Dessert First (24 page)

I typed to Hunter late that night. After the part of my brain that stops the rest of my brain from blurting out the truth had gotten too tired to stop me.

K:
Can I send you one message
?
Then have us both forget about it and never talk about it again?

H:
OK (*her DBF is a little curious and maybe afraid*) 'Sup?

K:
I'm not sure I can handle your dying. Or be there for you. I like you way too much. I thought I was stronger, but I'm broken inside. Even thinking about it. Even when I'm not thinking about it. Maybe I'm just broken.

H:
Is this the “it's not you, it's me” speech? Are you breaking up with me?

K:
No. No. No. No!

H:
OK. Cool. (Actually, yay!) Then—what?

K:
I don't know. It's that I pretend to be together. I mean together as a person.
Not just as a couple. Tough, been-there cancer sib. Maybe, compared to people who don't know anything about blood counts, I do know something. But I'm only me. Kat. Who can't get her homework done. I'm not sure I can do this.

H:
Nobody can do more than they can. Just do what you can, Sarcasm Angel.

K:
At least I'm using my awesome sarcasm powers for good, to entertain you.

H:
See—that's enough. It's more than enough. It's one of the best things I've got left. You're up there way above ice cream. Or anything.

K:
(*Kat's heart cracks
.
It will be broken later.*)

H:
Then it's good you won my heart in an online bet—a spare!

K:
Not sure it works that way
.

H:
Sure it does. Just imagine it that way. Like the taste of ice cream.

I was almost empty. I talked Beep through it. I couldn't do that again. Too soon. But that's not what I typed.

K:
I'll try. But don't expect much. I'm. Just. Me. And kind of broken. P.S. This conversation never happened. (*Kat snaps her fingers. 3000 miles away, her DBF begins to forget…*)

H:
What conversation? Depending on the day, I'm so spacey I can't remember anything.

K:
Always remember someone here is thinking about you.

H:
Some nights that by itself is enough.

Evan changed the subject when I mentioned Hunter, and I almost never talked to Evan about him anyway.

Dr. Anne kept suggesting, in that therapist-asking-a-question way, that I was bug nuts crazy, for being involved with Hunter, so soon after Beep died. (She didn't actually use the words “bug nuts” or “crazy,” but her eyebrows crawled into her hairline every time I mentioned him.) She had this weird notion that since I was in treatment for depression and anger issues, what with my brother dying and my flunking out, it might not be ideal to pile a long-distance dying sort-of boyfriend onto the heap. Apparently, they cover common sense in Ph.D. school.

Rachel got annoyed with how my next door clickety-click late-night typing to Hunter supposedly came through the wall to her bedroom and kept her awake. Also, she didn't quite get it, because what's the point of a boyfriend if you can't use him to collect neck hickeys?

Mom was the worst. After fluttering around for months like a giant moth, bumping over and over again into the topic of why I spent all my time messaging a sick boy instead of typing my massive make-up paper, she crashed into the walls for weeks in general Mom freak-out mode, which Rachel enjoyed. Little sis Kat was finally getting Mom meltdown-over-boy action, without even one little lip kiss. Story of my life. Mom finally tried a full-on intervention. She cornered me in my room, before another Skype-and-email night with Hunter.

She was, she made clear,
way
not okay with the DBF.

“Relax,” I said. There wasn't much chance of pregnancy or Other Terrible Things, because of how Hunter was (1) infertile, because of chemo and radiation; (2) probably without fully-working guy parts, because he was so sick; and (3) oh, 3000 miles away. “He'll probably be dead in a few weeks anyway.”

“That's what I'm worried about. How will you be, when he dies?”

“Sad,” I said. “I have practice.”

“You know, honey—you can always talk to me about it. If you're feeling overwhelmed.”

I looked up at the ceiling and wrinkled my forehead into a worried-about-your-nonexistent-sanity look. Mom's scale of 1 to 10 freak-out meter was permanently stuck at 15. She's not who you talk to about difficult stuff.

She looked forlorn. “Or at least talk it over with Dr. Anne.”

“I do.”

“Oh. I'm sorry, Kat. We haven't really been . . . With Beep sick . . .” She trailed off and tugged her hair. “I haven't been a good Mom to you. Not through this whole—”

“You've been fine. Good. It's been hard on everybody.”

“Is this Hunter thing really about Beep?” she asked. “To keep Beep alive?”

It's nice, after Mom manages to make sense for a whole minute, that she veers back into nonsense land, to remind me she's Mom. “No. That's
not
what this is about. Beep's dead. That's why we keep his ashes in the urn. In case we get confused.”

• • •

I Skyped with Hunter about it that night. “On the plus side, even my Mom thinks it's a bad idea to hang out online with you. So it couldn't be
completely
crazy. Everyone is worried, though, like I'll completely crack up when you die.”

“Will you?”

“Maybe. Or I've bottomed out already. How about you get well, so we don't find out?”

Hunter was quiet. He bit his lip.

“Unless, I mean,” I said, “that would interfere with your summer job, collecting the life insurance.”

He laughed, but it was a nervous one, not a ha-ha funny one. “I'd like you to stick around. If you can. Until I can't.”

“Sure. I can do anything, if it involves not doing homework.”

As if.

“We're stopping,” Hunter said at the end of that week. “No more dialysis or transfusions. I get to go home. If there's a problem, I won't come back.”

That meant hospice. Beyond do not resuscitate. No more intervention. Dying. “Oh, God.”

“My only hope left is a miracle,” the smile was in his voice. “And you're taking God's name in vain?”

It probably was in vain, even if that counted as a prayer. “I've got no pull with God. It's been tested. If I did, I'd still have a brother.”

