Dessert First (7 page)

We're the most dysfunctional two-person support group in the world. Or, I guess, even the solar system.

A few days later at lunch, Evan and I ended up on the grass at the end of the sports field, looking up at the sky. The top of Evan's head was pressed against the top of mine. Our legs were stretched in opposite directions, so my view of the lumpy clouds was upside down from his.

“It's an exercise,” Evan explained. “From drama class. Hey—we should take drama together next year. It'll help you when you're the front singer in our future indie band.”

My hair was in a ponytail, and the grass tickled the back of my neck. I wriggled to get more comfortable. “I already have enough drama.”

“No offense, but you're not going to carry the world's greatest indie band with just your current guitar skills.”

“There's that.” We'd have to play songs without the weird jazz chords Evan always noodled with. “Why this exercise, drama boy?”

“We can't see each other. It's supposed to make us open up and talk in a different way.”

“I'm not sure I can do this.”

“What? Talk and look up at the sky?” He kept his voice light. “Totally easy.”

“Talk, period. Let you back into my life.” I shifted, which gave me half an inch of distance, but then he pushed his head back against mine. My stomach was weirdly tense.

“Try,” he said. “Say something. Not the first things that pop into your head. But something serious.”

The first things would be about Beep, and after that about Evan, whose head bumped against mine, and whose absence at the end of last year had mashed my heart so much. “I don't know why Rachel hates me.” That just lurched out of my mouth, catching even me by surprise.

“Rachel doesn't hate you. Why would anyone hate you?”

“The Tracies hate me.” I tilted my head back slightly to direct the words to Evan, invisible back there. “And Kayla Southerland is working up to it.”

“Okay. Tracie does kind of hate you. But you provoke her. How come?”

“Who knows?” My version of the Book of Life is missing the chapter on the popular in-crowd girl thing. “Maybe none of us Monroes know how to get along with girls.” Rachel was popular with boys, but didn't have close girl friends. And Dad was so hopelessly confused about females, he'd married Mom. “I don't even know why Rachel's so mean.”

“Rachel's probably jealous.”

I barked out a laugh. “Of
me
?” Perfect, gorgeous Rachel, with her endless supply of boyfriend-candidates and amazing singing voice. Not exactly. “Did someone hit you on the head with a skateboard?”

“Seriously. She has that dyslexia thing, so she has to study really hard, but you're super-smart, so stuff comes easy.”

“Guess again.” Like the end of last year, I was already in danger of flunking out, if I didn't either do the homework or come up with a massive make-up project. Which I'd then have to figure out how to actually do.

“Well, weren't she and Beep super tight when he was little? Now you're the one who hangs out with him in the hospital.”

When Beep was small, they had been kind of a two-person mutual admiration team. “Rachel doesn't know
how
to hang out at the hospital.”

“Maybe it's not that easy. For some people.”

“It's not
easy
, it's just not complicated,” I said. “Just sit.”

“Sit?”

“Yeah. If somebody sick wants to talk, talk. If they don't, let them rest. If they want to play shooter videogames, let them. Even when they're confronting death by shooting zombies, they're not alone. But that chapter is missing in Rachel's book. Maybe with the whole section on getting along with non-boyfriend humans.”

Evan laughed, and with a pang, I realized how much I'd missed making him do that. The clouds above us were moving. One looked like a flying ice cream cone, chased by a dragon.

“Rachel always wants to
do
something—entertain Beep, or make things better,” I went on. “And wants him to be there for
her
when she graces his room with her gorgeousness. But most times Beep isn't in the mood. Or doesn't have the energy. Or is in videogame gunfire. So she gets frustrated. And Rachel still has sniffles, so Mom makes her wear a surgical mask when she visits.”

“See?” Evan said, like that proved something. “Also, this drama exercise is working.”

“Humph. Working to make me scared.”

“Of what's going on with Beep?”

“That too.” I was silent for a long time. “I can't take it if we do the bestie thing again, Evan, and then you disappear.”

“I won't.”

