The Maple Effect

by Madeleine Cull

  “At some point, we’re gonna have to leave, right? You’re gonna go back to Oregon, and I’m gonna go back to North Carolina and then what? Then we…won’t see each other, and all that’s gonna be left are memories.”

  “June, what—”

  “I’m serious.” He clutched the pillow tight in his lap. This was so difficult for him. He hated talking about the future. Another nervous breath. He met Aaron’s gaze with a shiver. Reached out and grasped his hand.

  “Aaron. When I’m gone, I want you to look up at the night sky and remember me. I want you to lay in the dark alone and know I’m there with you. I don’t want you to be afraid anymore, I want you to be happy. I want to help you...I-I just…I—”

  Aaron sat up then; eyebrows pinched together with concern because June had said too much. His heart pounded in his chest, and when Aaron pulled his hand away, it was all June could do not to get up and run. Panic blared loud in his ears. Threatening. Disorienting.

  “What do you mean, when you’re gone?” Aaron asked, taken aback. “We live in different states, not on different planets. We can talk on the phone and email, and stuff…we could even plan on flying out to see each other…or meeting here again next summer.”

  June shook his head to all of that. He was spiraling. Aaron was going to be furious, and there was nothing he could do. No way to put the bandage back over where it had already been ripped off. June was exposed. Raw and open and ugly.

  Aaron didn’t deserve him. There was nothing he could say to make this easier. Their relationship was only going to end in tragedy. It was always going to end in tragedy.

  Aaron took his silence as confirmation.

  “You don’t want to even try and be friends after this summer?”

  June’s lips trembled. This was not the conversation he’d been prepared to have tonight, but he couldn’t stand lying to Aaron anymore. Angie was right, but if there was anything worse than the truth, it was the truth, on top of the crazy idea that June flat out didn’t want Aaron. Aaron could not believe that. That was so far from how he felt.

  June would pack up and move his whole life out of North Carolina for Aaron. As young and dumb as it may sound, he’d give anything to stay with him. To support him and comfort him and grow with him. To create a real, mature relationship with him. Maybe even to love him? If given a chance, June thought he could.

  Or maybe he already did.

  “Don’t get mad,” June whispered, choked with the harsh reality that was the shitty hand he’d been dealt in life. His young, inevitable end. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, and he had no control. This summer had been a sad attempt at him trying to be in control. And low and behold. In the end. He failed. Failed himself and more importantly failed Aaron.

  “I’m dying.” June broke. And no matter how hard he wished it wasn’t true, it was.

  This really was his last summer.

  In early September of 1995, June and his family flew the several hundred miles home from Bass Lake, California, leaving behind their beloved summer in exchange for another long, gruesome year of school. June was nine years old; still innocent and naive and so in love with the world around him. Things were surreal back then. Safe and wholesome and very much opposite of the gritty real life he’d so far been sheltered from. He was happy. Incredibly happy. Slowly but surely growing into the respectable human being his parents always hoped he would be.

  And then everything changed.

  He’d gotten home from that flight achy and uncomfortable. Squirming in the backseat of his parents’ Honda until his sisters whined and complained. When his parents turned around and asked him what was wrong, he’d just shrugged and said he didn’t know. But he’d been holding one hand under his other arm and pressing his fingers into what felt like a bad bruise in his side. For three days after that, he’d touched the same place, jolting with pain and ignoring it all the same.

  It wasn’t until he was several days into his new school year that his teacher called home to his parents, explaining they didn’t understand his strange behavior. He’d gone into the nurse’s office and waited to be picked up, wondering what he’d done wrong and wondering why people were asking him so many questions.

  When his parents felt the space under his arm, they had kept unusually quiet. Murmuring to each other with their backs turned and their voices low. June had been confused and then scared when they told him he had to see a doctor. His father was a pediatrician, so they rarely went to see doctors. Not unless it was as serious as the time he fell and broke his wrist trying to jump a makeshift ramp for his scooter.

  June was a quiet and polite patient. Did exactly as told while he was poked and prodded and then rubbed with cold gel. They did an ultrasound on his small chest, and June knew that must have meant something bad. The doctor was stone-faced at the time, but even as a benevolent nine-year-old, June was always rather perceptive. He remembered thinking people were lying to him. That they acted like he was okay, but he wasn’t—because if he were, then his mother wouldn’t have left the room with her hand over her mouth like she was trying not to cry.

  Two more weeks of school and accidentally disturbing his classmates because June couldn’t stop touching his armpit. He was asked to sit in the back of the class, and eventually reprimanded in front of peers until he couldn’t take it anymore and he cried. It was the first of many outbursts he would soon come to have. His mom picked him up that day, took him out for ice cream and then home where they flipped through old summer photo albums until he felt better. They never addressed the problem, and looking back June couldn’t understand why. He’d been a very bright kid; arguably the most intelligent one of his two other siblings. He would have fared better with the truth from the beginning, had his parents been willing to give it to him.

  The truth was most, parents don’t know what it’s like to see a tumor growing in the side of their young child. And most parents don’t want to think about what might happen if that tumor is removed and comes back from pathology as anything but benign.

