“Can we stop somewhere? I hate talking in the car; I never know where to look. I know you have to watch the road, but I feel like I’m having a conversation with the side of your face and you’re talking to the windshield.”
Gyver eased his car into the parking lot for East Lake’s “beach.” It closed at sundown, and the only other things on the pavement were litter: sunblock bottles, deflated floaties, snack wrappers.
He raised an eyebrow, waiting for me to begin. I took a sip from the water bottle in his cup holder. It was out of a need to do something, not thirst. I choked it down with an awkward coughing noise.
He snorted. “You okay?”
I didn’t want to tell him what was strangling me—saying the news aloud would make it real. I pulled my knees up and tucked them beneath my chin.
Gyver’s hair looked blue black in the glow of the parking lot’s lights. His face was a series of beautiful angles and shadows, but I could still see him as he’d been: the little boy who’d been bullied in elementary school for being named MacGyver after a cheesy eighties TV show about a guy who liked duct tape. I’d defended him then, and he’d been my best ally ever since. I needed him now.
“Remember about a week ago when you asked if Hil and I were cat fighting—because I had bruises?” I regretted my choice of openings; annoyance spilled across Gyver’s features.
“I was joking. What’s Hillary have to do with anything?” “Nothing, but your comment made me notice how much I’m bruising.” I held up my elbow as proof; showing him the purplish bull’s-eye that marked the spot I’d just banged on the door.
Gyver touched it with two cool fingers. “Are you okay, Mi?” “No.” I swallowed against the tightness in my throat, the fear that piled like stones in my stomach. “I’ve also been really tired and I had a fever. Mom and I went to the doctor and he took some blood. He called me back the next day for more. We went to Lakeside Hospital for tests yesterday—they took a sample of bone marrow from my hip. Today we met with the head of oncology.” I felt detached, as if narrating the details of someone else’s life.
“What is it? Just tell me.” His hand curled around my arm, hitting the bruise, making me wince.
“Leukemia,” I whispered, the word sharp and acidic in my mouth.
“Leukemia?” His eyebrows had disappeared under tousled hair, and his face and voice were pleading.
I forced myself to continue. “It’s called acute lymphoblastic leukemia. ALL for short. It’s blood cancer; my body’s making lots of bad white blood cells. They’re called blasts—and they’re crowding out all of my good cells.” I parroted the words the doctor used that afternoon. My voice was emotionless, but my arms were trembling. I squeezed my knees tighter and tipped my head against the cool glass of the window in a last-ditch effort to blink back tears. I hadn’t cried in the doctor’s office. Hadn’t on the drive home. Hadn’t while getting ready. But with Gyver, it seemed like the only thing left to do.
“What do the doctors say? Mi?” He sounded little-boy lost, like the first time we’d watched Bambi.
I stared at the car’s ceiling, speaking around the stutters in my breathing. “It’s aggressive. That’s the word they kept using.
‘An aggressive form of cancer,’ ‘its spread is aggressive,’ ‘we need to start aggressive treatment immediately.’ ” I shut my eyes and tears traced salt lines down my face.
“That’s why I went to the party tonight. I just needed to feel normal for a few more hours. Before my life becomes a mess of chemo and doctors and drugs.” The last barrier between me and detachment fell, and the doctor’s words hit with suffocating reality. “God . . . I have cancer.”
He tugged on my elbow and pulled me toward him. I resisted at first; his sympathy would make it harder to stop crying. His other hand closed on my shoulder, and I surrendered, allowed him to draw my head to his chest and fold his arms around me. I could feel the thud of his heart through his T-shirt, interrupted by the convulsions of my sobs and his unsteady breathing.
It grew hot in the car—late-June-in-Pennsylvania humid— and I couldn’t tell tears from sweat. I needed to stop. To calm down. I couldn’t go home blotchy and terrified. I unclenched my fingers from a fistful of his shirt, sat up, and focused on slowing my breathing and tears. I took another sip of his water and asked, “What are you thinking?”
“I’m mentally shouting every swear word I know.” He rubbed his forehead with both palms, then leaned back against the seat and shut his eyes.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Am I okay? Am I okay? Of course not, but who cares? How are you? What does all this mean?”
“I don’t really know . . . I haven’t had much time to figure it out. We’ve got piles of brochures at home, and Dad’s already ordered every book he can find.” My fingers were at my throat, twirling my necklace in frenzied loops.
“So what do we do?”
His “we” filled my eyes again and I couldn’t answer. “Mi? What happens next?”
“I check into the hospital tomorrow for more tests. I’m not coming home for a while, like, at least a month. Probably not till August. Dr. Kevin—that’s my doctor, my oncologist—said they’d keep me there so I don’t pick up infections.”
“A month! What about school? Are you going back in September?”
The mention of school sparked a different reaction. I put my feet on the floor and sat up straighter. “It’s only been a day. I don’t know. I haven’t figured out all the details yet.” I sounded angry, but the alternative was tears and I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—lose control again.