“You do still have a brother. He's just dead.” He paused. “You know, if I die, you still get to call me your DBF. ‘Dead' and ‘Dying' both start with D.”

He was trying to cheer us up. But that was
my
job, and both of us were failing. He paused for a while, then kept his voice light. “You think you could fly out here in the next week? To say hi—bye. In person? Get to meet?” I was silent for so long, stretching to seconds, he jumped back in. “Look—sorry. Silly idea. I know it's—I didn't mean to . . .”

“No, it's a really sweet idea. A nice idea.” Nice except for Mom's limitless freakout, over my flying alone out to the East Coast—to visit a guy I met online. Or, more likely, Mom coming with me, which would mean flying cross-country with her whacked-out self and anxiety disorder. Way fun. How would I pay for it? What did plane tickets even cost? And I'm not sure I could do it. Seeing Hunter might rip my heart out of my chest. “But I don't think so. I don't think . . . I can.”

It was his turn for a long silence. “Okay.” He tried to make his voice cheerful. It sounded like an effort. “Well, think about it. If something could magically work out.”

“If I get one bit of magic, I'm making you well.”

“You said it yourself: You work miracles, but they don't let you pick which ones.”

“Well, if I get a vote. How long?”

“Maybe days. Couple weeks. A month. Depends on my liver. And whether I get pneumonia. But probably before the cancer messes up my brain. So I'll still be me.”

“Well there's a relief.” That had to be last-place finish for the silver lining award. “
That's
good.”

He laughed. “I'm okay with it. Really. You know, finally.”

I wanted to come up with something positive, but the best I could do was edgy. “If you
don't
get a miracle, Hunter, this death thing better work out for you, or I'll kick your dead grandmother's ass so hard she craps dentures for eternity.”

Hunter laughed, bless his kind soul, but the sound couldn't carry over the crash and splat of my breaking heart.

While Mom was chopping endless vegetables for Rachel that night, to make some dish that looked like the farmer's market compost bin, I asked whether I could go see Hunter before he died. She made a sour small mouth expression, like she swallowed spoiled milk. Or vegan imitation milk.

“Not appropriate,” she started, putting down the knife. Which was good, because she waved her arms once she got wound up. Mom covered loud topics ranging from no way to never, to not possible, to hell no, to not when hell freezes over, starting with why sixteen-year-old girls did not fly across country to visit boys they'd never met, to the cost, to how if I couldn't even do my homework she wasn't rewarding me with an expense-paid trip.

Rachel was smirking, enjoying that for once someone else was getting a hard time for wanting to go pretty far in the boy department.

“So,” I cut in, when Mom paused for a breath. “I take that as no.”

Mom was winding up for more. “Another thing—”

“Got it, Mom. It's no. I understand: No way. Ever.”

She wanted to keep going, but I walked out.

I typed an email to Hunter that I'd asked about coming to see him, but my Mom said no.

What I didn't mention was an awful true thing: I was relieved. But at the same time felt, for letting Hunter down, like a screw-up and a bad person. As usual.

That night I wandered down to borrow Beep off the mantle, thinking that hanging out with his remains would leave me feeling slightly less awful and alone. But Rachel had the living room fully occupied, sitting in the chair closest to Beep-in-a-bottle on the mantle, reading
The Sun Also Rises
for her English class. The only reason Rachel hung out in the living room was to be near Beep, even though she pretended that wasn't. So I didn't have the heart to steal him. Instead, I sat down in the other chair.

She looked up, like she was going to skewer me with an icy Rachel glare, but when she saw my haircut struggling back toward normalcy, I guess she decided to have pity on me instead. She nose-exhaled a long sigh, and then said, “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Probably not. I'm flunking out and a total screw-up.” Now I was even disappointing a dying guy 3000 miles away. Maybe I was bad for cancer patients. Rachel, by comparison, was getting straight-As and—in a new personal record—was still together with Brian, after six months. She looked almost infinitely sad, though, her mouth turned down and her eyes desolate.

“Are
you
okay?” I asked.

“No.” She looked surprised the word had escaped.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “You've got lots—” I waved a hand in a circle toward her, to take in her gorgeousness, her hard work, her basic non-screw-up self “—going for you. You'll be okay.”

She looked at me as if I'd described a stranger.

“You will,” I repeated. Then we both looked up at Beep, there on the mantle in his little urn, like he could add to the conversation.

She shook her head, as though my sisterly words of encouragement were too stupid to respond to. She looked scared. The silence after that weighed on me so much, after a minute I was surprised I could stand. “Well, g'night.”

“G'night, Sis,” she said, so quietly I could barely hear it.

You can call nights good as much as you want. They are what they are, though, when you realize there's still a Beep-sized hole in your sister, too.

'

This next part is about, well, me being Evil. Not Kat-is-snarky evil, or even the Tracies-are-mean-to-less-popular-girls evil. Worse. So awful it excused everything the Tracies or Rachel ever did to me.

I bailed on Hunter, right before he died.

I. Totally. Bailed. Right at the freaking end.

Me, who was upset when I thought one or two docs stopped coming around so much when it got clear Beep wasn't going to make it. Me, who was blowing off my schoolwork to be online with Hunter. Me, who was all about the cancer blog and
not
bailing right there at the end.

But spring vacation was coming, and Mom and Dad decided we would backpack and camp near Yosemite. They'd gotten a permit, a year in advance, when there was some hope Beep would be well, and in all the craziness forgot to cancel it. They decided why not—let's go march around in big circles, snore at each other in small tents, and listen to Rachel swear at animals. We'd get to see the Milky Way every night and think about Beep.