Wake (35 page)

“We had a nice chat.” Willa pulls a can of pop out of one of the sweater’s oversized pockets, cracks it and takes a sip. She offers it to me but I decline.

“What did you talk about?” Please, in the name of all that is holy, don’t let Mom have embarrassed me.

It’s embarrassing enough to be seen receiving treatment. Willa looks once at the tubes that enter above the col ar of my hospital gown, and tries not to look at them again. If I’d known she was coming I would have asked the nurse for a blanket or something to hide this uncomfortable sight.

“She told me that you used to win awards for music.”

“It was just a stupid music camp certificate.”

“So you didn’t win some competition to play with the Ottawa Philharmonic when you were like, fifteen?”

Why did Mom have to go and tell her that? She probably bragged about it, too.

“I don’t play that seriously anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Chemo.”

“I thought you were done?”

“No, chemo messed up my hands, like it did my taste buds.” I extend my scarred hand to her in il ustration. “Chemo kills a lot of cells that are actually useful. I lost feeling in my fingers and freaked out, so my doctor told me to drink a lot of water. I was chugging something like eight liters a day. Not all the feeling came back, though. I can’t play as well as I used to. And GVH made my hands so sore that I couldn’t play for weeks at a time.”

“You still play very beautiful y.”

“And you’re such an expert.”

“Your mom said you used to compose, too.”

“A little.”

“Will you show me an original piece sometime?”

“Maybe.”

“Harper,” she says severely. Her tone is weird because she’s smiling.

“Fine. I’ll show you some time.”

Willa smiles and nods with satisfaction. She takes a long sip of ginger ale and then gives me that devilish smirk that I don’t trust for shit. “So you went to music camp?”

“So?”

“Touchy.”

“It was one summer.”

“Or five.”

Damn it, Mom!

“Are you going this summer?”

“I’ll be in summer school, catching up on all the stuff I missed.”

“That’s a shame.”

I shrug. “It’s no big deal.”

“Elise said it used to be the highlight of your year. ‘Bigger than Christmas,’ she said.”

“You talked to Elise about me too?”

“You talk to them about me.”

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

“They’re
my
family.”

“And they care about you very much—enough to gossip freely, anyway.” She smiles again and swallows more of her pop.

“Music just isn’t a big part of my life anymore. Did they tell you that?”

“Jem,” Willa said calmly. Uh-oh. She’s first-naming me. “That is complete and utter bullshit.”

“Stop acting like you know everything. You know shit about my music.”

“Were you in a band?” she teases. “Bunch of classical nerds together in a garage—cel o, oboe, euphonium—” She knows what a euphonium is? “Al you’d need are a couple of bowties and you’re set.”

“Yeah? well …” Willa looks at me expectantly while I fish for a riposte. “Damn it, you don’t have any dorky hobbies.”

“Ha!”

“But reading Dickens for fun is still nerdy as shit.”

“So are you not as dexterous anymore or what?” She reaches out and picks up my hand where it sits on the armrest of the recliner. She turns it over in her hand and runs her thumb along my palm.

“I’ve still got full movement.” I wiggle my fingers to show her. “I just can’t moderate how hard or soft I touch things, sometimes. Music takes that kind of finesse.”

“So what’s your favorite song to play?”

“I dunno. It changes to whatever I feel like at the moment, I guess, or whatever piece I’m working on. I used to practice a lot more than I do now. I had a lot of free time on my hands before we started hanging out.”

Willa smirks. That last sentence reveals too much, and my face betrays me by turning red.

“I had a lot of superficial friends before I met you,” she says.

“Are you calling me ugly?”

“I’m saying you get me.”

“I do?”

Willa shrugs. This woman is frustrating as hell. “Do you think you get me?” she asks.

“I don’t understand a single word that comes out of your mouth.” She laughs and tells me I’m full of shit.

Saturday

Elise makes a crack at me for running late on a Saturday as I rush around the house getting ready.

Shower, clothes, breakfast, missing keys—al annoying little things that get in the way of me going over to the Kirk house.

