“Wait up.” Willa explains me to her friends as I make my way over. She introduces us—this is the mysterious Luke; he does exist—and we head inside. A few of the kids from Willa’s lunch table are already here. I recognize Paige Holbrook, Hannah Whatever, and who could forget Chris shit-for-brains Elwood? The rest I know by face but not by name. A boy with thick glasses whose name escapes me has brought a guitar. Bowls of chips are being passed around, and a few people are roasting marshmallows next to the wood stove. Willa, in typical weirdo fashion, has brought healthy food. She’s got fruit, veggie sticks and hot cocoa in her backpack. Then she pulls out a second thermos and hands it to me with a spoon.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued. Last time she cooked something for me, I didn’t eat anything else for three days. I open the thermos and steam rises up to meet me. This stuff smells good. It isn’t the carrot and pea soup, but I do detect a hint of ginger in the aroma.
“What’s in it?”
“Nothing you can’t eat.”
Good Lord, it’s good. It’s some sort of puree of broccoli and honey and a dozen other things I can’t identify. I thank her between bites and she responds by slipping a folded piece of paper into my jacket pocket. I bet that’s the recipe.
It’s kind of nice being here, even though I don’t know half the people. It’s like being part of a group of friends again. Most of them don’t look at me, as usual, because my appearance makes them uncomfortable. The only people who look at me and talk to me are Willa and her friend Luke, who doesn’t seem to find anything out of the ordinary with my appearance. For the first time in a long time, I’m having fun.
Everyone is hungry after the dance, so the first part of the evening is spent snacking and roasting marshmallows. Paige Holbrook starts a game of Never-Have-I-Ever, and when that gets old What’s-his-nuts brings out the guitar. He’s not bad with that thing, but I still can’t help wanting him to stop playing—the impromptu sing along has given Luke an excuse to cozy up to Willa’s side and put a hand on her knee. She doesn’t seem to mind. What is he, sixteen?
It isn’t until well after midnight that the group concedes that the temperature has dropped too low to keep sitting on the enclosed porch, and we move inside. Paige suggests getting another group activity together soon. She proposes ice-skating and manages to get almost everyone on board.
Willa turns to me. “Care to join in, Harper?”
I shrug. “I might not feel up to it.” There are a lot of things to consider, like what time of day they’ll be going and how that will affect my stomach and energy level.
“You could meet us at the rink if we decide to go out after.” She’s trying, which is more than most people do for me, so I offer her a smile.
“I’d like that.”
*
It’s two o’clock in the morning by the time I get home. I walk in the front door to find Mom and Elise on the couch with hot chocolate, waiting up for me.
“You have a curfew young man,” Mom says.
“Sorry.” I lean over to give her a goodnight kiss and she less-than-subtly smells my jacket. I smell like smoke from the wood-burning stove, and I hurry to explain myself before she jumps to the more obvious conclusion.
“You really went out,” she says with surprise. Always good to know she has faith in me. “Did you make friends?”
“Good night, Mom.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Good night, Mom.”
“Jem!”
Sunday
Sunday is sleep-in day at the Harper house. Everyone except Mom, chronic insomniac that she is, lies in till ten or later. By the time I wake up the sun is shining across my bed and it’s blissfully warm. I just lay there for a few moments, listening to the sounds of a sleeping house, before I bother to take stock of my body. When I do get around to it, I notice I’m hungry—that’s been happening more and more this past week. My hand, as usual, has made its way into my pants of its own accord while I slept. The difference is, I wake up hard today. Last time that happened, there were still Halloween decorations around town. I smile and start to move my hand. This has got to be my favorite sign of recovery.
I miss this, is my first thought, right before I notice that it doesn’t feel the same as it used to. I keep moving my hand, varying strokes and pressure, but there’s no build. The sensation never gets more intense. The urge to come never arrives, and after five minutes of pumping fruitlessly my erection starts to wilt in my hand.
“Come on, you bastard.”
Mom knocks on the door and the jig is up. So much for starting the day on a high note.
“Sweetie? Do you want breakfast?”
At least I’ve got a new soup recipe from Willa. That’s sort of a positive start to the day. I still would have preferred an orgasm.
Monday
I think about sitting with Willa’s crowd at lunch, even though it involves Chris bullshit-extraordinaire Elwood. But I do need to work on the whole ‘friends’ thing, and everyone was pretty cool on Saturday. They weren’t outright repulsed by me, anyway. Maybe with time they’ll get used to the elephant that follows me into every room, and I can be part of a social group again.
You know, I think I saw a flying pig out back.
Oh shut up, you.
You mean me?
I’m not having this argument with myself.
I follow behind Willa and her friends, keeping a bit of distance. Maybe I’ll just go up to them once they’ve found a table and ask if this seat is taken. Or maybe that will make them feel guilty and obliged to tolerate my presence. Should I just sit down and let them make what they will of it?
As I’m debating this they find a table. I look around for a seat to occupy, but they’re all full.
So much for that.
