“What?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Before we had you, your dad and I got screened. Sickle cell is a big concern, especially in the black community.”
“I just read that eighty percent of the people affected are black.”
She nods. “Yeah, it’s a lot. But honestly, I remember being surprised at how many people from other communities are affected, too. There are quite a few Spanish-speaking regions that are just as impacted. Plus, people in India, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. One of my best friends in college, Mira Hassan, she lived with sickle cell. She was this amazing sculptor, Jackie. She made this one piece, it was two people embracing, it must’ve been ten feet tall. She was brilliant. And then . . . I remember visiting her in the hospital, and like you, I had no idea what sickle cell even was. She was so sick. She had to drop out of school.”
“What? Why?”
“They kept her admitted for almost two months.”
“Two months?”
“She had good days and bad days. On her good days, I’d walk up and down the hall with her. She’d be clutching her IV pole, shuffling her feet. I remember thinking how unfair the whole thing was. Here was someone who was so full of life, normally so energetic, and then suddenly, without warning, she could barely hold up her head.”
“What happened to her?”
Mom bites her lip and looks away. “They didn’t know as much back then as they know now. You make sure you’re there for Kate, okay, Jackie?”
“I will.”
She stands up, squeezes my shoulder. “I’ll bring your dinner up tonight. You just keep reading.”
I nod. “Thanks, Mom.”
I Google the doctor Kate mentioned.
Dr. Sowunmi.
I dial his office but it’s already closed.
The next morning, I phone again. The appointment scheduler confirms that he’s all booked up the rest of the month, do I want to make an appointment for next?
Yes, please, I tell her, hopeful that next month isn’t too late.
And I’m not sure what I’m going to do.
If I can do anything.
But that has to be the reason I’m here.
To try.
He’s Got No Game
The Elytown Panthers come up short in the second playoff round again. Franny plays lights out again. The Coupon’s in jail. Again.
“At least when he’s locked up, I never have to wonder if he’s gonna show or not,” Franny says as we climb into Jillian’s car. “That’s messed up, right? Saying life is easier when my father is behind bars?”
“Baby, that’s the least-messed-up thing about all this,” Jillian says, taking his hand.
“For half a second, right after they announced the starting lineup, I look up and I swear I see him in the crowd. Like, I woulda put money on it. That somehow he’d found a way to make it. Like, he’d dug a tunnel with his prison spoon just to make it to my game.” Franny fiddles with the window button. “But that’s stupid. You’d think I’d know better by now, but . . .”
“This isn’t on you, Franny,” I say from the back seat.
“No?” Franny asks, staring out the window. “Then how come my shoulders feel so heavy?”
Graduates
Graduation is a collage of group hugs, no-filter-picture posing, and cap reapplication. Mainly because my cap is sized for a giant and swallows my head.
Meanwhile, Franny’s cap sits crisply atop his freshly sculpted curl-fro, looking dope as always.
And Jillian, our super-worthy class valedictorian, looks hella cool and destroys us with her speech:
“Go forth and conquer,” she concludes, throwing her hand into the air.
Our class goes crazy, hats and tassels leaping into the air.
Afterward, I find Kate.
“Hey,” she says, smiling.
“Hey,” I say back.
She leans in and I meet her lips and—
Have you ever kissed someone where every kiss feels as magical and as necessary as the very first?
Because I have.
Just now.
Not This Time
We’re an hour into my parents’ party and Kate’s nowhere to be found.
Which at first isn’t alarming. Kate is a lot of things, awesome things, but punctuality is not her bag. Even still, I would’ve expected her by now.
And I can’t help but think the worst.
That last time, on this very day, she was lying in a hospital bed. But this time, things are different, I tell myself. This time things are better.
I text Kate: Hey, where are you? Are you okay?
But she doesn’t reply.
I let thirty minutes pass before I try calling her. But it rings and rings.
And now it’s safe to say I’m concerned.
A few of my parents’ old friends try to make small talk. They ask me about college, if I know what I’m going to study, where I’m going to live, if I’m excited to finally spread my own wings.
I do my best to smile, to nod, to be hospitable.
But there’s a feeling spinning in my gut. A dread I can’t explain, or place. I call Kate again, but this time it goes straight to voice mail. None of my texts show delivered.
I know it’s probably nothing. She’s turned her phone off. Her battery’s died. She’s in an area with poor reception. She’s driving. A hundred plausible explanations.
But none of them are strong enough to combat the feeling that something’s happened. Something’s seriously wrong. I consider leaving, hopping in the car, driving to her house.
Then I hear Franny’s voice in the microphone.
“It’s time, everyone. Jack King, please report to the stage.”
The crowd turns stage-side.
I try Kate once more as I walk toward Jillian and Franny, their instruments already in hand. Voice mail.
“Kate, please, please call me as soon as you get this,” I say.
I pick up the microphone, tap on it lightly. A shrill of feedback makes everyone turn in my direction.