“What time will you be home?” Elise asks, following me around like a puppy. If she’s going to do that, she could at least help me look for the car keys.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe we can do something tonight?”

“We’ll see.”

“Jem,” she whines.

“What?”

“You don’t want to spend time with me?”

“Maybe tomorrow. Cal Carey or something.”

“She’s busy.”

“So am I.” Where the hell could Mom have put those keys?

“Can I come?”

“No.”

“Why not? Willa likes me.”

“I said no, Lise.”

“Fine. Hmph.” She sits cross-legged on the kitchen floor and folds her arms, pouting profusely. She’s about ten years too old to be pulling this shit. I set a cup of water and a bag of Bits’n’Bites next to her,

because “Pouting is tiring work,” and leave her to sulk. She’ll get over it.

*

When I walk up to the Kirks’ porch the door is open and there’s a sticky note attached to the screen:

Just come in, Harper. I like how she expects me now.

I step inside and follow the sound of the Stones’ “Everybody Getting High
.
” From the foyer I see Willa slide across the kitchen tiles on socked feet, singing along loudly. She’s in her standard weekend outfit:

torn black jeans, oversized plaid shirt (probably either stolen or a hand-me-down) and holey socks. I can’t imagine how she could look any better.

Willa turns the music down when she sees me and says good morning.

“Good morning to you too.”

She turns away and walks into the living room, so naturally I follow. Willa has three laundry baskets on the couch and chairs and has organized the wash into several different piles on the floor and coffee table. The whole room smells of warm laundry and I just want to get comfy and breathe it in. I have a thing about the scent of fresh laundry. I used to crawl into the dryer when I was a kid. Mom has pictures of me napping in the dryer barrel on a pile of warm towels.

Willa takes a stack of folded dishtowels to the kitchen. I contemplate burying my face in a nearby pile of t-shirts, but she might catch me and freak.

“Want to go for a walk?” Willa calls from the kitchen. “It’s a nice day and I need air.”

“Okay.”

“We won’t go far,” she promises as she comes back to the living room. She grabs Frank’s piles of shirts, socks, and jeans and loads them all into one of the baskets.

“If you need air we’ll go as far as you want.”

“Can you handle it?”

I give her a look and take the basket from her. “I’ll be fine.”

*

It’s a nice day for April. The sun makes more of an impression through the cloud cover than usual, and there’s a slight breeze. Willa and I stroll down her block slowly.

She looks over at me and smiles. “Nice hat.”

“Thanks.” It’s blue today. Elise took one look at me when I came downstairs this morning, sighed ruefully, and said, ‘well at least it matches your eyes.’

“You look healthier today.”

“Yeah?” That’s a real compliment, coming from her and considering that I look the way I do.

“Am I still not all owed to ask about your cancer?”

“You just said I look healthy; can’t we leave it at that?”

“Sure.” We walk in silence for a few minutes. Willa swings her arms slowly by her sides. I’ve got my hands in my pockets, as usual. I got into the habit as a way to hide the scars. I do it around Willa as a matter of routine, even though she said she likes my hands. Whether or not that’s true is an open question.

“I have a similar but related question,” Willa says after awhile.

“What?” I’m curious to know what it is, even though I may choose not to answer it.

“How’d it feel to find out you had cancer?”

I snort. “Like a bomb went off in the middle of my life. It’s enough to make your skin crawl, knowing there’s something living inside you that can kill you—that
is
killing you.”

“But it didn’t.”

“I got lucky—a lot.”

“Hot nurses?”

It takes me a second to get it, and then I tell her to bugger off even as I chuckle. “Nice nurses, but not many hot ones. I had some cool roommates, though.”

“Anyone interesting?”

“My first roommate was a year older than me—Evan—and he’d been sick a few times. Lost his eyes to cancer as a kid, and shit. He had this massive stack of Brail e books on the side table and he used to read them out loud, except when I knew him he had a brain tumor and he’d have these weird spel s where he’d forget stuff and read the same passage over and over again.”

“Did that bug you?”