  June hardly remembered the conversation he had with his parents once they finally did sit him down and tell him what was happening. He hardly remembered the big words they’d used, or the way they told him it was going to be okay, or how he’d have to miss a few weeks of school, but his teacher would make sure he still passed the year. What he did remember was the way an I.V. felt piercing the vein in the back of his hand. And the sounds of monitors and alarms going off in the part of the hospital he’d never seen before. He remembered the way his bed had rails on it, and how for the first time in his life he’d felt claustrophobic. He remembered the bright lights looming above him, blinding him. The smell of chemicals and the short countdown before the anesthesiologist put him to sleep. He remembered how scared he was. How ignorant.

  Everything had gone according to plan, and he’d done a great job, but the memory was blurry. Even now, as an adult, it didn’t make much sense to him. He wasn’t sure if it was the medicine or the trauma that clouded that part of his brain, but he didn’t care either way. Hospital visits were always the worst part.

  In conclusion, tests came back positive, and June spent the next three years of his life fighting for something he barely understood. Breast cancer was supposed to be a disease older women got, not young males. It was supposed to be one of the easier cancers to manage, not one that involved doctors scratching their heads in wonder. It was supposed to be something that could be lopped off and forgotten about, not something untouchable and hypersensitive.

  June hated it. Hated everything about it. From the excessive phone calls he received from relatives whose names only ever showed up on birthday cards, to the sheer force it took to swallow chalky, bitter pills. He hated the way his parents looked at him; like he was some delicate little flower not to be stepped on. He hated the way his sisters blamed him for the extra attention when he’d wished only to be left alone.

  He hated the way he used to lie in bed at night trying
to come to terms with the fact he might not ever be the same. That his friends and classmates might grow old and fall in love and have families of their own, and he might be left behind, sick and dependent.

  June agonized over those thoughts and feelings for so long that he came to know his former self only in retribution. A cruel memory of what was and what could have been. He started lashing out at school. Defending himself for reasons he didn’t know and taking his anger out on adults in the form of mockery and raw eggs on their windshields. He’d grown used to sitting in detention alone, scribbling in his sketchbook and cursing under his breath because deep down he knew he wasn’t a bad kid. He was just lost. Lost and confused and scared.

  June remained largely unreachable until the summer he turned sixteen when his father finally came to him and asked him what exactly they needed to do, to get him to come back to them. He’d never seen that man cry before, and if that wasn’t enough to rattle some sense into him, then it was the fact he was being offered an opportunity to make his own decision that did. All the years of fear and medicine and side-effects came down to that very moment, sitting on the counter in his kitchen, bare feet dangling over the linoleum as helplessly as he felt.

  He didn’t know what he wanted, but he knew he no longer wanted to fight. Breast cancer was an invisible enemy to him. Without all the aspects of fighting the disease, he was sure he would hardly notice the disease itself. And so, with little regard for what might be best for him, or what his family wanted for him, June decided he was done.

  Sixteen years old was extremely young to give up. But June would rather live his life as normally as possible for a shorter amount of time than live it miserably for an extended.

  So, he stopped taking his medicine. Stopped getting harassed by doctors and tested on like some animal in a cage. He stopped getting uselessly sick from side-effects and therefore stopped missing so much school. Slowly but surely, he stopped wincing at his pale, putrid reflection in the mirror and started spending more time in the sun. Started relaxing around his classmates and started fighting for the things he really believed in, instead of the subconscious things that haunted him. He took up weights and put energy into getting fit. Started running in the mornings and ice-skating with his sisters and being an all-around better human being. The town he grew up in may always remember his name for the delinquent things he did, but at least at this point, it would be remembered with a hint of acceptance. And maybe they’d shake their head at him from time to time, but they would with a small smile and a sigh.

  June made the most of his teen years. Trampled through high school and graduated on the honor roll so he could stand there in a cap and gown and look confidently at his parents in the audience. He got a job, started saving money, and started allowing himself to be happy again. He made amends with his former teachers and most of all with himself.

  And every summer, through the good and the bad, loving him despite all his hardships, was that cabin in the woods. That lake. That ice cream shop. Those dusty photo albums on his parents’ bookshelf. Memories and moments defining him, shaping him into who he was meant to be all along—the one place where he’d always felt whole.

  In the year of 2004, two months before June’s parents decided not to renew their contract in Bass Lake, California—thus ending their summer vacations in one messy signature—he’d found out he had six months to a year left to live.

  And that was the reason he ran away.

  For the majority of Aaron’s young life, he’d been considered a victim.

  By his parents who were overprotective and afraid the world would drag him down into muddy waters. By his peers who didn’t understand what it was like to have a mental crutch and cast him aside in some box not to be dealt with. By his therapist, who’s understanding gaze said more about how he needed to improve than how he should heal. By his cousin, who had supported him with a fire and intensity so unwavering that up until this summer, Aaron hadn’t known what it was like to stand on his own.

  Ever since he could remember, people had expected little of him. They put all their efforts into hoping he would squeak by in this unfair game called life. They didn’t see him as someone who would rise and take control or someone who could defy the odds. He wasn’t the underdog in some fictional story of growth and grandeur. He wasn’t the hero.

