Love and Other Unknown Variables (26 page)

7.1

L
ight filters through my blinds as the sun rises in the morning. Charlotte is next to me, one arm flung over my chest and a leg hooked in mine. The first thing I notice is how beautiful she looks, even with her mouth slightly parted and her hair matted. She looks real, so real.

The second thing I notice is my full bladder. I manage to slide like a boneless squid off the edge of my bed without waking her. She shifts onto her belly, her breathing soft and slow.

When I slip back into the room, I take time to notice the way the light plays along her spine. I lie down beside her and let my fingers drift from the small of her back to her neck. She murmurs and stirs, just as everything inside of me stirs to life as well. I trace the lines of her tattoo over and over.

I smile at the memory of our first meeting. So much has changed. I lean in and kiss her neck. She turns her face and catches my mouth with hers, her hands pulling me closer, her leg wrapping around me again.

“Good morning,” she sighs when the kiss ends. She flattens her right hand over the center of my chest, studying her fingers there.

“Tell me about your tattoo, Charlotte.”

She looks up at me, a playful quirk in one eyebrow. “Which one?”

“You’ve got more than one?” My eyes scan her body, looking for something I missed last night. She’s wearing shorts that show most of her legs and nothing else. I can’t find any other tattoos, which means…holy crap—I try to angle my hips away from her.

Charlotte grabs my hips and pulls me back. “Oh, no you don’t,” she says as she laughs. The sound is victorious. She’s got me right where she wants me. “Got my first tat when I was fifteen.” She slides her hands from my hips to cup my butt.

“What did your sister say?” I squeak.

She pulls away, her eyebrows high. “Seriously? You’re thinking of my sister right now?” I groan and she smiles before nipping at my chin. “Jo was thrilled. It’s where they zapped me with the radiation therapy.”

I try not to flinch, but I feel like I’ve been slapped. “Oh.”

She places my hand on the side of her head. “It’s here,” she says, pressing our fingers together over the spot. “I thought I was seriously badass, but when my hair grew back, you couldn’t see it anymore. I figured since the doctors got to pick my first one, I should get to pick one, too.”

I slide my fingers out of her hair to the nape of her neck. “And you chose hope.”

She nods, tears magnifying her eyes.

“What do you hope for, Charlotte?”

She takes a shaky breath and kisses me, like she can press her lips to mine and regain her strength. “I hope Jo learns to relax and take care of herself for a change. I hope Becca continues to have adventures that aren’t confined by the margins of a book.” She tightens her grip around my neck and looks up at me. “And I hope that your life gives you everything you truly need.”

My throat feels bloated, and I have to clear it before I can speak. “What about you? What do you hope for yourself?”

She bites the corner of her bottom lip, her eyes darting up like she’s considering. “I’m kind of hoping that you’ll shut up and kiss me.”

0.0

M
y phone rings. Bleary-eyed, I look at the screen and see it’s Charlotte. It’s also 4:38 a.m., but that’s not unusual. Charlotte’s insomnia has been out of control the past few weeks. She’s living on catnaps and coffee.

“Hey,” I say, clearing the sleep from my throat. “You okay?”

She doesn’t answer. Not really. All I hear is sobbing.

“Charlotte?”

The sobs build on each other, until they’ve formed a giant wall of sadness. Without thinking, I’m up and pulling on a T-shirt and shoes. “I’m coming.”

I grab my keys from the counter and make it to my car before she’s quieted down enough to speak, but her voice is so raw from all the crying that I can barely make out what she’s saying. I put the keys in the ignition and switch the phone to my other hand. “Charlotte, just breathe. It’ll be okay.”

“Hanson…”

Not Charlotte.

“Charlotte is—” The rest is washed away with a wave of fresh sobs.

I hang up the phone.

This is my absolute zero.

I. Am. Nothing.

I am without Charlotte.

0.1

I
now understand the expression,
That’s when the bottom drops out
. As a general rule, idioms are stupid, but this one,
the bottom drops out
, this one I totally get.

Gravity is a constant force in all of our lives, pulling us at 9.80665 m/s
2
to be exact. But, I swear, when the bottom drops out, gravity pulls at me much faster than is physically possible. There’s no hope. The force of my landing will annihilate me.

I drive to Charlotte’s house. Every muscle in my body feels like lead, so I’m driving fast, the wheels screeching as my heavy arms struggle to make the turns.