“No, actually. He was just this guy who had it so much worse than me, but he was still knew who he was and enjoyed his hobbies in spite of all the shit. I liked to think that I got him in a way that the nurses and everyone else didn’t, ‘cause I was sick too.”

“Did he know he was repeating passages?”

I shrug. “I never told him. I don’t think any of the nurses did, either. He didn’t have visitors very often, to tell him he was losing his mind.”

Willa stops and looks at me searchingly. “He’s dead now, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. He had a grand mal and went into a coma. His family pulled the plug after a few days.”

“Was it scary to watch that, being so il yourself?”

“I only saw him seize; they took him to the ICU after that. I found his obit later and nobody dies
that
fast in a coma unless someone yanks the power on their ventilator.”

“He did have a brain tumor. That could have killed him. They wouldn’t have let the family withdraw his vent if he wasn’t already brain dead.”

“Doesn’t matter; I prefer to think of his barely-there family as a bunch of assholes that didn’t want him hanging around on life support.”

“Would you want to hang around on life support?”

“I wouldn’t want to die alone.”

“You don’t know that he did.”

“His obit said that he ‘passed away peacefully in the care of hospital staff.’ I bet his family just phoned in the order to stop wasting the insurance coverage and called the funeral home while he was still plugged in.”

“Did it make you feel lucky?” she asks. “That you have such a caring family, I mean.”

“Yeah. It did.”

“Did you go to his funeral?”

“Yeah. They cremated him. It was weird.”

“My sister was, too. I read up on it after—it’s a sick process. They put the bodies in these cardboard boxes and slide them into giant ovens so their sternum is centered, and then they burn the shit out of the body and roll what’s left around in a mixer with ball bearings to reduce it to dust.”

Uh, gross. And I need to know that why?

“Only you would do research instead of grieving.”

She chuckles. “Hey now, I had a bomb go off in the middle of my life, too. Mine just had a timer on the detonator.”

“It’s not the same. Having your own body turn against you and having a loved one die are different kinds of catastrophes.”

“Did I tell you what Tessa had? It started with lymphoma, but by the time she died it was all through her abdomen. Her stomach was so swollen that she looked pregnant.”

“Jesus, Kirk.”

“There’s nothing graceful about dying. A catastrophe is a catastrophe, no matter what your role is in it.”

I nod in agreement because I don’t have any argument left, and we’ll never see eye-to-eye on this issue anyway. I can’t live her experience any more than she can live mine.

“We talk about the weirdest shit.”

Willa giggles. “Imagine if we were set up on a blind date or something. It would be the most depressing first impression.”

“But would you call back?”

“This is hypothetical.”

“Spare my ego, Kirk.”

“Oh, not the fragile ego,” she says with a roll of her eyes.

“Seriously.” I nudge her with my elbow and smile to show I’m teasing. “Would you?”

Willa sighs thoughtfuly. “But this
is
hypothetical, right?”

“You’re stalling.”

She elbows me. “It depends. Are we both at the same school in this scenario?”

“Sure.”

“Is it a dinner date?”

“If you like.”

“Would you try for a kiss at the end of the night?”

I try and fail to read the desired answer on her face. “No?”

Willa wrinkles her nose and shrugs. “I’d probably file you under ‘friend.’ That scenario is over-

traditional and has the potential to get messy. If we’re at the same school and it doesn’t work out, we’d still have to see each other every day.”

“And what about the real-life scenario?”

“We’re speaking hypothetical y.”

“Real life is infinitely messier. And what’s wrong with a dinner date?”

“It’s so conventional. It’s like something out of a bad sitcom.”

“Have you ever been on a dinner date?”

Willa mumbles noncommittal y. That’s a no.

“You should go on one before you judge. I’ll take you out sometime.”

“No.”

“In the interest of research.”

“Not interested.”

“In dinner, or dinner with me?”

“Both.”

“Why?” I’m a sucker for punishment. I have this compulsive need to hear her list in great detail each and every specific reason for rejecting me and filing me under ‘friend.’

“Besides the fact that we’d have to go to a vegan restaurant for you to be able to order anything?”

“Very funny.”

“I like cooking.”

“You deserve a night off once in awhile.”