars. Tell me what you dream about.”

  “Um.” I wish I hadn’t started. I can’t make the words come out. “Tired,” I say, instead of saying what I mean, about the biomes and the storm and The Velveteen Rabbit. When I say it like that, it does sound like a tiger on a leash, after all, and then without realizing it, I’m under, I’m asleep, I’m dreaming. I dream about school. I dream that I go back and there’s a test but I haven’t studied and I’ve wet my pants and everyone is laughing and laughing and hugging me, like I’m in on the joke, and in the dream, I try, I really do. I laugh with them and they pat my smooth head and I’m wearing a sparkly green cardigan that would look great with my hair if I had any and Kaitlyn is saying, “So cuuuuute,” and I’m smiling and agreeing and all around us, everyone is laughing like a donkey. And it’s not so bad, for a dream. It’s kind of nice. It’s easier than Mars. It’s easier just being in that dream and having it all happening to me than always having to be the one who has to work really hard, the one who has to be there for everyone, the one who has to save the day.

  Chapter 21

  Fish-­boy turns up the next day, just when I thought he’d stopped caring about me at all. He wasn’t at the birthday sing-­along. I don’t know where he was. He comes right into my bedroom, like he doesn’t even have to knock. I was sleeping! Well, not really, but a bit.

  “Hey,” he says. “Happy late birthday and stuff.”

  “Gavriel,” I say. “You don’t have to keep coming over. It’s weird. We don’t even know each other! I’m not interested in being the cancer-­kid-­who-­you-­feel-­sorry-­for. No, thanks.”

  “What?” he says. “We know each other plenty. You’re Ish and I’m Gav. It’s not my fault you have cancer. I’m not going to unknow you.”

  I frown. “We weren’t friends before I had cancer. I didn’t even know you!”

  “We would probably have been friends,” he says.

  “Not,” I say.

  “Would so,” he says.

  “Would not,” I say. “I’m not really a ‘friends’ person.”

  He laughs. “What?”

  I shrug. “I only have one friend.”

  “Yeah?” he says. “That’s weird.”

  “Is not,” I say.

  “Is so,” he says, grinning.

  “Look,” I say. “I get that this is something your mom is making you do. I’m just saying you don’t have to. Or if you do have to, you can just sit there or watch a movie on the iPad or something. We don’t have to talk.” I blink a few times. My headache is one of those things that grows and shrinks. Gavriel is making it grow. “Anyway,” I add. “We wouldn’t have been friends. You called me Fish!”

  “I was nervous!” he says. “It was my first day at a new school!”

  “Are you crazy?” I say. “It was everyone’s first day at a new school!”

  “I didn’t know anyone!”

  “I give up,” I say. “You’re giving me a headache.”

  “You have a brain tumor!” he says. “I think it’s probably the brain tumor that is giving you a headache.”

  He has a point, so I shrug.

  “Ha!” he says. “You know I’m right. You don’t like other people to be right, do you?”

  “Of course, I do,” I say as frostily as I can.

  “OK,” he says. “What if I say that no one can ever live on Mars because even if they solve the perchlorate problem, there’s so much radiation that everyone would die?”

  “You know about the perchlorate problem?” I go, kind of amazed. I mean, the perchlorate problem doesn’t get as much press as it should.

  “And,” he says. “That moon, Phobos, they think it might break into lots of pieces and make a ring, but there’s also a chance it will just slam into the planet and obliterate everything.”

  I look at him suspiciously. “Have you been reading about Mars to impress me?”

  “Maybe.” Gav grins. “I don’t know. I actually didn’t mean to. I just started and it was interesting so I kept reading.” He shrugs. “I probably have a lot of it wrong.”

  “Probably,” I echo, even though he really doesn’t. He’s pretty much exactly right. The radiation would kill every­one. Of course, I get radiated every day, but I guess that’s different. Well, it isn’t really different. It might kill me, too. It’s funny how you spend your whole life avoiding something—no X-­rays, they are dangerous! don’t stand too close to the microwave! don’t put your iPhone under your pillow!—and then, all of a sudden, to save your life, you’re practicall
y microwaving your whole head in desperation. I think about saying all that to Gavriel, not because he’ll understand, but because he’s here, but I don’t bother because talking that much seems like it would be tiring.

  Gavriel spins on the desk chair (which is annoying), practically knocking over a whole pile of books. “Oops,” he says. “Want to go for a walk around the lake? This is boring.”

  “No,” I go, right away, without thinking about it. “I’m sick, idiot. Sorry to be so dull.”

