A Messy, Beautiful Life

by Sara Jade Alan

  “Sorry, no way. I’m deciding the fate of my life and limb, and you want me to write a bunch of jokes?”

  Not swayed by my dramatics, she gave an even nod. “I do. Sometimes you have to leap and do great things before you are ready.”

  I shook my head and snorted. “Love ya, but no. Sometimes it’s better to never risk than to do a lot of work and risk making a fool of yourself. Is that how that quote goes?”

  Hana glared at me. “No. Not even close. And that’s the worst, most not-you thing I’ve ever heard. Take it back.”

  “Fine, I take it back. But seriously, I might implode if I have to think about anything else right now.”

  “Grr.”

  “Hey, Ellie, would you look at this?” Quinn asked, saving me from Hana’s wrath. I used the counter as my support and hopped over on my good leg to see the new costume she was working on for Hana. She’d decided on something different than the jumpsuits the rest of them would be wearing.

  She angled her laptop toward me.

  “Awesome. It’s perfect. I can’t wait to see it under the lights.”

  She brightened. “Owen and I came up with the idea together.” It came out as a wistful sigh. I was happy for her, yet slightly barfy at the same time. It was like Midsummer Night’s Dream around here, with me cast as Puck, alone and possibly responsible for all the trouble.

  I considered everyone around the island. Craig had his music, Hana had her contest-recruitment ideas sprawled out all over the island, and Quinn her newfound knack for costume design. And what did I have? A list of horrible options for my leg and the latest article I was reading about cancer. Oh, and best of all, my constant companion—fear.

  Quinn pressed her lips together. “I wish you’d be part of the sketch. We can do something different that you’d like more.”

  “I’m good. But thanks.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me like she wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but she didn’t push it. “Well, I guess that’s all I can do on the costumes for now. So, it’s either work on my college app or see if Owen’s on his way yet.” She grinned with the obvious answer and grabbed her phone. Apparently, Owen was a true romantic. It was weird to see the change in Quinn—she was serious about a guy, one who didn’t look like he’d walked out of the crew pages of an ivy-league college catalog.

  In just a few weeks, my friends seemed more grown up, more focused, getting ready to start their lives after high school and working on their dreams, while I was stuck in a medical abyss, my free time consumed by research and worry.

  Stop it, Ellie. Stop the pity-fest.

  I turned to check on Hana and her brownie-sitting.

  “How have the last two minutes been?”

  “Not good, Ellie. Not good,” she said, her gaze at the oven set to laser-beam-kill. With another huff, she walked over to my station at the counter and sat on the stool next to me, her shiny black hair swishing along her shoulders. She peered at the spreadsheet of all the treatment options I’d gotten from Dr. Nichols, along with their pros and cons on my screen. “Okay, I love you, Ellie, but seriously, you’re such a nerd.” She shoulder-bumped me and said, “What have you found out so far?”

  “That none of Dr. Nichols’s options appeal to me even a tiny bit.” I stuck out my tongue. “But look at this.” I maximized an article on my screen to show her. “‘Top Ten Miracle Doctors in the United States.’ There’s this surgeon, Dr. Ray, who cured a woman who had the same type of cancer. Every other doctor told her they would have to amputate her leg.”

  Hana’s eyebrows raised. “That could be you. Why are they so big on amputations? It seems that should have gone out of style in the late eighteen-hundreds.”

  “I know. Anyway, Dr. Ray did some crazy experimental procedure and was able to save her leg.”

  “That’s awesome. Let’s get him to be your doctor.”

  “Not so easy.” I shook my head. “He’s at a hospital in New York City.”

  “We can get you to New York, right?”

  Craig chimed in, “Yeah. It’ll be a cancer adventure. A canventure.”

  I gave Craig my Displeased Ice Princess glare.

  How many words are we going to warp with “cancer” now?

  Was this a general thing, or specific to myself and my weird circle of people? Would we have a party on the eve of my surgery and call it a cancerbration? A year from my now, will we remember my cancerversary?