He sighed and squeezed my shoulder. “Mi, I can’t believe this.”
“Get this, my horoscope today was: ‘Kick back and enjoy the flood of contentedness! It’s a great day to appreciate what you’ve got and stop worrying about getting more.’ ” I stared out at the litter-strewn parking lot. A lonely toddler-sized flip-flop. A cracked sand pail.
“I don’t know why you read those. They’re crap.”
“Maybe. Or maybe the point is I should start appreciating my life, because this is as good as it’s going to get.” My words slipped from bitter to wistful.
“Don’t,” Gyver warned.
“Don’t what?” I peeled my eyes away from the beach debris. “Don’t you dare start looking for pessimistic signs. You’re going to be fine.”
The windows were fogging, obscuring the lake from my view. “I need . . . I need air.” I pushed the door open and stum- bled into the humid night. Wiping my eyes, I crossed to a picnic table and sat facing the lake.
“Here. Drink.” Gyver handed me his water bottle and sat on the tabletop.
We faced each other in a showdown of fear. I spoke first. “I don’t want to go home yet.”
“Understandable. How are your parents? I can’t believe they let you go out tonight. Well, actually, I can.” I looked away from the ripples on the lake and up at his disapproving frown.
“Dad’s turned into Captain Cancer Facts—charts and spreadsheets in full force. And Mom? She’s alternating between hysterics and a Prozac-fueled insistence that I’m going to be fine. When I left she was taking a bubble bath to ‘calm herself down,’ and Dad was cooking dinner with a spoon in one hand and a pamphlet in the other. There wasn’t room for my reaction—I had to get out of there.” I rolled the bottle between my hands and fussed with the sand at my feet, creating furrows with my toe and then smoothing them flat.
“Oh, Mi.” Gyver, with his perfect parents, shouldn’t be able to understand mine, but he’d spent enough time around my mom’s melodrama and my dad’s analytics to nod with comprehension. “You should’ve called me, or just come over.”
“I should’ve. Is your mom going to make a big deal out of tonight?” My parents might accept that parties were a part of high school, but his mother—the chief of police—never would. Living next door to Chief Russo meant D.A.R.E. lectures at neighborhood barbecues. “I don’t think I can handle her yelling right now.”
“Don’t worry about her. It’s not a big deal,” he reassured me.
“I guess not, comparatively.” I kicked at the pile I’d built beneath the bench and watched the sand scatter into darkness.
Gyver reached out to touch my shoulder. “I’m here.”
“Thanks.” I leaned my cheek against his hand and took a deep breath. It stirred the faintest sense of comfort, the first flicker of reassurance. “You have your guitar with you, right?”
“I’ve got my acoustic in the car.”
“Can you play me that song? Do you know it?” It had seemed scarily appropriate: “blood,” “fear,” words whose definitions had changed overnight. Knowing the singer had faced this too, I needed to look for more signs in the lyrics.
He’d already pulled a pick from his pocket and was twirling it as if this were any other night and this were any song request. Then he paused, “You really want to hear it again?”
“Please.”
He squeezed my shoulder before backtracking to the car. After finishing the water, I fiddled with the empty bottle, spun it, and told myself if it stopped with the cap facing me, my friends would take the news well. If it stopped facing the lake they wouldn’t. It twirled an irregular circuit across the table. I held my breath.
Before it finished rotating, Gyver plucked it off the sun- bleached boards and tossed it into the recycle can. “You want to play spin the bottle?” he joked, then saw my stricken face and gestured to the guitar. “You sure, Mi?”
I nodded.
No matter which singer he covered, I preferred his version to the original. A girl could fall in love with a voice like his and lose herself in his performance. Not tonight. His deep voice was unsteady—it cracked on the first line and broke the word “hopeless” in half. Normally his eye contact was electric, but tonight he looked away as he sang.
When he got to the chorus, his intensity was intimidating— until he choked and stopped playing. I wasn’t surprised to find tears blurring my view of the lake, but I was shocked when he looked up and he was crying too.
I wanted to hug him—to remove the guitar strap from his neck and drape myself around it instead—but I couldn’t move. I’d made Gyver cry. The knowledge reverberated somewhere beneath my rib cage with an ache too intense to name.
Gyver put the guitar on the tabletop and moved to sit on the bench next to me. I tilted my head against his shoulder. He slipped an arm around me and leaned his head against mine. We stared out at the water, united in our fear. The silence was filled with the chirps of crickets and the splash of fish surfacing to swallow mosquitoes.
“I think you’re wrong,” I whispered.
Gyver eased his head off mine and examined my face. He smiled, but it faded before erasing any of the pain from his eyes. “You usually do. What am I wrong about this time?”
“It’s not an angry song. It’s a sad, scared song. You’ve got it on the wrong playlist.”