I thought about that. “Then you're on friend-probation, indie boy.”

“I'll be nice.” He moved around. There was some light touch on the top of my head, like lips touching my hair. “Now you'll think good thoughts.”

What?
“Evan, did you just kiss the top of my head?”

“I'm not telling,” he said. “I'm on probation, so I have to be careful what I say.”

The bell rang.

• • •

I was still thinking about the top of my head thing when I got home after school. Probably Evan didn't kiss me. Probably. Why would he kiss me on top of my head? Rachel—who had about eleven thousand times as much experience with guys as me—was sitting at the kitchen table, looking glum with a pile of books spread out in front of her while she typed on her laptop. She didn't even have her music going, so for once she wasn't surrounded by a bleating fog of mainstream pop.

Might as well take advantage of that once-in-a-decade opportunity. I sat down across from her and cleared my throat. “I have a question about a boy thing.”

She gave me a long, level gaze. “Is that a dig—how I'm the big expert on boys' things?”

“No.” I took a deep breath. Life: so deeply confusing, I was asking Rachel for advice. “I think Evan kissed me, but I'm not sure.”

“If you're not sure, then Evan needs lots more practice.” But she smiled and closed her laptop, like I'd finally said something interesting after fifteen years.

Lack of kissing practice wasn't Evan's issue, not after last year's Tracie-tongue-tag tournament. “I think he kissed me on the top of my head, but I didn't see it.”

“How could you not see . . . ?”

That was too complicated to explain. “If a boy likes you, wouldn't he kiss you somewhere
not
on the top of the head?”

“He's probably scared of getting anywhere close to your mouth,” Rachel said. “We all are, because you bite.”

“Pffft.” Insults. What did I expect? This was like asking advice from the Tracies.

“You've had a massive, obvious crush on Evan forever. He was probably saying that's okay.”

“I have not.” Also, it's not that obvious.

“Really? Then why were you in a bad mood—for months—after he got together with that Tracie girl from soccer?”

“Because I have to live with you. Also, hello: Beep's cancer.”

“Bzzzzt.” She made the wrong answer buzzer noise from one of Mom's game shows. “Beep was in remission this summer. When you were total sigh-soundtrack girl.”

“Was
not
.”

“Oh? Mom and Dad are paying for your therapy because they have extra money?”

That dig was way out of bounds. Mom's crazy, but I'm the one who has to do shrink hour on Tuesdays with Dr. Anne. “Thanks for the reminder. What does it mean, though, if he kissed the top of my head?”

“It means we need to have the condom talk. Because of Evan. With everyone else you can keep using your personality for birth control.”

“We don't need to have ‘the condom talk.'” This talk was bad enough. “Forget I said anything.”

“I'm just trying to help. I think—”

“Help me what? Feel bad about myself? I have that down already.”

Rachel looked surprised. “No. He . . .”

I stomped upstairs. Me and my pregnancy-prevention personality. I don't know why Rachel hates me so much.

Up in my room, I tried to distract myself from being so annoyed with Rachel that I would break things. So I imagined Evan being my actual boyfriend. For a long, dreamy time. I pictured us sitting in his bedroom, writing a duet. Him watching my lips as I sang about him. Then, I imagined, he leaned over and kissed me with his soft lips.

Then I thought about Evan breaking up with me after that. Which interrupted quality daydream time like a kick in the chest. It probably wouldn't take long. Evan had averaged a week and a half between breakups during his Tracie face-sucking phase. And if I started trooping around school hand-in-hand with Evan, that would draw a thick swarm of Tracies after him, like so many two-legged human flies, their eyes bulging at the sight of hot, awesome musician Evan with lowly Kat. So, after about three weeks, I'd see Tracie or Ashley hauling him away instead, with her arms wrapped around him and his hand in her hair.

At that mental picture, a hot wave of nausea went through me. It was like I'd accidentally gobbled some of Beep's chemo meds.

This was crazy. We'd had a conversation, and Evan touched the top of my head, and now I was actually making myself sick with my imagination. Whatever the touch on the top of the head had been, it was best to decide no kissing had been involved.