“Mom and Dad, if you could come and take a seat up front please,” I say, waving them over from across the lawn. I have notecards inside my suit jacket, but I don’t reach for them. “It’s been thirty years since you two began your journey together. Thirty years since you said yes to each other, and I do to the future. And you’ve had your share of valleys, of disappointments, of, dare I say, regrets. And yet here you are. Together still. Happy still. And so here we are, friends and family, to share in this day all these years later. Some of us probably thought you wouldn’t make it.”
Laughs.
“I mean, not for as long as you have, anyway. But screw those people, right? Because they obviously don’t know anything.”
More laughs this time, a few whoops, some applause.
“Because in the end, it comes down to what you’ve told me ever since I could walk. Nothing good in life comes easy, but it’s about deciding each day that you will stick with it. You choose to stay, to work hard, to love, and you keep choosing. You are the perfect example of two imperfect people making it work. I thank you for that. For everything. So, if you will, please join in raising your glasses for Nina and Abe, my mom and dad. Thirty years from now, we’ll do this again, in this same place, at this same time, hopefully surrounded by these same people. Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad. And if you two wanna sneak away for a bit, the rest of us will pretend not to notice you’re missing. But hurry back, okay, this is your party after all. Cheers.”
“Cheers,” everyone echoes.
Kate’s still MIA. I clear my throat, push on. “Now, while we still have your undivided attention, my friends and I have been working really hard on something special for you. So, this is our gift. We hope you enjoy. And if you don’t, just do what you’ve done my entire life whenever you haven’t wanted to stifle my creativity: fake it.”
Mom blows me a kiss, and Dad gives me a thumbs-up, both of them grinning. I nod to my fellow ba
ndmates—my best friends in the world. They nod back. I pick up my horn, let it settle against my lips, and I blow.
And we play like we invented music.
We are in perfect sync.
We are in perfect measure.
Overhead, the clouds thin and vanish.
The small lanterns strung across the backyard fence glitter like fool’s gold.
A hundred people sway.
And life, all in all, has been pretty good to me, yes.
But this moment is perfect. Spectacular.
Maybe it’s the wine.
Maybe it’s the trumpet in my hands, the cool brass against my fingertips.
Maybe it’s the smiles stretched across my parents’ faces. The joy that’s welling up in their eyes, the happy tears they don’t bother to wipe away.
Maybe it’s just that kind of night.
Maybe it’s goddamn everything.
Everything rolled into one.
And it’s hard to imagine better.
That’s when I get the call.
Second Chances Are Still Just Chance
There’s nothing but open road as far as I can see.
This time I know what to do.
I won’t leave Kate’s side.
I’ll be right there for as long as it takes, as long as she needs me.
I won’t let her go.
The eternal Crunch to her Cap’n.
And then I hear a discombobulating shrill. Up ahead, red flashing lights falling horizontally against the dusk.
A goddamn train!
I swear I can’t recall the last time I saw a train on these tracks. These tracks that divide our town into two even halves, like a jacket zipper.
I contemplate going around the wooden arms.
I inch the car forward so I can see just how far away the train is, how much time I have to make it across the tracks.
But then the train blares its get the hell back horn again and I have to throw the car in reverse, cursing my luck, cursing every locomotive ever built and every track they’ve ever railed along, cursing the whole misshapen world.
Because time, there’s none to waste.
I lay into my horn like a wild man, because dammit, what else can I do?
The train takes its sweet-ass time.
And the faster I honk the slower it goes.
FML.
I bust an illegal U.
“I’m looking for Kate Edwards, please,” I say to the elderly man at the front desk. And it’s a different room number than last time. Ninth floor.
I wonder what that means.
If it means anything.
I can barely breathe by the time I make it to Kate’s room.
I stare at her from the doorframe, my lungs too flat, too stuck together for decent air, like when you try to peel open a plastic grocery store bag. She doesn’t look deathly sick exactly, whatever that means. But she’s somehow paler, smaller.
“Hey you,” she says, her face perking up.
“Fancy seeing you here,” I say, stepping into the room, closing the door behind me. “Nice outfit, too.”
She looks down at her hospital gown. “This ol’ thing?” She grins. “Just something I picked up on a business trip to Paris last autumn.”
“Très chic.”
“Je vous remercie.”
“Impressive. You speak Français?”
“Um, no, I just exhausted all of the French I know.” She scoots herself up in bed, fluffs her pillow to sit up taller. “I’m not contagious.”
“What?”
“You’re a million miles away.”
“Oh,” I say, realizing I’m still barely just inside the door. “Right. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I guess I was just hoping for a kiss, or even just a—”
But I don’t let her finish. I close the distance between my body and her bed in record time. Plant my lips against hers, and leave them there for what I hope to be forever.
But then she pulls away ever so slightly.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Um, I can’t breathe.”
I look back at the door, panic in my chest. “Should I get a nurse? A doctor?”