  “You’re not dead,” he says. “Your mom says we should get outside for fresh air or whatever.”

  “She didn’t,” I say.

  “Yeah, she did,” he says. “Your dad said, ‘Take water!’ ” He holds up two water bottles. “See?”

  “Oh,” I say.

  The truth is that I haven’t gone for a walk for a long time. I used to run all the way around the lake at least four times a week! Going for a walk seems like a sad, old-­person alternative to that. I am more like a sad old-­person than I am like old-­me, the me of last year, who (if things were completely different) would right now probably be running on that familiar path, my feet slip-­slapping the dirt in the way they always had, while I counted the number of steps I took between breaths.

  Then, out of nowhere, the Brussels sprout hands me this thought: “Fish-­boy is sort of cute.”

  “No!” I say out loud. “He is not.”

  “Are you OK?” he says, looking scared.

  “I’m fine,” I go. “Look, why do you like me? Why are you doing this?” I don’t mean to ask that, it just comes out, like the Brussels sprout is sitting on my filter and I can’t stop myself from blurting. The Brussels sprout is a terrible ship’s captain, I can tell you that. If I were a spaceship, it would have just steered me directly into a falling meteor. Boom. Then we’d all be dead.

  There’s a silence long enough that I die inside.

  I’m dead.

  The end.

  Just kidding! But it’s a long silence.

  “Who said I liked you?” Gav goes. Then he laughs. Then he stops and stares at me. Then he goes, “I guess I do kind of like you. You’re different from other girls. Anyway, I’ve always liked girls better than boys. Mostly. Before we moved here, my best friend was a girl. I guess I just . . . um, relate to girls more?”

  “Yeah?” I say. I try to think if I know anything about Fish-­boy, but I don’t. “How?”

  He shrugs. “Do you ever feel like maybe you made a mistake? Like just before you were born, you were meant to choose ‘girl’ and you chose ‘boy’ instead?” He blushes and takes a deep breath, like he’s about to tell me something really scary or personal or both. He clears his throat. “Um, when I was littler, I used to wear dresses.”

  “Oh,” I say. Then unexpectedly, even though I know it’s the wrong reaction, I laugh, like it’s really funny. Hee-­haw, hee-­haw, hee-­haw. I’m practically channeling Kaitlyn. That’s not even my laugh! It isn’t even funny!

  He looks mad or sad. Both, I guess. “I wouldn’t have told you if I thought you’d laugh. I kind of don’t know why I told you. We aren’t good enough friends for me to blab all my feelings out! Uh,” he pushes his hand through his hair. “This is awkward. I’m, like, embarrassed.” He squints at me, like he’s actually mad. “I thought you’d get it.”

  “That’s not fair,” I say, quietly. “I was just caught off guard! I didn’t have time to think about it!” I lie very still. The sunlight plays with the curtain and throws a shadow on the ceiling that looks like a wing.

  Gavriel spins the chair around faster and harder.

  “Look,” I say. “I get it, OK? I used to think I should have been a boy because then everything would be easier. People would take me seriously and stuff like that. But then I realized I don’t want to be a boy. I like being a girl. I guess I wish people didn’t treat girls so crappily all the time, assuming we care about our hair more than we care about the perchlorate problem.”

  “Huh,” he says. He stops spinning. “I don’t think that’s the same, though.”

  “Maybe not,” I concede.

  “So you don’t want to go for a walk?” he goes, standing up really fast. “If you don’t, I gotta go do something.”

  “I do! I want to,” I say. “I will. I just have to do something first. Do you want to help me?”

  “I guess,” he says. “Is it something gross?”

  I shake my head and point at the bathroom door. “Come on,” I say.

  We go into the bathroom. I can tell he’s really embarrassed. He probably doesn’t go to the bathroom with a lot of girls. That’s when I notice that his T-­shirt has a My Little Pony on it. Maybe he wasn’t lying. Maybe he is a girl on the inside. I make a point of not looking at it, though, so I don’t embarrass him.

  I open the drawer and I take out Mom’s hair-­cutting scissors. I can’t believe I’m doing this. It’s like my body is being operated by someone else. Maybe Nirgal has taken over completely now. “I am not myself,” I whisper. I hand the scissors to Fish-­boy.

  “What?” he says.

  “Nothing,” I go. He’s not Tig! the voice in my head reminds me. Don’t get confused! I hesitate. It’s true that if Tig were here, I would totally have asked him to do this. But he isn’t here. Gavriel is like Tig lite. Actually, he’s nothing like Tig. My hand wobbles. I put the scissors down on the sink. Then I pick them up again.