Be there. Be okay. Be there. Be okay. Be there. Be okay.
My mind can’t move beyond these two phrases. They are the parachute I pull during free fall.

Ms. Finch is waiting for me. Her long hair is pulled into a messy ponytail that makes her look younger than she is. But the redness around her eyes and the emptiness within them give the impression of too many years.

“She’s gone,” Ms. Finch says. These words, too, are made of the heaviest elements. They clatter at our feet.

I push past her, taking the stairs two at a time, Luna loping after me, beating me to the top. Ms. Finch calls out, “She’s not here. She’s gone.”

Be there. Be okay. Be there. Be okay. Be there. Be okay.
I will get to Charlotte’s room and she will be there. She will be okay. It’s the only reality that makes sense. When I lift the lid, the cat will be alive. The cat has to be alive.

I’m about to charge into Charlotte’s room when I suddenly panic. What if she’s sleeping? I’d feel like a shit if I woke her. I whisper for Luna to stay. She sits on her haunches and whines. “Shh,” I say, holding a finger to my lips. Luna’s ears flick backward.

The blinds are open so moonlight pools into the room. I creep toward her bed, stepping carefully to avoid tripping over the debris on her floor. I place my hand on the end of her bed, sliding myself forward, lowering my face. My eyes adjust to the empty darkness.

Fucking cat.

I can’t be here. I can’t be in this room. I can’t be where she was. I want to be where she is.

Luna follows me to the kitchen where we find Ms. Finch sitting at the counter staring at an empty coffee mug. Her hands are wrapped around it in a stranglehold. Tears follow the canyons carved down her face from earlier tears.

I envy her. I envy her sadness. I feel nothing right now, which some might think is a blessing, except I can’t even feel the good stuff, like the love I know I have for Charlotte. It’s buried, too. I can’t reach it, so I sit like a stone and watch Ms. Finch grieve instead.

Those websites I found for teens with cancer also had sections for parents and friends. The stages of grief were outlined very clearly: Denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. According to the testimonies I read from grieving parents, the stages don’t always happen in order and often you move from one to another only to cycle right back where you started. It sounds horrible, unpredictable, and completely unavoidable.

Ms. Finch is currently at stage two.

“She’s gone. She left us.” She spits the words. “She’s somewhere else and we’re left here. Alone.” She stands, her arms shaky as she braces them on the counter. Then her right arm is a blur, and she’s hurling the coffee mug as hard as she can at the refrigerator. It hits the metal, a loud crack piercing the air, and shatters as it falls to the floor. Luna skitters back, watching Ms. Finch intently.

“They took her away in the ambulance,” she hiccups, trying to regain control. “When we got to the hospital, a doctor told me she’d had a stroke—bleeding from the tumors.” She’s yelling and her voice has gone all raspy. It makes my whole body ache to hear her. “He said it was quick. She wouldn’t have felt any pain. He said it like it matters. Like
anything
matters now.”

I’m not sure why I’m here. I knew from the moment I heard Ms. Finch say, “Hanson,” that Charlotte was gone. Why did I come? But now that I’m sitting here, looking at the couch where I held Charlotte’s head in my lap as we watched her favorite movies, I can’t leave. Except Charlotte isn’t on the couch.

Once again, I’m left with the wrong Finch.

“It should have been me.”

I’m brought back from my thoughts—scared I may have said that last bit out loud.

“From the moment she was diagnosed, I believed someone had made a grave mistake,” Ms. Finch says. “If one of us had to go, it should have been me.”

I should tell her she’s wrong. But I can’t. If it could have been anyone else, I wish it had been me.

Welcome to phase three.

0.2

I
don’t remember driving home, but sure enough, here I am. Mom and Dad have already left for school. Hearing the car pull up, Becca bounds out the front door. Too late, I glance at the clock in the dashboard and realize this is when Charlotte should be picking Becca up for school.

Becca freezes mid-step when she sees me. She knows. Before I can say anything, she charges back through the front door. I race inside after her, but I hear her bedroom door slam as I hit the bottom step.

“Becca?” I knock.

No response. Becca has chosen to dive right into stage one.

Isolation.

“Becca, please don’t make me do this from the other side of a door.” I try the knob, but it’s locked. I slide down, making a puddle of myself on the carpet in the hall.

