But it wasn’t like we were geeks, exactly. We were normal, nice-looking, red-blooded American high-school juniors who just happened to have been overlooked in the great pairing lottery. Each of us knew her prince would come. We just figured they were taking the scenic route.
At that moment my ten-year-old sister appeared in the doorway. She expertly spun a basketball on her index finger. “You have the most disgusting grin on your face. Sort of like a stoned cow.”
“Did Izzy call?” I asked. There was no point in responding to her. Sara was going through an obnoxious phase. Near as I could pinpoint, it had started sometime around conception.
“What am I, your social secretary?” Sara stroked Snickers’s chin. “I was shooting hoops.”
“She’s probably still at the eye doctor,” I said. I passed her Snickers’s saddle. Sara scowled, but she dropped her basketball and took the saddle into the large storage room that doubled as a tack room.
“Izzy getting glasses?” Sara called.
“Not at this rate,” I said. “She has these headaches, and she’s gone to, like, three eye doctors, but Iz refuses to believe them when they say she needs glasses.”
Sara returned and straddled a bench. “Can I take Snickers out for a while?”
“I just cooled her down, Sara.” I led Snickers into her stall. “And you know the deal. You help with feeding and grooming her and mucking out her stall, you can ride her all you want. You don’t, no deal.”
She sat there practicing her laser-guided hate looks, a shorter, ganglier version of me. Same light brown hair, same gray eyes, same sweet, wholesome looks that made grandmothers pinch my cheek and guys yawn. I didn’t hate her the way she seemed to hate me, but then I wasn’t ten, the age when you aren’t afraid to say what you’re really feeling. Around Sara I just felt … well, confused. Usually, I had a pretty good instinct for what was going on in other people’s heads. But communicating with my little sister was like trying to get through to an annoying, untrainable, occasionally vicious pet.
“Have I mentioned lately that I detest you, Al?” Sara said by way of good-bye.
I went to the tack room and settled on a trunk, breathing in the rich, sweet smell of leather and saddle soap. I pushed four, Izzy’s speed-dial number on the portable phone. Lauren, Izzy’s mom, answered. Izzy was at the library, she told me. Her voice was subdued, soft around the edges. I could hear sobbing in the background, punctuated by Spanish.
“Is that Rosa?” I asked, a flutter of worry in my stomach. Rosa was Izzy’s Cuban aunt, who shared their waterfront condo.
“Yes, dear.”
Lauren never called me “dear.” It wasn’t her style. “Is everything all right?”
“I have to go now. Isabella’s at the library. You can talk to her there.” A fresh wail in the background. “Really, now, I have to go.”
I listened to the dial tone. Someone must have died, was all I could figure. One of Rosa’s relatives back in Cuba, maybe. Izzy’s dad, a well-known fiction writer, had come to the United States from Cuba many years ago. Her mother, who’d edited his books for the U.S. market, had helped arrange the whole thing. It was all very romantic, I thought. First to fall in love with his ideas, his words. Then him. Very bigger-than-life.
I grabbed the keys to the station wagon and promised my mom I’d be back in time for dinner.
Way back when, my parents, who shared a thriving veterinary practice, had used the aging wagon for occasional emergencies. It had once even played ambulance for a goat who’d eaten a Tupperware tub full of lentil pilaf. It smelled a little rank, but I’d convinced my parents to keep it around as an extra family car. It wasn’t the sexiest transportation on earth, but at least I had wheels.
The New College library was virtually empty; it was almost dinnertime. I found Izzy at her usual carrel, a nice corner spot without the distraction of a window view. She was hunched over, her long hair obscuring her face. I envied Izzy’s beauty sometimes, the exotic darkness from her father, the fragile intensity from her mother. Her face was long, her eyes deep-set. She was tall, very tall, and elegant without being self-conscious. It was an intimidating beauty, one that seemed to keep guys at bay. Still, I would have given anything to slip into her skin for a day.
