Dessert First (6 page)

We shuffled over to our old lunch spot and sat on the bench, but in silence. When I pulled it out, my peanut butter and jam sandwich was mashed so hard from my clutching it through my lunch bag, it was oozing purple jam from four finger-dent wounds.

Evan finally broke the silence. “I have a chocolate bar. You should eat it instead. It has your name on it.” He set a Kit Kat bar next to me, a peace offering.

I laughed. That wasn't a cure-all, but it was something. Which was nice, because the day got worse from there.

• • •

After lunch, while Evan went off to his class, I was opening my locker when my phone rang. It was Mom, who thinks it's rude to call during the school day, so this was bad. “Beep's doing terribly.” Her voice was urgent. Beep was in the PICU, but not responding to the antibiotic. They'd stopped the chemo, to give him a chance to beat the infection before they poisoned him more. One of the docs had told Mom to consider having a priest give Beep last rites, in case. So I should probably go there right after school. Even Dad was on the way, leaving work early.

My locker is outside in a hallway, next to Kayla Southerland's. If it wasn't for my homework holiday, Kayla would be the official screw-up girl of our class. She gets in actual fights, and once showed up with a black eye. I used to think she and I might become friends, but when she gets cranky, I get cranky right back. Now she's especially mean to me, since I'm the only girl who's more of a social outcast than she is. Also, I might have commented a few times on her makeup.

I froze, after hanging up from the call. I couldn't remember what book I was supposed to be pulling out, and I guess my open locker door was in her way. Kayla banged it hard to shut it, but it bounced right back, off my arm.

She glared at me through her hand-trowel makeup. “Move it, Crazy Kat.”

“What?” That nickname just never got old. When I turned to her, she must have seen I was crying, but it's probably harder to tell without a smudgy giant river of running mascara.

“What's your problem, freak?” This, from the girl whose look was scary clown.

“My brother's sick with cancer.”

“Ooh.” She shrank back and wiped the hand she'd used to shove my locker door on her pants, like she'd catch it, from skin contact.

“Cancer's not contagious.” I grabbed her by the shirt and stepped so close she flinched. “And it's not like bad manners and bad makeup.” I let her go with a push. “You don't already have it.”

I closed my locker without getting whatever stupid book I was supposed to grab. Ignoring Kayla's hostile squawks, I walked home, so I could get my bike and go to BART and Muni and UCSF to see Beep. And so I wouldn't beat Kayla stupid. Or more stupid.

Not yet, anyway.

With over a hundred copies fluttering around the halls last year and others passed in class for reader comments, almost everyone at my school had had a chance to read the extended slut-shaming fiction about me by Curtis Warren, complete with creative spelling and even more creative description of my supposed moaning.

Here's what really happened:

Freshman year, just before Evan got together with Tracie and before the Evan-and-the-Tracies friendship meltdown when everyone started hating me, I got invited to a party at Cindy Cruller's. I went, because Evan might be there, and I somehow thought it was a good idea to show up to a party he was invited to. Except he never showed up. Being popular, I guess he already knew those things were dull.

The point of parties at Cindy's house, which I didn't know back then, was that her mom's idea of “supervision” was to wander around with a tall glass of vodka, pretending it was water. Then pretend she was still in high school, refill the glass, pretend that she wasn't laughing too loud, pound down a third, and then finally stagger upstairs to hide, embarrassed. Which, for the record, is pathetic.

Evan wasn't there, so while I waited for him to not show up, I talked to Curtis Warren, who was at least sometimes funny. I used to think Curtis and I were in a friendly competition for class clown, about who was funniest (which I totally win, since most of my jokes don't involve fart noises). I also thought Curtis sort of liked me, because of my sense of humor. With some guys, though, when they say they like girls with a sense of humor, they mean they'd like a girl who laughs at their jokes, not tops them. Curtis hunches with his shoulders rolled forward, and his ears stick out so much, they look like they're mounted sideways. Coupled with his prominent front teeth, the look is skinny gerbil. Not ideal for attracting the ladies, even without the fart jokes, which he managed two of, while we were talking.