  “Or maybe he could at least refer you to someone that’s just as good near here?” she suggested.

  “Maybe.” I tried not to sound forlorn.

  For a minute, we just stared at the article about the miracle doctor. Then Hana turned to me, deeply serious, “Do you think the eggs in the brownies have cooked through, at least?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I think they have.” Hana hopped off her stool, slipped on the oven mitts and pulled the brownies out of the oven. “How’s that for problem solving? I have no answers for getting Ellie to her miracle doctor, but I have the power to transform brownie batter into brownie pudding.”

  We all clapped for Hana as she came to the end of the counter where Craig was sitting, climbed on a stool, and set down the pan. She dug in for a spoonful and blew furiously at her brownie glop. “Now I have to wait for them to cool?” She growled again. “Craig, let’s never run out of Marshmallow Mateys again, okay?” She patted him on the knee.

  “I promise you, Hana, from now on I will always provide endless bags of Mateys.” He gave an endearing smile.

  Despite the scalding state of the brownies, the smell of the rich, sweet chocolate lured Quinn and me to join Hana around the brownie soup. We scooped the gooey mess into our mouths with wooden cooking spoons. I had one spoonful and called it good, Marissa’s inane words about cancer and sugar niggling at me. But they acted like it was a fight to the brownie finish.

  “You two are sugar vultures,” Craig said. His knee was pressed up to Hana’s thigh.

  The only sound for a while came from the pan sliding against the counter as it got pulled back and forth between Hana and Quinn. Finally, Quinn set her spoon down with a groan and went back to her phone. Hana kept at it. I looked at Craig who was texting like crazy.

  “What are you and Luke working on?” I asked.

  “Music for the Comedy Hub contest.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you finished the Una Paloma Blanca track?”

  “I did.”

  “Okay, so is this something else? Is it a humorous song or something?”

  “Hell no.” He didn’t look up from his phone.

  “Sooo…?”

  He finally set the phone in his lap, giving me his attention. “I figured with the freaky girl-chip you three have you’d know about it already. The Comedy Hub people asked Scared Scriptless if there were any local high school musicians who could play while the contest judges made their decisions about the winners at the end of the show, and Jason asked me.”

  “Wow, that’s so cool.” And then, out of nowhere, big gloppy tears sprouted out of my eyes. I got up, balancing on one leg, balling my fists into my eyeballs. “Sorry, sorry.” I grabbed my crutches and went through the kitchen door into the backyard.

  This didn’t make sense. I was happy for Craig. Happy for all of them.

  Am I really so selfish that my friends tell me good news and I cry?

  It was a cloudy night. I sat down in the grass, feeling a quick shock of pain around my knee. I adjusted my leg and ripped up the grass. Ripping, ripping, ripping, deeper until I was pulling out mounds of earth, ripping until there was a big circle of dirt in front of me. They didn’t understand, they couldn’t understand. Or maybe it was me. Maybe I didn’t understand. Anything.

  “Barb is going to be pissed about the hole in her yard.” It was Craig, and I ignored him. He plowed on. “Dude. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think it was a big deal. Jason just asked, which is why Luke and I are working on it so fast. You three tell each ot
her everything, I honestly thought you knew and didn’t care.”

  I squished some dirt. “Craig, I think it’s awesome, really. I’m happy for you, and I’m seriously not mad you didn’t mention it.” He plopped in the grass next to me. “I don’t know why I reacted like that. Maybe it’s because—”

  “You have cancer. You pushed away the boy you like a lot. Your friends are doing normal things, and you’re stuck on crutches with no answers.”

  “Yes. That. You’re annoyingly perceptive.”

  He shrugged. “That’s how I’d feel. Except the part about the boy, or the girl, if it were me.”

  I arched an eyebrow at him. “Are you about to give me advice about guys?”

  “Who better?”

  “Anyone besides my stepbrother who is dating one of my best friends?” I shivered involuntarily.

  “I’m just saying it doesn’t sound like Jason wanted to be pushed away. You act like it’s some noble, wise thing you’ve done, but I call total bull.”

