Wake (18 page)

“Almost.” Emily pushes up my sleeve without asking permission and studies my smooth forearm.

“What’s almost?”

“I have hair here.” I direct her attention to the fine hairs on the backs of my second knuckles. Those are the only ones fit for polite discussion.

“Just there?” I can see she’s wondering about the parts that aren’t open for polite discussion.

“Not
just
there.”

“What happened to your hands?”

“It’s a side effect of the transplant. Perfectly normal.” And perfectly hideous.

“Will it go away?”

“Eventually. Like a sunburn.” But not completely.

“I heard chemo feels cold going in.”

“Yeah, they have to keep the drugs at a certain temperature.”

“Does it make your arm go numb?”

“It doesn’t go in through the arm. I’ve got a tube in my chest for that.” There’s a reason I didn’t tell Emily all this stuff as it was happening. It would have freaked her out, as it does now when I explain what a Hickman is.

“Can I see it?”

“No.” I put my hat back on.

“Why?”

“It’s private.” Palming my bald scalp is one thing. Staring at the port in my boney, hairless chest is another. My ego can’t take that kind of negative scrutiny.

“That’s why Eric calls it my connection to the Matrix,” I offer by way of lame humor. Emily laughs sweetly. “Come here.” I grab her around the waist, teasing her like I used to, and pull her onto my lap. I twist her long dark hair around my hand like a rope and say ‘gotcha’ in her ear.

Emily rolls her eyes at me. She always did. She’s the kind of girl who pretends to hate attention until she can’t stand to fake it anymore.

“You’re so immature.”

“And?” I chuckle. She tries to stand up and I pull her back. “Where you going?”

“I’m not too heavy?”

“I think you weigh all of fifty pounds when wet.”

Emily sticks her tongue out at me. She loves it. “I mean, I’m not hurting you, right?” A year ago she tackled me onto a couch with absolutely no mind for gentleness—just passionate making out in her parents’ basement. Now she’s afraid to sit on my lap.

“I’m not made of glass, you know.”

“I know, but you’re so thin…”

“I’m fine. Relax.” I pull her back against me and slouch again. We both put our feet on the bed, nudging toes. It’s a familiar pose. We were cuddle-friends even before I knew she had a crush on me, before she had a boyfriend. That’s why I don’t feel bad about holding another guy’s girl: I was there first, technically.

“I can feel it,” she says quietly.

“What?”

“Against my shoulder.” She flexes slightly in demonstration. She’s talking about my Hickman. She can feel the catheter tips through our shirts.

“Sorry.” I let go and help her sit up.

“I don’t mind.”

Elise interrupts the moment by bursting into my room with the force of a small bomb. The door bangs back on its hinges as she launches herself onto the bed and bounces there on her knees.

“Guess what? Guess what?” she squeals.

“Rowling is writing an eighth Potter book?” What else could reduce Elise to the level of an over-

emotional four-year-old so quickly?

Elise stands up and starts jumping on my bed, talking between bounces in a voice breathless with excitement. “I sent him an email about the party Mom said I could have and he said—”

“Jesus Christ, Lise.”

“—Yeeeees!” she sings, and jumps off my bed with a flourish. “He’s coming to my party. And he’s not going to blow me off at the last second, either, so don’t even say it, Mr. Pessimist,” she says, and jabs a finger at me. Emily laughs.

I can see a mil ion ways this can go wrong. But Elise is happy, and damn it if I can stand to contemplate all the ways she could be hurt. It’s not as simple to get a smile like that out of her anymore—

at one point in time all it took was a chocolate chip cookie.

Elise squeals again and skips out of my room. “I have to call Carey!”

Emily smiles. “She hasn’t changed a bit, has she?”

“Of course she has.” This last year as seen plenty of change in her: she has boobs now (gross) and is chasing after a jock like some horny teenaged airhead (grosser).

“I meant her enthusiasm,” Emily clarifies. “But you’re right, the boobs are an improvement.”

“Oh shut up.”

Emily finds it easier to talk when she doesn’t have to look at me, so she stays on my lap for a while.