“Not that kind of can’t breathe,” she explains, smiling. “The good kind.”
“Well, then,” I say, leaning in for more. “In that case.”
I pull up a chair. The nurse brings us cups of ice, and I open the nonalcoholic champagne I’d snagged as I was leaving the house. There wasn’t time to pack up dinner, or even cake, but it’s something.
We toast.
We talk.
We even laugh, swapping stories about horrific summer-camp romances and nightmare part-time jobs.
I couldn’t tell you when I fall asleep.
Only that I awake to the sound of nurses barking orders to a pair of patient care techs, and that overhead, on the PA system, this announcement shakes the entire hospital:
Rapid response, room 918.
Rapid response, room 918.
Kate’s room.
This room.
“Folks, we’re going to have to ask you to step outside the room, please.”
Which is when I see Kate’s mom sitting up in the chair behind me.
“Wait, what’s happening? Is she okay?” Kate’s mom shouts, jumping to her feet.
“Please, we need you both to clear the room.”
I don’t feel my legs move, but somehow I’m out in the hallway peering into Kate’s room through the blinds, her mom and I stepping aside for a handful of docs, and people with breathing masks dangling from their hands, and a machine on wheels that I think reads heart rhythms.
“Kate, we’re still here,” I call out to her as another doctor swings open her door. “Kate!”
But my voice shrinks into nothing.
A pissed-off headache erupts between my temples.
An ocean roars in my ears.
My eyes lose focus.
I reach out for the wall to steady myself, only I miss, or the wall’s moved, or—
“Kate, I’m not going anywhere,” I try to call out, but my words are hostages inside my head. “Kaaaaate!”
It’s no use. A million blades corkscrew into my spine and my kneecaps melt into my ankles and my head detaches from my shoulders and—
The Charm of Third Times
Things Happen in Threes
And I wouldn’t believe it if this wasn’t the second time.
If I didn’t hear the familiar thump of partygoers.
The living room TV blaring the same State basketball game.
V-Neck Sweater Guy (check!) chatting up Hello Kitty Neck Tat (double check!).
The red Solo cup in my hand.
The pissy, slanted stairs.
Jillian leaning against the kitchen counter, the queen in the middle of an undergraduate swarm, waving at me, smiling—
All that’s missing is . . .
“Excuse me, man, but you’re sort of damming up the steps.”
. . . and there she is.
“Actually,” I say, turning my head to look up at her. “I’m doing a mediocre job at best. I could really use some stair-damming backup, if you’re up for it.”
I don’t know why I’m back here.
Why time has once again backed its behemoth ass up.
Chances are, I may never know. The why. Certainly not the how.
But I’m here now.
Probably because whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing, I have yet to do it.
At least not satisfactorily.
So if I have the chance to make even a few things better in this world—for my family, for my friends—
Then I’d be a fool not to try.
And Mama didn’t raise no fool.
(She really didn’t. All of my many and varied foolishnesses are mine alone.)
Anyway.
Enough talk, guys.
There’s some crap with my name on it.
(Okay, that sounded better in my head.
Let’s try again.)
Enough talk, guys.
We got crap to fix.
(Better.)
The Plan to (Hopefully) Save Kate
I need money.
An astronomical amount of money.
Which is a problem in the sense that I don’t have money.
But the thing is, the treatments that I’ve researched with the best shot at curing sickle cell cost a lot of the money that I do not have. And the doctor that Kate, and her parents, believe in most costs the most.
So, the plan is to get a lot of money, fast.
So, I’m going to . . . gamble.
I know, Jack + anything that requires “winning” typically = terrible idea.
Except if I do it just right, if it pans out the way I think it can, it won’t really be gambling.
Which, when said out loud, does appear to be hinged to some significant caveats. Maybe I should . . .
Nope, nope, it’s going to work. It has to work.
In the history of the world, when has gambling ever not worked out?
I take a monetary survey. Which basically involves surveying every nook and cranny for money that I may have overlooked.
This is a very expedient survey.
There is zero overlooked money.
In my checking, I have $204.89.
In my savings, I have $2,019.11. Between installing carpet the last two summers and accrued birthday money, I’ve done a decent job in maximizing my limited revenue streams.
Still, I barely have enough to cover the consultation visit, let alone the actual treatment. And if my calculations are correct, I need roughly one thousand times the amount of money I have. Maybe if I’m lucky only seven hundred fifty times.
Unfortunately, luck continues to ignore my friend requests.
Anyhow. Here’s how I think it’ll work: I bet on the games that I can remember. Fortunately for me, March Madness is two weeks away. And I’m confident that I remember the outcome of each game, and at least for a few of the games, how close they were.
Even more fortunate, Mandrake University isn’t even expected to make the tourney, let alone win the entire thing.
Which means anyone who bets on them is a fool.
Or a time traveler from the future.
Opposite of Always Page 17