  People like June were supposed to be the hero.

  For the first time in Aaron’s life, rather than running away from his problems, he was thankful he had them. Because while it was unfair for him to be nineteen years old and absurdly afraid of the dark, it paled in comparison to living with the fear of death over your shoulder. And while Aaron could always outrun his self-esteem issues and trigger points, June had to live with his truth day in and day out. It was part of him. Maybe even the largest part of him.

  He was dying.

  Dying.

  Aaron had never lost anyone in his life before. Not even a pet. He didn’t have the first idea what grieving felt like; let alone how to cope with it. So when June broke down in front of him, a sobbing and violent mess, he simply sat there in shock. One hand caught motionless half extended between them, eyes wide and glossing over. He couldn’t hear anything. Just the pounding, incoherent race of thoughts through his mind. Thrashing him.

  He wanted to run.

  Years of being a helpless bystander had made Aaron good at running. Years of conditioning himself to give up and move on before things got too rough prepared him for moments like this. Taught him to use the fire escape and deploy the airbags before impact. People and experience had taught him to go. To escape the things that snapped at his heels and threatened to eat him alive. His parents, his peers, his therapist, his cousin…they’d all been part of a narrow path that led up a mountain. And now he stood at the top looking down a sheer cliffside into the abysmal darkness below, numb and stupid. Unprepared.

  Somewhere in the abyss, he saw June’s eyes. A wicked storm brewing grey and blue. Lighting flashing, wind howling, and rain flooding the earth. He saw the swell of water sweeping away everything in its path; powerful and relentless. He saw fog and smoke billowing into the mix of clouds. Hail falling sharp and objective onto everything that was not yet submerged.

  Aaron saw the madness from above. Understood for the first time, you could not contain that level of chaos. That no matter how hard you tried to keep it at bay it would rise again, painting destruction in its path. Aaron stood, still a victim, watching and waiting for it to reach him.

  He’d never know if that destruction was June’s or his own. But truth be told, it didn’t matter.

  Aaron stood at the top of that sheer cliff, no fire escape, no airbags, and no safety net. He glanced over his shoulder toward the safety of sun behind him, breathed a sweet and sorrowful goodbye, and then fell.

  June stayed in his lap for several long minutes. Aaron’s hands moved up and down his back as the storm raged on. Hot tears soaked the material of his shirt, and shallow breaths tried desperately to become words. Aaron could make out things like cancer and sorry and worst of all, scared. He aligned those pieces together and found them both disturbing and compelling. Tried to fill in the gaps of the story with his own ideas and notions of death. Found nothing he thought he knew, actually made any sense at all.

  Eventually, however, June as a whole began to make a lot more sense. The way he lashed out at people. The hesitancy to make friends. The need to argue and fight—a cruel interpretation of how he wished he could deal with his problems. Aaron could see through that. Saw that beneath the exterior of a fearless, stubborn young man there was a child who was battered and bruised. Scared to bear the storm in which he lived. Restless. Exhausted.

  Maybe June wasn’t the hero after all? Aaron considered it, and then he decided no, he was wrong. There was no such thing as heroes when it came to inner turmoil. There was just you and the people willing to stand with you.

  The boy inside of Aaron who trembled and bled in the bottom of a dark min
eshaft reached out to June. Took his hand and sat beside him. Was willing to get muddy and wet and cold if only he could share their chaos a little longer. And while he sat there, June’s warmth spread through his palm. A quiet, thankful pulse between them. Connecting them.

  “I’ll do it.” He wasn’t sure if he’d said the words out loud or not, but June must have heard him because he pulled off Aaron’s chest at that moment. Pierced him with those eyes and waited.

  “I’m gonna get over my fear of the dark,” he whispered because June was right.

  No matter what their unknown future held, Aaron would look up at that night sky and know June sat with him. Would clutch and squeeze his hand however long it took to wait out the storm. And together they would stay like that.

  Summer would come to an end. The scorch of the sun would surrender to the Earth’s rotation, and the lake would grow cold. The wind would blow a hollow, mournful September song; and across that gravel driveway, spread through the lawn and scattered over the porch would be the brittle and discarded maple leaves. Fallen in mourning for life.

  And for death.

  Neither one of them slept that night. Lost in the unknown territory of how to ask questions and how to answer them, Aaron laid with June, thinking this all had to be some horrible dream. Initially, he wanted to be angry with June for not telling him sooner. For allowing him to get in this deep. But the reality of the situation was that Aaron would have gone willingly regardless.

  June, with or without cancer, was still the wild, untamed flame he so desperately wanted to hold.

  Aaron didn’t believe in a higher power, but he did believe in fate. He liked to think everything in the world happened for a reason. That if humans were made of stardust, then the stars probably had a way of aligning people together too. The idea he walked a path with purpose comforted him, even when things got rocky. He wholeheartedly believed June had been guided to him, then given the tools to crack Aaron open and peer at his insides. His soul. June held the end of a red string fastening them together, and he yanked until Aaron came undone at his feet. Heart splattered all over the floor.