We turn on the computer and creep her boyfriend’s Facebook page. She shows me the photos of her winter formal—it looks like she had a fun time—and then it occurs to her to ask if I’ve made any new friends here.

“A few.” Okay, one.

“Anyone interesting?”

“Not really.” Only a riddle of a girl.

“Are you lying to me?” She looks at me over her shoulder with a teasingly shrewd expression. I just chuckle and tell her of course not.

“You smell different,” she says suddenly. I don’t know why, but I can feel my face go hot at her inconsequential comment.

“Just my soap, I guess.” But the soap I use is unscented, hypoal ergenic stuff from the pharmacy, formulated to keep my skin from peeling off in sheets and breaking out in blisters.

“You don’t smell like a brand scent,” she continues. “You smell like…I don’t know what.” So I come right out and say it. “I smell like drugs.” Emily flinches. “They’ve got me on so much strong stuff that my skin is soaked with it. I’ve got opiates in my sweat. The chemo smell was worse.”

Emily is about as rigid as a statue. Mom calls up the stairs that dinner is ready, and Emily practically runs from my room.

You shouldn’t have scared her like that.

She needed to hear it.

Gently, you jerk.

How do you gently tell someone that you smell like a cancer patient?

*

After dinner, Elise starts a game of War with three decks at the dining table. She must have blackmail on Eric, because he and Celeste join in instead of going off on their own. The three of them keep Emily distracted while I slip away to discreetly vomit upstairs. Al I ate for dinner was soup. Willa’s soup has never made me sick, or even queasy. Maybe the milk was bad.

Everything comes back up—why does it always feel like I puke three times as much as I eat?—and when the nausea passes I feel hungry again. I wash up, brush my teeth to hide the smell of vomit, and go downstairs to seek out a cup of yogurt.

“Help Elise,” Eric says when I enter the kitchen. “She’s losing, hard.” Elise kicks him under the table as hard as she can, and he barely flinches. I just laugh and grab a yogurt cup before sitting down beside her.

The point of this game is to gain all the cards in the decks. Each person sets down one card at a time, and the person with the highest card claims all the others. It takes a long time to play, with great ebb and flow between streaks of luck. That’s if we play by the rules. It’s a tradition among us kids to cheat as much as possible, and if you catch someone cheating, you get to punch them in the shoulder.

“Jem’s on my team.”

“We’re not playing in teams,” Celeste says.

“Donor and recipient can be counted as a single person, then,” Elise says, and sticks her tongue out at Celeste, who sniffs in response. Elise scoots onto my knee and plays an ace. She really is getting clobbered. I make all the snatches, even the cheat ones, since her reflexes are horrible. She takes all the punches when we get caught, though. That’s my tough little Elise, taking the beatings she knows I can’t.

You’ve reached a new level of pathetic.

And you owe her a big thank-you.

Maybe I’ll put Gryffindor-colored M&Ms in her pancakes tomorrow.

When she finally catches Eric cheating, Elise gets up and walks around the table to give him as good a punch as her scrawny arms will deliver. She pushes back against me to move the chair, and the slight weight of her back against my front sets something off. I try to swallow to forestal the sensation, but it’s no good. The yogurt is coming back up, one way or another.

I practically trip over Elise in my haste to get to the sink—there’s no way I’m making it to the bathroom.

“Crap.” Elise drops her cards and grabs a roll of paper towels from under the sink for me. Eric asks if I’m okay and Celeste sighs loudly.

“Jeez, Jem,” she complains.

Elise turns around and stamps her foot. “He didn’t do it on purpose, Cee!” Her voice is beyond shrill with indignation.

“Shut up, Elise.” She turns to look at me with surprise, and then with hurt. She throws the rest of the paper towels down next to me.

“Fine,” she hisses, and storms away.

She was only trying to defend you.

Because a guy like you needs his shrimp of a sister to fight his battles for him.

You need to apologize.

You need to grow a pair.

“Let’s put on a movie,” Eric says, trying to divert our guests’ focus. He, Celeste and Emily abandon the cards on the table and go to the living room. Emily hangs back, though.

“Do you need any help?” she asks as I turn on the tap to rinse the sink.

“No. I’ll meet you in there.” She goes without any further encouragement. I think she understands why it takes me an hour to show my face in the living room.