  “It’s not. It’s real.”

  “No one knows the future. If I were you, I’d say, ‘Jason, let’s carpe diem the crap out of everything before my surgery—no strings, yo?’”

  I belly laughed, looking up at the sky, my mouth wide. “So, romantic. Is that what you said to Hana when you ran after her?”

  “Hana? No. I didn’t think I had a chance with her since she’s so out of my league, but I’d follow her anywhere next year if she’d let me. Doesn’t hurt she happens to want to go to school in New York City.”

  My eyes and nostrils prickled. That’s the sweetest thing ever. “Are you in love?”

  “I’m just saying I’m in if she’ll have me, for as long as she’ll have me.”

  I hiccupped with a cry-laugh that I shook off as fast as it came. “I cannot believe you spend your time on abstract music crap when it turns out you could be topping the charts with the sappiest love songs ever recorded. You’re a hopeless romantic.” I poked my finger into his arm. “Holy crap. My whole world is crumbling.”

  “Eat a bag.” Craig shoved my shoulder and made the back-of-the-throat clicking sound he did when he was uncomfortable or embarrassed.

  I blew some breath-giggles through my nose and shoved him back. “Eat a bag, yourself.”

  “Let’s keep this heart-to-heart stuff between us for now, okay?” He stood up and stretched his legs. “I’m going back in to see if I can save her from a brownie coma.”

  “I’ll be in in a minute.” I rubbed my leg, putting both palms on my knee and feeling the warmth of my hands around the tumor spot. I tried to stuff all the grass back on the dirt mound. It didn’t look great, but at least the torn-up ground wasn’t so exposed.

  I eased myself onto my back, moving like I belonged in a nursing home instead of high school. The night sky was splotched with drifts of gray. There was only one visible star, probably a planet or a satellite. I chose to believe it was a star. The rhyme Mom always chanted on starry nights came to me. “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking of Mom, of college, of all my friends finding love. Of Jason. Of my unknown everything. Please, please…heal me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Everyone else had rehearsal for Las Palomas del Disco, so I was sitting on my bed surrounded by my spreadsheet, articles, and piles of the most depressing papers ever from the hospital. So you have cancer… Thrilling titles that made me start to regret my decision to drop out of the contest. But it made it easier to keep Jason at a distance if I didn’t have to actually see him. I replayed his sister’s words in my mind to remind me why I was doing this.

  By eleven p.m., I was still wide-awake when my phone beeped. It was a text from Jason.

  Are you awake?

  Hi.

  Don’t be scared, it’s me. Knock, knock.

  There was a tapping on my window. Despite the warning, I bolted up in fear. A second later, connecting the sound to the text, I got up on my good knee to pull up the blinds. Jason was at my window looking adorably disheveled. Now my heart was racing in a whole different way. I unlatched the lock, and he popped his head and half his torso through the cheap, unscreened window.

  “Hey,” he said, that simple word causing an earthquake ripple from chest to belly.

  “You scared me. ‘Knock, knock?’ That’s a creepy, psycho-killery thing to text.”

  “But it was coming from me. How’s that psycho-killery?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the psycho killer stole your phone,” I said, keeping my voice low.

  “Good point. Next time I’ll call first so you can approve my voice. Oh wait, that wouldn’t work because you ignore my calls.”

  Ouch.

  “Can I come in? This window ledge is slicing my rib cage. I just need to say a few things, and then I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Yes. But be quiet, our walls are binder thin, and Mom’s room is right there.” I pointed to the wall across from my bed and moved out of the way as Jason slithered in from the window.

  He tumbled onto my bed, sending my stacks of paper everywhere and completely squashing the fourth-grade birthday present from Mom: a stuffed hippo that wore a leotard saying I love to dance. Righting himself on my bed, Jason removed Stanley from under the small of his back.

  He eyed my white cotton duvet and all the pillows in shades of blues and greens. “Should I take off my shoes?” His face flushed. “Not that I have to stay. Long—stay long—I don’t. It’s just…I don’t want to get shoe prints…”

  I nodded yes. This was so awkward.