Anyway, I was making Curtis laugh, feeling awkward, clutching a red plastic cup of Hawaiian Punch and looking around for Evan. Curtis finished his rum and coke and asked if I wanted to go to the back yard, “to see Cindy's fountain.”

That sounded slightly less stupid than craning my neck around her living room, looking for Evan until I pulled a back muscle, so I said sure. On our way out, Curtis stumbled down the back steps, which made me wonder how much he'd had to drink.

Okay—I had never before (or, let's face it, since) been invited to a party at Cindy's. I had no idea—
at all
—that wandering out to the dark back yard was code for being willing to have Curtis try to tickle my tonsils. With his tongue.

We were outside in the semi-dark back yard for fifteen long, awkward minutes of halting conversation, while I came up with various ways to make fun of the gurgling fountain and Curtis got even more fidgety, as if he was nervous or scared.
Was he afraid of the dark?
I wondered. Then I wondered if Evan had arrived at the party and was somewhere in the house behind us, while I was out here babbling bad jokes about fountains. “Uh, should we go back in?” I asked.

“Kat,” Curtis said, with stress in his voice. I looked at him, and he grabbed the back of my head, pulled my face down toward his, and tried to kiss me, with his tongue already sticking out. Eww.

I turned my face away, so he mostly got the side of my mouth, with his slimy tongue pressed against my cheek like a slug. I tried to pull away, but he was holding the back of my head and trying to press my face into his, trying to lock lips again, his breath smelling like rum and corn chips. The grabbing, pulling thing crossed over into
way
not okay, and I took a step back, but his hand was tangled in my hair and he was still trying to pull me toward him for the kiss. He got the footwork wrong, so my move pulled him forward and off balance. He tripped and fell.

I took two more steps backward, like I was afraid his tongue would keep slithering after me like a little poisonous snake, then stared down at him, sprawled on the path and in the shrubs.

“Wow, some fountain,” I said, before he could pick himself up or I could think of something more appropriate. “It must even have a frog.
Something
tried to catch me with a slimy tongue.” Then I fled back into the house.

Not the most thoughtful response.

But not as awful as his, eventually.

When I came back in through the door, people were looking over expectantly, some nudging each other. Then I got it—apparently everyone but me knew that when you disappear to the back yard, it's for the zoning: It's make-out city, protected by darkness and two steps down, so even Cindy's drunken mom can't stumble down to “supervise” you groping each other. Which was a shame, because, at a minimum, Curtis needed some coaching.

A minute later Curtis came in, pink-faced, glaring. His look said
I'll get you for this.

And by the next Monday, he had. Scattered in the hallways at school were hundreds of photocopies of his two-page description of how he supposedly had sex with me in Cindy's back yard. Later that week, Evan got together with Tracie for the first time.

The next day, on a different antibiotic, Beep crawled back from the gray edge of death. Which was great, because it let the hospital get back to the urgent business of nearly killing him with the chemo drugs—so cancer would finally realize he was a bad neighborhood and move out for good.

I dragged myself to the curb for morning carpool. At school, Kayla Southerland was waiting for me by my locker, which was now graffiti-covered, illustrated with a large cartoon cat in black marker and the oversized angular letters “Crazy Kat” below. Payback for yesterday's grab-and-insult?

“Nice.” I pulled my World History book out and stuffed my backpack in. I shut my locker.

Kayla continued to slouch there, smirking. She's an art kid, always drawing in the margins of her notebook. And the Crazy Kat writing looked like hers.

“You're really good with drawing.” I tilted my head and pretended to admire her cartoon cat—which was nicely done, and definitely crazy-looking. “So I can't figure out why you're so awful with eyeliner and mascara. Really. Your eyes are like little fishbowls of dead rainbow trout.”

She frowned, then turned to go. I walked alongside. “What do you call today's look? Stage musical prostitute?”