Piles of books, thick ones with wordy titles, filled the carrel. I dropped my backpack on one of them. “Iz,” I said, “what’s the most bizarre thing on earth I could tell you?”
She looked up from a book. Her eyes were bloodshot. Drops at the ophthalmologist’s, probably, but there was something else there that made me uneasy. “You’ve discovered a cure for cancer,” she said.
“You okay, Iz? Is something going on, I mean? I called your house and I could have sworn I heard Rosa crying.”
“She’s always crying. She cries over that cotton commercial with all the old people.”
“That’s what I figured.” I nodded at the books. “What’s the deal? You’re not doing some extra-credit stuff for Leach’s class, are you? You’re going to make the rest of us look like slugs.”
“Just a little light reading.” Her voice was not quite hers, I realized. It was like a message on an answering machine. I scanned the titles. Principles and Practice of Clinical Oncology. The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. Radiation and Chemotherapy: Therapeutic Advances.
Something began to coil inside me, tightening, twisting, hurting. “Iz?” I said. “What did the eye doctor say?”
Izzy closed her book. “What’s the most bizarre thing on earth I could possibly tell you?” she said, and then she began to cry.
I drove Izzy to Turtle Beach, because the sun was going down and the ocean was quiet and it was the only thing I could think of to do.
We went to our usual spot, a gentle dune where we’d watched a loggerhead turtle lay her eggs in the glittering moonlight the previous May.
This was the place where we’d cried over bad grades and parental injustice and unrequited love. We’d discussed the eternal, slippery mystery of the ages—Guys: Why Are They Such Weenies? We’d mapped out college. We’d planned our brilliant careers. We’d written our joint Nobel acceptance speech and named our children (Izzy liked Guinevere, but I figured it was just a phase).
We’d allowed for the occasional setback—the males who resisted women in science, the costs of our education, the juggling of multiple loves on multiple continents.
We’d just never thought to allow for brain cancer.
The sun boiled into the horizon. We buried our feet in the floury sand. Mostly we cried. We did not speak. There were too many questions, no answers.
Izzy finally broke the silence, laughing at two gulls fighting over a piece of seaweed.
At the sound of her deep laugh, I realized I was furious. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded in a choked voice. “You knew, Iz. You’ve been going for tests—you weren’t going to an eye doctor. That time you got dizzy after PE and said it was your period.… You must have thought I was so stupid.” I was babbling as tears rolled down my cheeks. “I was so stupid. You’re my best friend, you jerk.”
She turned her placid gaze on me. “Was there a complete thought in there somewhere?”
I felt terrible. Everything I said mattered. This would be the scene where I Found Out, and I’d blown it already, yelling at Izzy when she needed me. There could be other scenes, scenes at the hospital, chemo or radiation maybe, and I would have to handle them better. I wanted to do this right, to be there for her until she was okay again.
“God, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m a jerk. I just started thinking about you worrying, with no one to talk to, and at least I could have worried with you.”
“What point would there have been in both of us freaking?” Izzy asked calmly. “The first two doctors were telling me all kinds of things: it was nerves, it was stress, I needed glasses, I had the flu. And then they did the EEG and the MRI and a bunch of other tests with multiple letters, and the odds were so long that I figured …”
She shrugged. “There’s still plenty of time to worry.”
She watched the waves weaving in and out of each other. Then she looked at me, straight on. “Five or six months, anyway.”
Five or six. Till summer, then. “You mean, six months until you’re all better,” I said, hoping I was right, knowing I wasn’t.
She shook her head, almost imperceptibly.
“Until you’re in remission, then.”
“Until I’m worm food,” Izzy said. She chewed on a thumbnail. “Although one textbook I read said three months, four at the outside. Statistically speaking, that seems to be the norm. It varies a lot, of course. I’m just assuming the worst.”
“Shut up, Izzy. Shut up. This is not about statistics. This is you. You are not going to die, not tomorrow, not in four months or six months or six years.” I took her hand and held it so hard she winced. “Doctors can be wrong, they’re wrong all the time. They tell people this crap and then their patients end up outliving them.”
