Antsy Does Time

And that’s when things began to get weird.

4. Photo Ops, Flulike Symptoms, and Trident Exchange in the Hallway of Life

There are very few things I’ve done in my life that I would consider truly inspired. Like the time I e-mailed everyone at school to tell Howie his pants were on backward. After dozens of people pulled him aside to tell him, he finally gave in to peer pressure, went into the bathroom, and turned his pants around, so they really were on backward.

That was inspired.

Giving Gunnar a month of my life—that was inspired, too. The problem with inspiration, though, is that it’s kind of like the flu—once one person gets it, it spreads and spreads until pretty soon everyone’s all congested and hawking up big wads of inspiration. It happens whether you want it to or not, and there’s no vaccination.

I tracked Gunnar down in the hallway between third and fourth periods that day, and presented him with his extra month, officially signed and witnessed.

He read it over, and looked at me with the kind of gaze you don’t want a guy giving you in a public hallway.

“Antsy,” Gunnar said, “there are no words to express how this makes me feel.”

Which was good, because words might have made me awkwardly emotional, and that would attract Dewey Lopez, the school photographer—who was famous for exposing emotions whenever possible. Such as the time he caught star football jock Woody Wilson bawling his eyes out in the locker room after losing the first game that season. In reality, Woody was crying because had just punched his locker and broken three knuckles, but nobody remembers that part—they just remember the picture—so he got stuck with the nickname “Wailing Woody,” which will probably stick to him like a kick-me sign for the rest of his life.

So here we are, Gunnar and me, standing there all ripe for a humiliating Kodak moment, and Gunnar finds the words I had wished he wouldn’t: “As Lewis once said to Clark, ?He who would give his life for a friend is more valuable than the Louisiana Purchase, entire.’” And now all I can think about is what if he hugs me—and what if Dewey gets a picture, and I’m known as “Embraceable Antsy” for all eternity?

But instead Gunnar looks at the paper again and says, “Of course you didn’t specify which month you’re giving me.”

“Huh?”

“Well, each month has a different value, doesn’t it? September has thirty days, October has thirty-one, and let’s not even mention February!”

I have to admit, I was a little stunned by this, but that’s okay, since stunned is an emotion I can handle. It is, in fact, an acceptable state for me. I was willing to go with Gunnar’s practical approach—after all, he was the one who was dying, and I wasn’t going to question how he dealt with it. I did some quick counting on my fingers. “You got six months left, right? A seventh month would put you into May. So I’m giving you May.”

“Excellent!” Gunnar slaps me on the back. “My birthday’s in May!”

That’s when Mary Ellen McCaw descends out of nowhere, grabs the paper away from Gunnar, and says, “What’s this?”

Just so you know, Mary Ellen McCaw is the under-eighteen gossip queen of Brooklyn. She’s constantly sniffing out juicy dirt, and since her nose is roughly the size of Rhode Island, she’s better than a bloodhound when it comes to sniffing. I’m sure she knew about Gunnar’s illness; in fact, she was probably responsible for broadcasting the information across New York, and maybe parts of New Jersey.

“Give it back!” I demanded, but she just holds the thing out of reach, and reads it. Then she looks at me like I’ve just arrived from a previously unknown planet.

“You’re giving him a month of your life?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“Giving Gunnar a new lease on life? Antsy, that’s so sweet!”

This leaves me furtherly stunned, because no one has ever called me sweet—especially not Mary Ellen McCaw, who never had a nice word to say about anybody. I figure at first that maybe she means it as an insult, but the look on her face is sincere.

“What a nice thought!” she says.

I shrug. “It’s just a piece of paper.”

But who was I kidding? This thing was already much more than a stupid piece of paper. Mary Ellen turns from me to Gunnar, and bats her eyes at him. “Can I donate a month of my life, too?”

I look at her, wondering if she’s kidding, but clearly she’s not.

Gunnar, all flattered, gives her an aw-shucks look and says, “Sure, if you really want to.”

“Good, then it’s settled,” says Mary Ellen. “Antsy, you write up the contract, okay?”

I don’t say anything just yet, as I’m still set on stun.

“Remember to specify the month,” says Gunnar.

“And,” adds Mary Ellen, “make sure it says that the month comes from the end of my life, not the middle somewhere.”

“How could it come from the middle?” I dare to ask.

“I don’t know—temporary coma, maybe? The point is, even a symbolic gesture should be clear of loopholes, right?”

Who was I to argue with logic like that?

***

“So what’s it like at the Umlauts’?”

Howie and Ira were all over me in the lunchroom that day, as if going over to the Umlauts’ was like setting foot in a haunted house.

“Was there medical stuff everywhere?” Howie asked. “My uncle had to build a room addition just for his iron lung—the thing’s as big as a car.”

“I didn’t see anything like that,” I told them. “It’s not that kind of illness.”

“It must have been weird, though,” Ira said. I considered telling them about Gunnar’s do-it-yourself tombstone, but decided not to turn something so personal into gossip.

“It was fine,” I told them. “They’re just a normal family. The dad’s always off working. Their mom’s pretty cool, and Kjersten and Gunnar are just like any other brother and sister.”

“Kjersten ...” Ira said, and he and Howie gave each other a knowing grin. “Did you get some quality time with her?”

“Actually, I did. We all had dinner together.” Ira and Howie were disappointed at how normal the whole thing was, considering. Still, it didn’t stop them from being envious that I actually got to eat a whole meal with Kjersten. I didn’t even have to exaggerate. The more I downplayed it, the more jealous they became.

There’s something to be said about being the envy of your friends. They made some of the standard rude jokes friends will make about beautiful girls out of their reach—the same ones I was tempted to make myself, but didn’t. Then the conversation came back to the subject of death, which is just as compelling and almost as distant as sex.

“Were they all religious and stuff?” Ira asked. “People always get that way when someone gets sick— remember Howie’s parents when they thought he had mad cow?”

“Don’t remind me,” says Howie.

I thought about it, but didn’t remember anything like that at the Umlauts’. They didn’t say grace like we do at my house when someone remembers to. Ira was right—if Gunnar was my kid, I’d be saying grace all the time.

“His mom doesn’t talk about his illness at all,” I told them. “I guess that’s how they deal with it. It’s creepy, because there’s always, like, an elephant in the room.”

Then Howie looks at me with those drowning-penguin eyes, and I know where this is going.

“You’re joking right? Is that even legal?”