Melting this way makes it easier to ignore the feeling that my chest is caving in. I feel like my whole body will become a black hole of pain. For the life of me, I cannot imagine why people want to fall in love when it will inevitably end like this. If I can survive this, I swear, I’ll never do anything so stupid again.

I hear movement behind the door. “Bec?” A muffled thud and the breeze-like sound of pages being fanned is her only reply. Is she reading? Now? I’ll never be able to drag her out from her stories.

“I’m so sorry, Bec.” There’s more I need to say, but the silence buries me.

0.3

“
C
huck?” Greta’s voice calls from downstairs.

I hear two sets of feet. I consider counting the footfalls, but fuck it.

“Chuck!” Greta rushes over, pulling me up into a hug before holding me at arm’s length to examine me. “There’s a substitute in English. What happened?”

“Charlotte—” Nope. I can’t say it. How did I think I could tell Becca when I can’t even tell Greta?
Hello, Denial. Why don’t you go fuck yourself and your little friend Anger?

“Oh, Chuck, I’m so sorry.” Greta’s face crumples. Somehow, I feel like slapping her. Like her grief takes away from mine. And I want all of mine. I want it to crush me into oblivion.

When I speak, the words taste like nails in my mouth. “Don’t. Please.”

James stoops beside Greta. “How’s Becca?”

I look away from the two of them. “Dunno. She won’t open the door.”

James nods. “I can fix that,” he says, reaching into Greta’s hair and extracting a bobby pin. He straightens it and pokes it into the little hole in the knob, and then jiggles it until we hear a click.

Greta looks impressed and outraged.

“I live with a house full of drama queens,” he says, shrugging.

I open the door, calling, “Bec?” I expect to see her in her nest with a book, but what I find is unbearable.

She’s taken every book in her room and laid them like bricks in a circle around her. Crazy part is the books aren’t all closed, most are open to random pages then stacked, like she was looking for something in them and the resulting wall was an accident as she tossed them aside and grabbed a new book.

My throat feels full. My hands fall away from where I’d been gripping the doorframe and rest limply at my sides.

“Oh, Bec.” I circle the wall. “Don’t disappear on me, too.” It’s only a whisper.

I drag the wooden desk chair across the carpet toward the book wall and hop up so I can look down to see Becca inside. She looks so small, buried under all those stories. “Hey.”

She flinches and burrows deeper in her nest at the heart of the fortress.

“Bec—” But I stop myself. I was about to tell her about the stroke and how Charlotte died so quickly she didn’t even know it. How in the hell is that supposed to make anyone feel better? I’d like to drive to the hospital and slug a doctor—any doctor will do.

Becca’s shoulders slump forward even further, like she’s a mountain caving in under the weight of my stare. I sit down in the chair, and all I can see are the books. I sigh. “Dammit, Bec.”

No response.

From my seat, I notice a chink in the wall. It’s a space in which there is an absence of a book more than anything else. I whisper into the space, “I’m sorry. I know it’s not enough, but I love you.”

I stand to put the chair away, managing to knock its legs into the desk and tip over a picture frame. I pick it up and am blinded by instant tears that refuse to fall. Smiling back at me is Charlotte, one arm wrapped around Becca and the other around me. The picture is from Becca’s sixteenth birthday dinner, the first and only one to which she invited a friend.

Bringing it back to the wall, I nudge it into the place that is not a book. “When you’re ready to come out, I’m here. I can wait.”

Greta shifts next to me. I’d forgotten she and James were here. I stub out my tears with the backs of my wrists and offer a weak smile. It feels awful, so I let it slide away. “I need to get out of here.”

“Where do you want to go?” James asks.

“No. By myself.”

“That’s maybe not a good idea, Chuck.”

“I’m not asking for permission.” Greta flinches, and I feel like a schmuck for being so angry, but I don’t want any part of either of them right now. It’s like I’m pissed at them for having heartbeats and brain waves and circulatory systems that are still up and running.

And while I know this is normal, this is the way the human psyche has evolved over the ages to survive loss, the knowing doesn’t make it feel any better, which is a first. Knowing is always better than not knowing. Or at least, it was.

I push past them and take the stairs in great leaps to get away faster. I climb in my car, hoping to drive away from the large crater in my chest where goodness and hope and Charlotte used to be.