Izzy sighed. “Al, that happened on The Young and the Restless last summer.”
“Still, you can’t know this for sure,” I said. “They have to do biopsies. You don’t even know if it’s malignant yet.”
“True. But judging from what I know so far … I’m just saying it’s likely that the prognosis isn’t all that promising.”
The air was wet and thick. My breath came in gasps. “What is the matter with you?” I struggled to my feet, gesturing wildly. “You’re acting like this is a done deal, like it’s over.”
“It’s just that I’ve had a while to let it sink in. A couple of weeks ago, they told us this was likely. Today was just the grand finale. Give it time.”
“No, I will not give it time!” I was screaming.
“The problem is,” Izzy continued philosophically, “nobody talks about dying. I mean, let’s face it, it’s a bummer. I’d rather talk about Congress, or Eddie Vedder, or those sandals at Dillard’s—you know, the black ones that cost about two thousand bucks?” She lay back in the sand. In the waning light, her dark hair could have been a pool of water. “We pretend we’re immortal because it’s easier.”
“We are immortal, Izzy, we’re juniors.”
She smiled.
I tried again. “They’re doing all that gene research. You could get into one of those experimental drug projects.”
“Yeah, I asked my doc about it. I’m going to Miami for more tests. Maybe I’ll ask there. Of course, even if I did get into one, there’s no guarantee it’d work.” She rolled onto her side. “But I’d like to feel … you know, like I’d done my part for science and all that. I would rather have found the cure for cancer myself, but hey, I’ll be a guinea pig if I have to.”
I dropped to my knees. The sand was already cool, but the sky still simmered with color.
“That’s the only thing that pisses me off,” Izzy said softly. “I wanted to do … well, great things.”
I sat beside her. “Iz, you are great things already.”
“You can do the great things for both of us,” Izzy said. “Don’t forget the twin guys in Paris, okay?”
“You are not gone. You are here. You are going to get better.”
“Also, the skydiving. No, let’s make the skydiving optional. The twins are enough pressure.”
“I want to start this day over,” I said. “I want to backspace it out of existence.”
Suddenly I thought of Sam. He had been part of this day too, this day I wanted to erase. I tried to remember his quiet smile or the feel of my arms around his waist, but all I could remember was his bike flying through the air in a beautiful, deadly arc.
The moon was getting braver, taking on color and light. Izzy pointed to the spot where the turtles had hatched the summer before. “Think they’ll come back?”
“They always do. Late spring they start laying, remember?”
Izzy nodded. “Think I’ll see them hatch?”
“You’ll see them.”
“If I don’t,” Izzy whispered, “you can do it for me, Al. The twins, the skydiving, the turtles. Don’t forget, okay? Especially the twins.”
“You’ll be here. You can do it yourself.”
“Maybe you’re right. You couldn’t handle twins.”
“Please, Izzy. Hope. For me. It’s way too soon to stop hoping.”
Izzy sat up. She shook sand out of her hair. We watched the moon trip lightly along the water. I cried softly. Izzy just hugged her knees, swaying slightly. I could feel her watching me.
“When do the turtles hatch?” she asked.
“Mid- or late summer.”
“Sooner, ever?”
“Not usually.”
Izzy nodded, as if she’d come to a decision. “Okay, then,” she said. “Okay, Al. I’ll be here.”
Chapter 3
WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, everyone at school knew about Izzy. Rumors about Iz replaced rumors about Sam. She had three weeks to live, she really had AIDS, her cancer was catching—you name it, we heard it. It was so completely horrible it was almost funny.
Izzy’s parents arranged for her to have surgery at a medical center in Miami. The surgeon came highly recommended and was doing some interesting work with brain tumors, Izzy told me brightly. Iz actually seemed excited about getting to hang out at such a swell facility. She was even hoping to get a tour of their lab. I wondered if maybe she was in denial. While the rest of us were so frantic, she was … well, just Iz.