My life was already insane enough.

Beep begged me to stay overnight in his hospital room that Wednesday, so he could get a break from Mom.

“Please.” Beep clutched my hand in both of his, when Mom was in the bathroom. He squeezed almost hard enough to leave bruise marks. “She's driving me crazy. And it's more fun when you hang out.”

I was the self-appointed chief morale officer for Beep, in charge of making him laugh, when he was in the mood.

“I'll stay with Beep tonight,” I told Mom. “Go home and get some sleep.”

On Beep's last two bouts with cancer, he'd stayed at home and gotten his chemo treatments as an outpatient, but with his repeated infections he was stuck in the hospital this time. One family member could stay overnight with him, on the foldout mini-bed that the guest chair turned into. But it was hard to get good sleep there, because every two hours a nurse came in to check vital signs or change a drip bag.

“I can stay,” Mom said.

Behind her Beep was shaking his head
no no no
.

Mom looked terrible, with dark circles under her eyes and worry lines on her forehead and around her mouth, as if she'd gotten ten years older in the last month.

“In the morning, you've got a house tour. With clients,” I said. “If you don't get some real sleep, you'll scare them. You look like an experiment with raccoon DNA.” Mom was a realtor, and on Thursday mornings in Berkeley they have “brokers' opens” where realtors tour the homes that are going to be open houses the next weekend. They can even drag their buyer-couples along, like Mom was supposed to do. She needed a good night's sleep, which she wouldn't get if she stayed in the hospital.

“What about your schoolwork?”

Good question. I nodded toward my backpack on the visitor's chair. “I brought my books.” Not that the books would be doing the short-answer questions by themselves. “And a change of clothes.” I could shower in Beep's hospital room bathroom before heading back across the Bay on BART in the morning for school.

“You have to be eighteen to stay overnight,” Mom said.

“No. I only have to
say
I'm eighteen, if they ask. I'll tell them I look young for my age, and I'm sensitive about it.” Which would totally work. The pediatric unit was full of kids with heart defects and lung problems that made them look small for their ages.

I wasn't sure why someone has to stay with Beep all night, because he was surrounded by a hospital full of doctors and nurses, but Mom was convinced that he'd get gobbled up by flesh-eating bacteria or something if one of us wasn't there to press the call button. At least with me guarding him, Mom would be able to sleep, knowing I was on the lookout to make sure they hadn't hauled Beep to the operating room for secret organ harvesting. (Organs full of cancer, probably not high on the must-have spare parts list. But common sense isn't the border of Anxiety Momistan.)

It took twenty minutes of knocking down Mom's objections, one by one, to get her to agree, and in the end, Beep still had to play the cancer card.

“Please, Mom,” he said. “Don't make me use my one Make-A-Wish just to get a night to hang out with Kat.”

She paused, pressing her lips together, but I knew we had her. “Fine,” Mom said. “But you have to call if anything—anything at all—happens.”

I promised to text regular updates all evening. Then I physically walked Mom to the door, with my hand on her back, in case I had to literally push her out of the room.

“Whew,” Beep said, when we were finally alone. “Thanks.” His hair hadn't fallen out yet from the chemo, but he had a buzz cut, so when what was left came out, it wouldn't be in big clumps.

I plopped down on the guest chair, and let out a long breath. “You look good,” I said. “Like the world's smallest U.S. Marine. It's weird that you're not doing sit-ups or something.”

Beep grinned. “I could do a sit-up. But I'm saving my energy for the dry heaves. They're a better ab exercise. You should try them, to get in shape for soccer.”

“I'll keep it in mind.” On my current no-homework program, there wasn't much point in conditioning for soccer—dry land, dry heaves, or otherwise—because I wouldn't be eligible. “But maybe you should do a workout video. For cancer kids and bulimics: ‘From Sit-Ups to Spit-Ups: Dry Heaves As a Functional Exercise.'”

Beep laughed, which he always did at gross-out humor.