“No, wait.” I snapped my fingers and pointed at her, like I'd just figured it out. “It's ‘I'm saving myself for a color-blind guy with a raccoon fetish.'”

“You think you're so funny.”

“I just think, Kayla, period. That's why you have trouble keeping up.”

She took a left turn where the corridor branched. I kept going straight. “Good luck with Raccoon Boy,” I hollered after her. “And have a nice day, scaring children.”

Yeah. That went well.

At lunch, Calley Rose and I tried to scrub off the marker, using wet paper towels and liquid hand soap from the girls' bathroom. No luck. It was permanent. “Looks like I'm stuck being crazy forever,” I finally said.

Then Mom called with more great news. For some pile of reasons even she couldn't climb over or argue through—Beep had the wrong “allelic ratio” and also had ALL and was too sick from the infection—Beep failed to qualify for the clinical trial we found.

Here's the demented grownup logic: They wouldn't give possibly life-saving cutting-edge treatment to Beep, because, apparently, he was too sick. Really.

What kind of drugs are they taking in these hospitals, to think up things like that?

• • •

I'm depressed. It's an official pronouncement and everything. Although Dr. Anne has also hinted about “anger issues” and “anxious depression.”

“Depression”
should
mean I get to dress in black, eat chocolate, and lie in bed all day listening to emo bands. I wish. Instead, the symptoms are fun things like inability to concentrate, withdrawal, feelings of worthlessness, and hostility possibly escalating to violence. Basically, I'm miserable and possibly scary, like some parts of life, and can't do homework. Don't flunk me—put my brain chemicals in detention.

The afternoon I heard Beep wouldn't qualify for the clinical trial, I sat in front of the computer, unable to type a single sentence of homework. Somehow I just couldn't. I stared at the assignment of simple questions in a stupor of misery. Ten minutes crawled by in wounded agony, while I felt more frozen and more of a total screw-up. Then I gave up and went to my cancer blog, because posting about cancer and chemo and barf seemed less depressing. And I might be doing someone else some good, when I couldn't even start a homework assignment for myself.

Then I went on Facebook. Hunter had posted,
Radiation today. I'm cookin' now.

Beep always said radiation was like being microwaved, so I commented,
Microwave good-bye to blasted leukemia blasts.
Blasts are the immature, mutated, mostly non-working blood cells that blood cancer pumps out.

An incoming email dinged. For Cipher, from Drowningirl. Drowningirl emails from a home she calls Jupiter, where the oppressive gravity is crushing and the atmosphere is poisonous.

D:
I'm at the end
.
It's too hard.

Like me, Drowningirl has a sister who's hateful, but unlike me, in some weird Stockholm syndrome, she's grateful for
her
semi-perfect sister because of the help her sister gives her cancer kid brother. As far as I know, her mom is not insane, but worse—unlike me—Drowningirl doesn't get one shred of her parents' love, not even mixed with the little scraps of attention they have left for her.

C:
Less than one year
.
Then you'll be away at college. The launch date is set. Even on Jupiter, you'll have escape velocity.

D:
That's too long
.
Jupiter is so far from the sun, even part of one of my years takes forever. I'd give my life in a minute to make my brother well.

C:
I don't think that's how it works, dgirl.

D:
Guess not. But he wants to live, and I don't want to—I hate my life. I think about ending it sometimes, but he's fighting so hard to live, that seems wrong.

C:
Way wrong. You've got so much ahead of you. What's your phone number? I'll call you.

D:
Sorry, Cipher. Your phone won't reach Jupiter. We have a weird area code.

Then she sent me another of her poems.

Drowningirl wouldn't give me her phone number, or tell me where she lived. So I just did what I always do. Pasted in the suicide prevention numbers:

C:
1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433) and 1-800-273-TALK (8255). They're toll free, dgirl, so you can even call from Jupiter.

D:
Thanks
.
If I ever get more bummed (as if) I will. Be well
.

I always send her the hotline numbers, like she'll forget. She always says be well, but I can't remember what well is.