The Beautiful Between (11 page)

“No fun. I know exactly what Kate’s getting.” The cab arrives, and Jeremy pays the driver, and Kate and I scoot out and into the restaurant. Kate doesn’t take the bait, doesn’t respond to her brother’s teasing her about her order. She stays silent, still angry at her mom. You’d think she was being a brat if you didn’t know the whole story.

Jeremy continues as we’re led to the table, ignoring the serious turn this outing has taken, still trying to joke. “Kate always gets scoops of chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and coffee, with hot fudge, nuts, and whipped cream, and then swirls it all together until it is a very, very disgusting shade of dark pink.”

“God, Kate,” I say, trying to get in on the joke. “Can you eat all that?”

“Yes!” she says defensively.

“Well,” I continue, desperate to say something right, “I’ll be full after two bites. My eyes are much bigger than my stomach.”

“How about you, Jeremy?” I ask as we sit down. “What are you gonna get?”

“Hey, I’m on your side—I can’t finish one of those huge things. Want to split something?”

“Perfect.”

We split a hot fudge sundae. Kate’s sundae comes and she does in fact swirl it all together, and it does turn a gross color, and she does begin slurping it up, but after a few spoonfuls she loses interest. I wish Jeremy and I had never suggested this outing of ours. Kate looks like she’s about to cry. I nudge Jeremy, who’s up to his elbows in our sundae. He looks at his sister.

“Kate?” he says quietly.

“I don’t think I can eat this,” she says. She’s staring at the sundae as though finishing it is a matter of life and death: finish it and prove you’re the same girl you used to be; don’t finish it and admit just how sick you really are.

“That’s okay,” Jeremy says firmly. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does,” Kate says, and a couple of tears slip down her cheeks.

I hate how important the sundae has become. It feels intensely like this could be the last time Kate will ever come here, like it might be the last time she’ll ever turn a sundae pink, the way she’s been doing since she was a little girl. This place will never be the same for her, no matter what happens with her illness. When Jeremy and I go back to my place later, he chain-smokes on my terrace, almost a whole pack of cigarettes. I’ve never seen him so upset, and I feel awful that I was the reason for it. My stupid physics score prompted the whole thing.

15

My mother and I don’t look alike. I’m always fascinated when you see parents with their children and their relationship is very obvious. The Coles are obviously related. Just take one look at Jeremy’s mother and you can tell where he got his eyes, his mouth, and his hair. His hands match his father’s. Kate’s chin and lips match her brother’s.

But it’s more than that, more than just the way that they look. Kate makes the same gestures as Jeremy when she speaks, has the same spark in her eye when she’s teasing her brother that her brother has when he’s teasing me. When I call Jeremy’s house and his father picks up, he always makes small talk before passing the phone to his son, and when he asks how school is and how my day was, I can hear the same intonations that are in Jeremy’s voice when he asks those questions.

I wonder if my mother and I share traits like that. The kind that you pick up from living with the same person for a long time. I must have something of my mother’s, some habit, like the way she makes little swishing noises with her lips when she’s walking around the apartment, looking for a lost pair of shoes. But I’ve never noticed myself doing that. Technically, I guess it’s an unconscious habit, but still. I’ve lived with her all my life. I don’t question why we don’t look alike—that’s just some trick of genetics—but I do wonder what traits of hers I may have picked up over the years.

I start going to the Coles’ after school; Jeremy and I are still studying together and he likes us to go to his apartment now, not mine. Neither of us would ever say the reason, but of course it’s to spend more time with Kate.

Last week, Jeremy’s cell phone rang around nine. Kate and I were eating ice cream on the couch, eavesdropping.

“Hey, Fisher, what’s up?”

Kate and I could hear Brent Fisher screaming through the phone; he was someplace noisy.

“No way! I’ve been dying to go there!”

Brent screamed some more.

“Tonight?” Jeremy stood up, looked back at Kate and me on the couch, then headed for the door, holding the phone. “No, man,” we could hear him say as he left the room. “Nah, not tonight.”