*

I’m tired as all hell by ten, but I stay up because everyone else is still awake. Normally I would go to bed whenever my body tells me to quit, but Emily’s presence gives me social obligations as her host. She comes into my room before bed, dressed in pajamas pants and a tank top, and says she’s going to have bruises on her shoulders by tomorrow.

“well if you didn’t cheat so much…” I tease her, but the joke falls flat.

“Do you still feel sick?” Emily asks. She’s standing back farther than normal, holding her arms defensively around her middle. Like I’m catching. Like I might puke on her.

“I’m okay now. I got sick really suddenly, is all. It doesn’t happen that much anymore.”

“It used to?”

“During chemo it could happen without warning.”

She doesn’t like my direct honesty nearly as much as Willa does. Why can’t she take it? Whatever she’s imagining can’t be nearly as bad as going through it yourself or with a loved one, like Willa has.

What a wimp.

Be nice. She’s still your friend too, and you have a limited supply of those.

Emily steps up to me very carefully, like she isn’t sure if I’ll bite. Then she reaches up and pulls my hat off. “It’s less weird that way,” she says.

“What?”

“When your hat is on I can’t help picturing you with hair. It’s like watching someone wear sunglasses indoors.” She bites her lower lip and shrugs. “This is…you.”

I don’t want this to be me.

Emily sets my hat aside on the dresser. We sit on the bed and talk about tomorrow’s plans. Dad wants to go to church, and Emily and Celeste are free to come if they want. Easter breakfast is always a big deal, and Eric still puts on an egg hunt for Elise even though Mom and Dad insist she’s too old for it.

We’re discussing plans for an afternoon walk when Mom knocks on the door.

“Can I come in?”

I jam my hat back down on my head. Emily might like to look at me this way, but it’s enough to make Mom cry. She’ll lose more sleep if I upset her right before bed.

Mom knocks softly on the door before poking her head in. “The phone is for you, Jem. Do you want to take it or are you too tired?”

“I’ll take it.” I accept the cordless phone from Mom and ask Emily to excuse me before taking it into the hal . I shut the bedroom door behind me. Mom slips away down the hall with a fond smile and a wave goodnight.

“Hello?”

“Hi.” Willa’s voice is soft and sort of dreamy, like she’s about to whisper a fond secret.

“Hey. What’s up?” It’s a relief to talk to someone who isn’t weird about…well ,
me
.

“I missed you today.” I should probably say it back, but all I can do it smile from ear to ear.

“You too good to hang out with me now, or something?” she teases.

“No. No, I’ve just had company today.” I have to speak lowly for Emily’s sake.

“I worried about you. It’s been awhile since you’ve been MIA on a Saturday.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s a warming but guilty feeling, knowing that she cares enough about me to worry when I’m not around and don’t call .

“You were with family today?”

“No. A friend came down from Ottawa.”

“Did you have fun?”

“She’s in town all weekend.”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice that you dodged the question, Harper.”

I rest my back against the walland slide down to sit on the floor. I set my elbows on bent knees and seriously consider her question. “No, actually.”

“Why not?”

I swallow. “I might have to answer your question with a question.”

“Okay.”

“What…um…you know how…?”

“Go ahead,” she prompts me softly. I hang my head.

“How can you stand to look at me?”

She’s silent. I hear her shift positions on the other end of the line. “That’s a complicated question.”

“I might need to hear an actual answer.”

“You’ve got such nice eyes…” she trails off thoughtfuly. “They suck me in.” I hear the rustle of fabric near the phone. “And you’ve got these really interesting hands. I like to watch them.”

My chest feels tight and my stomach has butterflies. The feeling is reminiscent of that time in fourth grade when Bette Lapalme pantsed me after gym class, even though we were alone packing up equipment and she was the only one who saw my underwear.

“And sometimes when you come to class you’ve got Jel -O coloring on your teeth.”

I snort.

“I look at you because I like to.”

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

“Sometimes,” she admits. “But
you
don’t bother me.” For some reason, I don’t doubt her. “I want to show you something. When you have time.”

“Alright.”

“Are you going to bed soon?”