I turn and make my way toward Elise’s table, trying to make it look like I’m not retreating. When I sit down Elise gives me a strange look. She thought I would sit with other people today too. I just shake my head and turn to my Jell-O cup, and she—mercifully—lets it slide.
*
You’re an idiot, Harper.
Why’d I want to be friends with her anyway? She’s a bitch.
She’s sort of hot.
That’s enough out of you.
Like it matters, limp-dick.
Shut up.
She only invited you along to screw with your head.
She’s not totally incapable of being nice.
Look! The pig flew by again!
Willa spares me from my mental dialogue by pulling her chair back from the table loudly. She sits down with a nod hello and opens her books.
“Why’d you invite me to hang out with your friends?”
Now would also be a good time to blurt out that you’re failing three of four classes and can’t get it up, moron. Go on, share with the class.
Willa looks at me calmly. “Why do you think?”
“You like this snippy banter, don’t you? On some level you enjoy hanging out with me because you get to be wittier than you can be with any of the other cretins in this place.”
She smirks. “I felt sorry for you. Dude, you showed up at my house with nothing better to do than help me shovel snow. Come on.” I could have guessed that. But I didn’t want to.
“That’s some bit of brutal honesty.”
“True friends stab you in the front.” I bet she thinks it makes her witty to quote Wilde’s platitude. It disgusts me almost as much as her statement confuses me.
“We’re not friends.”
“If you say so.”
“I take it back.”
She laughs. “You’re pathetic.”
“You’re not friends with pathetic people?”
“I’d be willing to make an exception, as long as there’s a good reason why we should be friends.”
I bite the inside of my cheek as I turn that over in my head. Brutal honesty might actually work here. “Because I’m lonely.”
Willa sm
iles just slightly. Then she shakes her head. “Not good enough.”
“Books open to page 245, class,” Mrs. Hudson announces over the chatter. “I’ve got an in-class assignment for you today. All the info you need to answer the questions is on that page.” Assignment papers begin to circulate from the front of the room.
I turn to Willa. “Think about it? Please?”
She drops her voice to a murmur. “I think it’s a bad idea. You don’t really want to be friends with someone like me.” Well, that’s a convenient way of phrasing rejection.
“Why not?” Go on; tell me off to my face.
“Because I kill people like you.”
Now that I didn’t expect.
*
That conversation distracts me for the rest of the day. I barely absorb a word of my English lecture. I wonder what she meant when she said she kills ‘people like me.’ What kind of people? Cancer patients? Flagrant assholes? She can’t have been speaking literally. It bothers me so much that I can’t let her leave school without confronting her. I follow Willa to her car after English and tap on the driver’s side glass.
She rolls down the window. “What do you want, Harper?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m living like I’m already dead.”
Willa smirks like I’ve said something funny. “Why me? There are plenty of nicer people in this school. Why not ask them to be your friends?” She gestures to the throngs of students milling around the parking lot.
“Because you’re not scared to look at me.” I can’t read the look on her face. Is she impressed?
“Get in.”
*
The Kirk kitchen still seems cryptically bare. Willa whips up a soup made of asparagus and chickpeas that tastes fantastic.
“Where’d you learn to cook like this?”
“My grandma.”
“The one whose birthday was on Saturday?”
Willa doesn’t bother to contradict the lie. “Yeah. She’s a good cook. I made a lot of soup for my sister before she died.” Now I feel like a jerk for bringing it up.
“I’m sorry.”
Willa shrugs. She doesn’t seem upset that I’ve touched that topic. Maybe it’s been so long that she’s in a comfortable place with her grief.
“When did she die?”
“Two years ago. Cancer.” Willa gets up and opens the cupboard next to the fridge. There are a few cookbooks in there, but she pulls out a binder and sets it on the table. The cover has her name on it. It’s full of pages torn out of other cookbooks and recipe clippings from magazines and newspapers. She stops on a recipe I recognize—the carrot and pea soup—and points to the title on the page header. She tore that page out of Living with Cancer: Diet and Nutrition. She’s been serving me her sister’s cancer food. That’s so genuinely kind and accommodating I don’t know what to say without sounding stupid.
“Were you guys close?”
“Not really. She was nine when I was born. We got closer after her diagnosis.”
“Smoker?”
“Yep.” Willa gets up for another serving of soup. I wonder what it tastes like to someone with a strong stomach and functional taste buds.
“So are you ever going to tell me what kind of cancer you had?”
“Some other time.” For once, Willa leaves it without prodding.
Tuesday
We have a work period for the term project in Social Studies, but nerdy Willa has ensured that we’re ahead of the game, so there’s not much work for us to do. We fill the time by playing X’s and O’s on her notebook cover. Her gloves are yellow today.
“Do you ever take those off?”
“Sure,” she says, and leaves it at that. “Are you eighteen yet?”
“Yeah. You?”
Willa asks me for my birth date—January tenth—and rolls her eyes at my answer. “What?”
“We share a birthday.” I’m too competitive to let that slide, so I question her until we determine that I’m actually six hours older than she is. And I’ll never let her forget it.
“So how old is your brother?”