  As he slipped off his shoes he said, “Don’t ask how this went in my head.”

  He smelled so good.

  “Okay, let me get this out.” His gaze was steady and serious. “No.”

  I waited for him to go on. He didn’t.

  “No?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “No. I don’t accept you pushing me away. You said it was because you couldn’t handle us while you’re going through all this.” He gestured to my leg and papers and crutches. “But I’ve been thinking about this—like, a lot. You overheard me and Olivia talking that day you came over, didn’t you?”

  I avoided his eyes and bit the insides of my cheeks.

  He huffed. “I knew it. But you must not have heard all of it. What I said back to her.”

  “You said it would be cruel to break things off with me when I’d just learned I had cancer.”

  He closed his eyes, puffed out his cheeks, and then looked at me again. “I said that for her. But I said more after that. Look, you don’t get to tell me how to feel or who to care about. If you tell me right now that you hate me and don’t like spending time with me, or that you really can’t handle being around me, I’ll go away and leave you alone. But you have to be honest. Because I’m here. And I want to go through whatever happens with you. Period. And it’s because I like you. A lot. I want to spend time with you, I want to be with you.”

  I hunched and hid my face in my hands, overwhelmed by the cacophony of emotions inside me. He stroked my hair. He’d meant every word. I’d given him an out, and he didn’t want it. He was here because he liked me and didn’t want to give up on us.

  Now it was up to me.

  Pulling myself together, I sniffled and straightened back up, meeting his gaze. “I really like you, too, Jason. A lot, a lot. I just don’t know what’s going to happen. It all feels half-real right now. I’m on crutches, I have a scar on my leg, but that’s nothing compared to what’s ahead. So what does that mean for us? What if I have to get my leg amputated and—”

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, but…”

  “What? Just tell me.” I pulled a pillow into my lap.

  Jason ran his fingers along my calf, sending tingles through my body. “You have gorgeous legs. Seriously gorgeous. But they’re not even in the top five reasons I like you. I hope—for you—that
you get to keep your leg. But if not, I’ll crowd-source robotics-funding for a kick-ass, tricked-out, Transformer-level prosthetic. Okay?”

  I laughed. “Okay. But we really don’t know what’s going to happen with me. What life will be like, what I’ll be like. So, let’s just agree to the now, not to the future. Deal?”

  Jason cocked his head and opened his mouth as if to speak, but then closed it again. He simply nodded then, finally, said, “Sure. Deal.”

  He leaned over and kissed me. It was a long, body-altering kiss that turned into fluttery kisses. After a while Jason pulled back a little and said, “This is even better than it went in my head.” He smiled. “I have another thing to say.”

  “What’s that?” I hugged the pillow closer.

  “I think you should do the standup contest for Comedy Hub.”

  My head about spun off. I threw the pillow up into the air as I whisper-yelled. “What? Why? Where’s this coming from?”

  “You know the number one place it’s coming from is Talent Coordinator Hana. She really gave me the sales pitch at rehearsal tonight. But also, your ‘cancer and sugar’ line to Marissa has popped into my head a bunch since it happened. So that’s number two. And number three is probably my wanting to live through you vicariously. My mom and I would think of the cheesiest jokes to entertain her through treatment. Maybe we could work on your set together?”

  I picked at the edge of my journal, which peeked out from under a pillow. There were some jokes I’d jotted in there. Well, I don’t know if I’d call them jokes yet, but premises, nuggets of things I found so absurd about all this that they deserved a punchline.

  Looking back up at Jason I asked, “What were your mom’s favorite jokes?”

  He shook his head and gave a breathy laugh. “The worst kind. Knock-knock.”

  He paused, looking expectant.

  “Oh, we’re really doing this? Okay, who’s there?”

  “Alma.”

  “Alma who?”

  “Alma hair keeps falling out.”

  My mouth gaped with a shock-laugh. “That’s terrible.”