As the rest of the mourners milled about, held flags, shook hands, I tried my best to subtly make my way to my car—my head down, not risking the opportunity for a forced, sympathetic look. Not that I wasn’t sympathetic, but a look wasn’t what Leo or his family needed. I breathed out with relief when I got to my car door undetected. I made the mistake of looking up toward the funeral, and in that quick second my eyes led directly to Leo, who was looking right at me. We were far enough away that I didn’t attempt mouthing anything to him, not that I had something to say. All I could offer was a slow nod of my head. Leo did the same. Then someone engulfed him, a blubbery hug, and I made my escape.
Maybe it was enough that I was there. Maybe he knew I cared even if I couldn’t talk to him. Maybe it didn’t matter at all.
I thought about skipping the rest of school that day, but I had a quiz in history that I didn’t want to have to make up. Annoyingly I reached the school building at the same time as Mr. Esrum. He gave me a conspiratorial face, as though we’d just shared something momentous. But we hadn’t shared it. Everyone was alone at a funeral. “Lovely service, wasn’t it?” he asked. Funeral small talk was so gross. I shrugged. “Hopefully Leo will be feeling more up to it second semester.”
“Up to what?” I asked.
“I’m sorry. I assumed he told you. Leo is taking the rest of the semester off to do homebound. It’s very common for kids to need time off when there’s a death in the family.”
I knew that all too well. Even though I didn’t.
“I’m sure you’ll see him, though.” Mr. Esrum was fucking clueless.
“I have to get to class,” I told him, and walked as fast as I could to the book closet. I fumbled with the key and swore repeatedly until I managed to unlock the door. Once inside, I was lost. This tiny space and I was lost. I knocked at a stack of Shakespeare, and it spilled to the ground. That wasn’t enough. I kicked another stack, and down it went. I slipped on books, which made me angrier, and I punched a shelf. Books rained down in every direction as I kicked, hit, shoved at any semblance of neatness and order. When nearly every book lay in a heap on the floor, I collapsed on top of them. Corners jabbed my ribs, my neck, my face, and I welcomed them. Then the tears came. I couldn’t stop them. I imagined I was Alice through the looking glass, filling the floor with my giant tears, the absorbent books sopping them up until the pages floated along like soggy crackers and I floated away with them.
CHAPTER 27
WINTER
BECCA FINISHED HER LAST round of chemo yesterday. She claimed it was at maximum toxicity, and I didn’t doubt it. It seemed like the chemo was meant to kill everything except her. Sometimes she could barely lift the remote, and other times her head hurt so badly all she could do was silently cry.
School and life had been lonely, but not much different than it had been over the summer. I worked, watched movies, helped my mom out. Talked to friends at school, but that was about it. Whenever Becca felt up to it, I went to her house. My mom had taken up making a different casserole for each visit. I don’t think Becca managed to try even one. The smell of her bedroom had evolved. In eighth grade, Becca went through a fragrant phase after her aunt Vicki visited the Caribbean and bought her a perfume called White Witch. Becca thought this was the coolest thing ever, never mind the nose-piercing smell. She managed to collect dozens of bottles and sprayed everything she owned with the scent. Thankfully, she finally moved on to a new smell, one of Britney Spears’s concoctions, but the White Witch bottles still remained in a box in her closet. The White Witch smell hung around too, and I couldn’t be in her room without flashing back to innocent dances and early curfews.
Her room smelled nothing of White Witch anymore. The smell was a combination of disinfectant, Jell-O, and puke. I wondered if Becca could smell it. Or if her nose was immune to it, like how grandparents have an old- person smell that I’m sure they’re not aware of.
Some days the smell in Becca’s room was so bad I almost suggested pulling out the old vile of White Witch and coating the air with it.
I watched helplessly as she dealt with the side effects: constant nausea, puking, not being able to walk, not being able to see, not to mention the tubes and holes and weight loss and not wanting to eat. Why did this happen? To Becca, and to anyone? Why can someone get so sick that the only way to get better is to make them more sick? It’s like the world’s longest exorcism. It doesn’t make sense that I can chat with someone live on a tiny screen, that governments spend billions of dollars on war and mayhem, that actors make millions of dollars to just look pretty and skinny, yet no one can fucking figure out how to cure cancer without torturing people.
The other day Becca’s mom said, “Thank God” about something. It wasn’t anything important enough to remember or anything big enough to warrant divine intervention, but she felt the need to thank God, something she’d been doing a lot of recently. Becca didn’t hesitate to correct her mom, “I don’t believe in God.”
“What?” Her mom looked shocked, uncomfortable, as if saying she didn’t believe in God would somehow make Becca cursed. If she could be more cursed than she already was.
“I don’t believe in God,” she repeated.
“I suppose that’s understandable, though I’m sure you don’t mean it,” Becca’s mom conceded. “I’m going to believe in Him and keep praying for you.”
“That is just wrong, Mom.” Becca’s mom had hit a nerve. “What kind of god do we have to beg to make us well? What kind of god allows people to get this sick? And not just get sick, but have months of pain and misery? Is it some kind of vengeance? A lesson He’s trying to teach me?”
“God gives what you can handle.”
“So it’s a test? Let’s see how much shit Becca can endure, so she can come out a better person on the other end? Was I that bad a person to begin with?”
“It’s not just what you can handle, Becca. And God doesn’t control everything, but He can help us get through.”
I wondered if Becca’s mom had always been this religious and I hadn’t noticed, or if this was a direct correlation to watching her daughter disintegrate.
“I don’t want to believe in a god who can help me because I can’t believe in a god who would let something like this happen in the first place.”
Becca’s mom was shaken. Maybe she was holding on to the belief that God would save Becca. That if she prayed long enough and hard enough, she’d get better.
I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Here I was, surrounded by death and sickness, guilty for the tiniest crumbs of pleasure I allowed myself: ice cream, horror movies, and the selfishly selfish act of finding happiness in making Becca laugh. Where did God fall into any of that? I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want the blame, or the hope, to be on someone else. So I carried on, waiting for whatever was to come, with or without God’s help.
CHAPTER 28
I HADN’T SEEN LEO since the funeral. I told myself he needed space, that he wouldn’t have taken a semester off if he wanted to be around people. I tried to convince myself that somehow we were different; that my absence was appreciated instead of begrudged. But really, why would he want me around after the way I treated him? I went with that, but I thought about him all the time. When a movie came on TV that I thought he’d like, or I read about what celebrities were coming to Dead of Winter Con next month. I wanted to call, or at least text. Once I managed to force my fingers onto my phone.
Got a 2nd copy of Frankenhooker. You want?
Two painful days later, I heard back from him.