Kate waited until we couldn’t hear Jeremy anymore and said, “He doesn’t go out like he used to.” She sounded like she felt guilty.

“I know. But it’s not your fault.”

“Sure it’s my fault,” she said, almost shrugging.

“Not any more than it’s mine,” I said, wanting to make a joke. “Seriously, the minute your brother decided to hang out with me must have also been the minute he gave up going to lots of parties. I am not a party girl.”

Kate giggled. “I guess you’re not.”

“Hey,” I said, feigning offense, “I could go to plenty of parties if I wanted.”

“Yeah, but you don’t really want to.”

“Once in a while,” I said honestly.

“Once in a while,” Kate echoed thoughtfully. Then she said, “It’s just … he used to have so much fun all the time. It used to be important.”

“What do you mean, ‘it used to be important’?”

Kate shoved her ice cream bowl onto the coffee table; we both ignored that it was mostly full.

“I mean,
he
used to be important. Whether or not he went to these parties was important. It mattered. People wanted him to be there.”

“They still do—they still always invite him.”

“But it’s not the same now.”

I thought about this. Kate was right; it did used to matter—a party wasn’t a party unless Jeremy Cole was there. You weren’t cool unless the prince validated your party with his presence. And Kate understood that.

“You know,” I said slowly, “I had this theory about your brother, about high school.”

Kate looked intrigued now, excited. “What?”

I was excited too. I was going to tell Kate something I’d never told anyone. I leaned in conspiratorially. “That the school was like a kingdom, and that Jeremy was, like, Prince Charming, and everyone else—”

Kate cut me off. “Like in a fairy tale. Like the girls wanted to be Cinderella, or Sleeping Beauty.”

“Exactly!” It was exciting—it was
fun
—confiding this to Kate. Maybe making all this stuff up in my head didn’t mean I was weird, or crazy.

“That makes perfect sense!” Kate said, almost shouting. “Jeremy is totally the prince at school. Like, at parties, girls want to spend time with him, just like Cinderella at the ball.”

“Oh my God, exactly! That’s totally what I thought too.” Kate and I grinned at each other.

A moment later, though, Kate leaned back on the couch, turning quiet. “Is he still the prince, even if he’s not there?”

I nodded solemnly. “Yes, he’s still the prince. Royalty is something you’re born with. Like when Sleeping Beauty was hidden in her castle, asleep, she was still a princess, even if she wasn’t going to balls and holding court.”

“That’s right.”

“Yeah.”

Kate smiled then, like she’d just figured something out. “That’s like me, then. Sleeping Beauty. ’Cause if Jeremy’s a prince, then I’m a princess, huh?”

I never thought anyone else would find sense—would find comfort—in my fairy-tale world.

“Absolutely,” I agreed.

“Yeah.” She nodded, and we both smiled, sitting close.

Tonight, the three of us are in the den: Kate is reading the book I gave her, Jeremy is taking a practice SAT, and I’m reading about the current situation in the Middle East for my Conflicts class. None of us is paying particularly close attention, though, because the TV is on in the background. Kate’s face is swollen from the chemotherapy; her cheeks are pudgy—grotesquely chubby, making a joke of what a healthy face is supposed to look like; not at all like cheeks that make you want to squeeze them. Jeremy makes a joke of it; calls her a chipmunk, storing nuts in her cheeks for the winter.

Jeremy’s phone rings and he picks it up, then gets up from his chair and goes into the other room. I put my reading down and turn to Kate.

“How are you liking the book?”

“The writing is better than the story.”

“I thought the same thing when I read it. But I loved the main character.”

“Yeah, me too.” She smiles at me. “I like the parts you underlined.”

“Thanks,” I say, because what she says sounds like a compliment.

Kate pauses, and then she says, “Did you read this in school, when you were in seventh grade?”

I shake my head. “I just read it for fun.”

“’cause I thought maybe the teachers might have asked you to bring me my homework or something, like, Oh, Connelly, we hear you’re spending time with the Coles. Bring this to Kate Cole so she can catch up. Like they don’t realize I might not come back—or anyway, not anytime soon.”