Wednesday, Izzy insisted on coming to school, even though she and her parents had a four P.M. flight to Miami. She had a physics test that morning she didn’t want to miss. Afterward we sat under a palm tree, having lunch. Neither of us was very hungry.
“Are you nervous?” I asked her.
“Nervous? Just ’cause some stranger’s going to drill a hole in my head and scoop out a handful of brain? Nah, I’m not nervous. Now, if I were having a nose job, then I’d be nervous.”
Izzy brushed a long wisp of hair out of her eyes. When she came back from Miami, all her hair would be gone. I thought she would still look beautiful, and I told her so.
“Just promise me this, Al. If I come out of surgery a cauliflower, make them yank the plug.” She tossed her lunch into the trash. “I told my parents the same thing, but you know how attached parents can get to their kids. I mean it. If I come out drooling—or if suddenly I start watching lame reality shows or something—put me out of my misery.”
I managed something between choking and laughter.
“No, I’m serious,” she insisted. “Promise.”
“I promise.” I was glad we were both wearing shades. I didn’t want to see her eyes.
Izzy leaned close. “Dark, brooding semistranger at three o’clock.”
I followed her gaze. Sam. It was the first time I’d seen him since that afternoon in the grove. He’d probably been cutting classes again.
I hadn’t even mentioned him to Izzy. Somehow all those new, amazing feelings about Sam had gotten lost in all the worry about Iz.
He was leaning against the spiny trunk of a nearby palm, maybe looking at us, maybe not. He was wearing sunglasses too.
The damp breeze played with his hair.
“Bad Boy Sam,” Izzy said. She pushed down her sunglasses. “You know, I kind of like the look of that guy.”
“Sam?” I asked neutrally. “How come?”
“Well, when you’re freakishly tall, it sort of limits your options, Al. He has the definite advantage of being over six feet.” She repositioned her glasses and turned onto her side. “And he’s got one of those great smiles. Like he knows some really juicy secret but he’s not going to let you in on it. Plus,” she added, “there’s that Harley. Guaranteed to piss off Mom.”
“I think his Harley is out of commission.” As soon as I said the words I wanted to swallow them. This was a stupid time to bring up my infatuation with Sam. I wanted to discuss it with Izzy, but not just then, not that day of all days.
“Ye
ah? How do you know?”
I plucked at a piece of grass. “I saw him crash it. In that grove where I go riding. It was totaled, pretty much.”
“You’re kidding. Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“Well …” I paused. “It was Monday.”
“Oh.” Izzy nodded. “So what happened?”
“He bled on my T-shirt.”
“Very Rescue 911. Is that it?” She grinned. “No mouth-to-mouth? No CPR on that smooth, firm young chest?”
“Nothing life-threatening.”
She cast me a questioning look. “Do I take it sparks flew?”
“No sparks, Iz,” I lied. “He came, he crashed, he bled. That’s it.”
“Good, because I’m thinking maybe I’ll just saunter on over there and ask him out. ‘Hey, baybee, I know your Harley’s dead, but maybe you could still take me for a ride.’ ”
“Yeah, right.”
“Too much?” She shrugged. “What do I care, anyway? You know, I believe the specter of death is liberating. What’s the worst that could happen? I ask him out, he says no, I die. I ask him out, he says yes, I die. Either way, the rejection part is sort of small potatoes in the grand picture, no?”
“Are you serious?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore, Al.”
She lay back on the grass and sighed. “You think I’ll die a virgin?”
“Yeah, I’d lay odds on it. But I’m figuring you’ll be about ninety.”
Izzy laughed. “You’re such an optimist.”
“I am an optimist. And I wish you’d see the light and convert.”
“I wish I could. It must be nice to assume that if you just think good thoughts and say the right things, everything will turn out peachy keen.”
The edge of sarcasm hurt. “You make me sound like some New Age Marcia Brady,” I said.
“Quiet, Marcia.” Izzy nudged me. “Look who’s limping over.”
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