  “Cut,” I say, handing them to him.

  “No way,” he says. “Um, you want me to cut your hair?” He looks super unhappy. “Why?”

  “No, my nose,” I go. “Of course, my hair.”

  “I don’t know how to cut hair!”

  “Please,” I say. “It’s all falling out. I’m going to shave it off, but first you have to cut it really short.”

  He snorts his breath in like he’s going to choke. “I can’t,” he says.

  “Then give them to me, I’ll do it,” I tell him. I grab the scissors from his hand and I start chopping. It’s harder than it sounds. Those things only cut through small bits at a time, not big chunks! I saw off a big chunk of hair and it falls onto the floor. We both stare at it. He looks up and his eyes meet mine. His eyes are nice, big and brown. They look soft, like puppies. Actually, they are kind of girly, come to think of it. Mom told me once that sometimes people are born into the wrong bodies. Maybe he’s one of those people. Maybe it makes sense.

  Maybe, in a weird way, Gavriel is my first real girl friend. Except he isn’t a girl.

  “OK,” he says. He steels himself with a big breath, which he lets out slowly. “I’ll do it.” He takes the scissors from my hand and starts cutting. I close my eyes. It feels nice, the sound of the scissors on my hair, the weight of it tumbling to the floor. My head gets lighter and lighter. I think about birds. I think about Buzz Aldrin and how he lifted off. My hair is lifting off.

  It takes a pretty long time. And then, he’s done. “OK,” he whispers, like he’s scared. “I’m done.”

  I open my eyes. All over my head—except for the bald patches—my hair is sticking up in short tufts. “I look like a hedgehog!”

  “It’s not that bad!” he says. Then he laughs. “You sort of do.”

  “I know,” I go. “It’s OK.”

  Then I get out Dad’s shaving stuff.

  “I don’t know how to do this part,” he goes. “I can’t. What if I cut you?”

  “How hard can it be?”

  “I don’t know! But maybe you should ask your dad to help.” He looks scared. The razor is one of those old-­fashioned ones. It looks sharp and dangerous. We both stare at it on the counter.

  “OK,” I say. “You go get him.”

  “OK,” he says. I hear him going down the stairs. I rest my face against the cold tile on the wall. I like how it feels. Solid. Permanent. The tile doesn’t have a brain tumor. The tile isn’t going to die. The tile won’t go anywhere. I wonder if there will be tile on Mars. You’ll never know, the voice in my head te
lls me. You won’t be there. You won’t get to go now. Not ever.

  “Shut up,” I say out loud.

  The door swings open.

  “Dad’s not home,” Elliott goes. “But I’ll do it. I’ve got this.” She grabs the razor. It glints in the light like tiny diamonds reflecting off water.

  I blink. Tick, tick, tick. Fish-­boy is standing behind her, raising his eyebrows, like “Is this OK?” And I’m signaling him with my eyes, “No! This isn’t OK!” But Elliott already has a lather going in Dad’s fancy shaving bowl and then she’s smoothing it all over my hedgehog bristly scalp with this big brush and it feels so nice that I forget to tell her to stop.

  “How do you know how to do this?” I say.

  “I used to watch Dad when I was really little,” Elliott says. She shrugs. “I don’t remember why.”

  “This dad?” I say. “I mean, our dad? I mean . . .”

  “Yes.” The razor swoops swoops swoops over my skull. “I don’t remember our other dad.”

  “You have two dads?” says Gavriel, looking confused.

  “We were adopted,” I explain.

  “Oh,” he goes. “But you’re really sisters?”

  I shrug.

  Elliott goes, “We’re really sisters anyway, idiot.”

  “Yeah,” I echo.

  “Sorry,” he says. He looks embarrassed.

  “It’s OK,” I tell him. “Don’t worry.”

  Elliott laughs. “Everyone’s family is mixed up, right? Yours probably is, too.” She shoots him a look.

  “Yeah,” he goes. “I mean, I guess. I don’t have a dad. Well, he died.”

  “Sorry,” Elliott says. She does look really sorry. Her hand wobbles a bit and the razor nicks my scalp.

  “Hey!” I go. “You can’t concentrate when you’re talking.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry, Little Sister,” she goes.

  A lump forms in my throat and my eyes just about overflow. “Little Sister.” I don’t know why that makes me want to cry! Why isn’t Elliott being mean to me? I’m so dizzy, but I don’t want her to stop, so I balance myself by holding the edge of the sink.

  “Are you OK?” Elliott says.