I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself: I giggle.

“What’s funny?”

“I’m sorry, I just never thought of your name as Kate Cole before. It just sounds—”

Kate interrupts me. “I know! Like the nursery rhyme! You’d think my parents would have thought of that before naming me. But they were thinking Katherine Cole; they didn’t stop to think about the nickname. So stupid.”

“Yeah.”

“And the worst is my middle name. Ann. Katherine Ann Cole. So boring.”

“My middle name is Jane; can’t get much more boring than that.”

“Yeah, but at least your first name is interesting.”

“Except I hate when people shorten it to Connie. It sounds like I should be wearing white tights and clogs when I hear that.”

“Jeremy calls you Connie.”

“Yeah, but he’s not people.”

Kate grins at me, and I blush. I think Kate likes to make me blush.

“Anyway,” she says, “I was just wondering if this was on some teacher’s reading list. They keep sending e-mails letting me know what to study so I don’t fall behind. I ignore them, so maybe they thought they could go through you.”

“Nope. I just gave you the book because I love it.”

“Oh. Well, thank you. I really do like it.”

I smile and turn back to my homework, but then Kate says, “Can you believe they knew before I did?”

“What?” I say dumbly.

“The teachers. My parents told the school about the cancer before they told me. They just told me I was sick, that they were running tests. But they knew what it was.” She sounds angry.

“Maybe they were just—”

“Protecting me? That’s what Jeremy says, but that’s a stupid idea of what’s protection. As if it wasn’t scarier going to the hospital without knowing why. I thought I had some rare, horrible disease that the doctors had never heard of and that they wouldn’t know how to fix me.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Jeremy was the one who got them to tell me. I heard them fighting about it.”

It’s strange; I’ve never imagined Jeremy fighting with his parents. I wonder what it’s like—it must involve yelling, or something like yelling, if Kate overheard them.

“When they finally did tell me, they didn’t tell me the truth.”

“What do you mean?”

“They didn’t tell me how bad it was—they said ‘leukemia,’ but they didn’t tell me how bad it was. Like they didn’t think I could just go Google it or something.”

I don’t know what to say. She seems so calm.

“So I asked Jeremy, and he told me the rest of it. He told me what the prognosis was. He told me what the real chances were. They didn’t.”

I think about my mother, about the things she’s kept from me. But then, I’m a liar too.

I ask Kate, “Were you angry at them?”

Kate shrugs. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I think I was just—I don’t know. I know they thought they were protecting me, but didn’t they know that keeping me in the dark made it so much scarier?”

I pause, and then I say, “Maybe they weren’t trying to protect you. Maybe they were actually protecting themselves. Like they just couldn’t face having to tell you that.”

Kate thinks about this for a minute, and so do I.

Kate speaks first. “I don’t know. That’s so …” She seems to be searching for the word. “Weak,” she says finally, sounding disappointed.

“Yeah. And I wasn’t trying to defend them—I was just trying to understand.”

“I know,” Kate answers, but I can tell there’s more she wants to say.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I want to ask you something, but it’s private.”

I smile. “You can ask me anything—really, I don’t mind.” And I don’t; I don’t think there’s anything I can’t talk to Kate about.

Kate bites her lip. “Did your parents do any better—when your dad was sick?”

It takes me a minute to figure out what to say, but I smile at Kate to let her know I’m not upset that she’s asked.

“No,” I say finally. “They didn’t do any better.”

“Maybe all parents suck at telling their kids things.”

I smile. “Maybe. But I was so young; it’s different.”

“How?”

“I was two. Even if they told me, I wouldn’t have known what cancer was.”

“So what happened when your mom did tell you?”

I’m not scared to tell Kate. If anyone can understand what it’s like not to know something important, it’s her.

“She didn’t.”

“What?”

“No one ever told me how he died.”

Kate’s eyes go wide. “No one told you?”

I shake my head.

“So how did you find out?”

I blush. “Your brother. He let it slip when …”