“Damn it,” she says as I win another tic-tac-toe match. “He’s twenty-five.”
“Is he a step-brother or were you an accident?”
“Shut up. At least I don’t have Middle Child Syndrome.” Willa gives me the eye.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“How old are your siblings, anyway?”
I’m not happy about having my question dismissed, but settle for coming back to it later. “Eric is nineteen; doing a victory lap because he couldn’t decide about university. Elise will be seventeen soon.”
“So did she cut her hair short like that or did she have cancer too?”
“No, she shaved her head to raise funds for cancer research.”
“What kind of research?”
“Research for a cure. Duh.”
“No, what kind of cancer?”
“Kirk,” I scold her. She wins her first match. The score is still ten to one in my favor.
“Do you have any hair at all under that hat?”
“Inappropriate question.”
“Did you shave it before treatment? Or did you wait for it to dry out and fall away on its own?”
“Jesus, Kirk.”
“Am I being too forthright?”
“Nosey is what it is.”
“My sister had me shave her head,” Willa says with a fond smile. “She had long, thick black hair. Barely even waited for it to thin; just invited me into the bathroom and handed me a razor.”
“Creepy.”
“Nah.” Willa shakes her head. “She was still beautiful.”
Wednesday
I’m washing the supper dishes with Eric when Mom comes into the kitchen with the cordless phone in her hand. She looks at me like she’s seriously concerned and says, “The phone is for you.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s a girl.” Again, it’s good to know Mom has faith in me. Eric sniggers at her surprise. I dry my hands and take the phone into the other room.
“Hello?”
“Hey. How’s my partner?”
“Fine. Why are you calling?”
“We need to set a time to work on phase two of the term project. You told your mom you chose her snapdragons, right? She isn’t going to catch us digging up her plants and freak out?”
“Yeah, I told her.” I should really tell her.
“You free Saturday?”
“No, Kirk, my weekends are fully booked.”
“Two o’clock?”
“Make it two-thirty.”
“Address?”
Thursday
When I walk into the cafeteria the first thing I notice is that Elise’s usual group of friends are huddled near the food line, giggling and whispering conspiratorially. What the hell? I look around for Elise and find her at the usual table, talking to a senior. It’s the guy she’s been crushing on—the one who called her a lesbian and made her cry. He’d better be apologizing.
Elise’s friends practically hiss at me not to interrupt as I make my way over. I want to hear what this jackass has to say. Then I hear Elise giggle and realize they’re having a pleasant conversation.
“Hey.” I pull out a chair and sit across from her. Elise gives me a not-so-subtle ‘go away’ signal. Nice try.
“Well, I should get going,” he says. He sounds uncomfortable. Maybe my stare bothers him. Or maybe it’s the aura of death that people perceive around me.
Elise gets this panicked look on her face like she doesn’t want him to leave. “Oh…okay. Maybe I’ll talk to you again sometime?”
Desperate, much?
“Sure. I’ll see you around.”
Elise turns right around in her chair to watch him leave. She only turns back to the table when he’s taken a seat across the room with his friends.
“You’re such a jerk.” She kicks me under the table.
“Jesus, Lise.” That’s going
to bruise.
“Why’d you have to go and ruin it? He was actually talking to me.”
“Did he apologize for calling you a dyke?” Elise growls and kicks me again. “I’m just looking out for you.”
“Well knock it off! You never want me to meet anybody or have any fun.”
Now that the senior is gone, Elise’s friends descend upon the table and demand to know every single detail of what was said. Their chatter derails our conversation, and I leave to go sit with Willa and Co. Elise and I will talk later. We each know where the other lives.
Friday
Today at lunch I try eating something other than soup, yogurt or Jell-O: a cup of tapioca pudding from the cafeteria cooler. It goes down okay, but my stomach starts to hurt by the end of the period.
“Don’t piss me off today,” I tell Kirk as she sits down at the table, “or I’ll readily puke on you.”
“You can do it on cue?” she says with false admiration. Then she turns off the smartass and offers me a mint to suck on. “Why did you come to class? Just go to the nurse’s office if you’re feeling sick.” I would, but then I’d miss the only part of my day where I get to have conversations with someone who isn’t a member of my immediate family. I can’t tell her that, of course. It would over-inflate her sense of self-worth.
And make you look pathetic.
“I don’t want to deprive you of the chance to guess what I had for lunch.”
“You’re such an ass.” She shakes her head and turns her attention to her work. After five minutes, I’ve sucked my mint down to nothing and I ask her for another one.
“That was my last.”
“What good are you?”
She casually elbows me in the side, and that slight jab is enough to make me gag. As I lean over the sink at the back of the room, I regret that I didn’t aim for Willa instead. That would teach her.
Saturday
Willa’s car is in desperate need of a new muffler. I can hear her coming from the end of the block. She’s right on time. I can’t believe I’m about to let that snarky bitch into my house. Mom had better not embarrass me. She works mostly from home, and even though it’s two in the afternoon she’s probably still in sweats with three or four drafting pencils sticking out from her ponytail.
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