After Ever After (9780545292788) (9 page)

Guess what? Lindsey has a sprig of mistletoe over her bedroom door.

Just sayin'.

Tad was back in school the second week after Christmas. I asked about his trip to Philly, but he didn't want to talk about it. I understood that. If I never saw the inside of Children's Hospital again, I would still be seeing it in my nightmares forever. I could only imagine what Tad went through every time he had to go there and get poked, prodded, and stabbed.

So I said, “All your parts working OK?”

He said, “Absolutely, D.A. Just ask your mom.”

And we moved on to other subjects.

My after-school math classes started that week. Incredibly, the instructor was Mr. McGrath. You know, because when mathematics is the game, and children's futures are on the line, it definitely makes sense to call in … THE GYM TEACHER! When I told Tad, he said, “What — there wasn't a lunch lady available?” But actually, it appeared that ol' Flash knew his stuff.

He started us off with one of his patented lame-o speeches about
vic
-to-ry, but once we got into crunching through problems, things went fine. Except for the fact that it was a whole extra freaking hour of math twice a week, that is.

Oh, there was one other problem: As you might expect from a guy named Flash, Mr. McGrath was into making us do everything as fast as possible. If you took too long on a problem, he came over and started yelling in your ear, “This is a
pow
-er test, ladies and gents — a
pow
-er test. Knowing the
an
-swers isn't enough — you have to grind it out as
fast
as you can. So we're going to drill, and drill, and drill some more until you don't have to
think
at all. Write this down:
Think
-ing is the enemy of math!”

Uh, whatever you say, Flasheroo.

After the seventeenth time he shouted at me about it, I tried to explain to him about my processing problem, my 504 plan, and how I get extra time on tests. Which was like explaining poetry to a brick wall.

“Alper,” he barked, “I've been watching you all year.”

I gulped. “Uh, you have?”

“Abso-
lute
-ly. You think I don't see you, just because you're in that back room? Well, that's where you're wrong.
Dead
wrong. When they put you in my class, and told me that you'd be using the
train
-ing center, I was one
hun
-dred percent against it. I thought,
Those ma
-chines
are for athletes, not for little wimps who refuse to participate in their real gym class
. But I had no choice, so I just decided I'd stay away from there, and see what happened.”

He paused and stared at me from about a foot away while I resisted the urge to wipe his spit spray off my face.

“And do you know what I've seen in there this year, Alper?”

Uh, my butt?
I thought. But all I said was “No, sir.”

“I've seen courage. Guts. De-
ter
-mination. Why, you've taken that Ibsen boy, and you've gotten him up and out of that wheelchair. I swear, if you had told me in Sep-
tem
-ber that Ibsen would be up on
the treadmill by Christmas, I'd have laughed in your face. And I've seen your workouts, too. You're
sweat
-ing over there. You're getting stronger every day. I'm proud to say I was wrong about you, son. Now, if you can get that flabby pos-
tee
-rior of yours in shape and get your stubborn friend to walk, don't you think you can pass some namby-pamby math test?”

“Um, maybe?”

“Alper, listen: I was a track-and-field star back in the day, and my old coach told me something very important. He said, ‘There's no such thing as a maybe-finish line. There's no such thing as an almost-finish line. All there is is a finish line.' Do you get my
meee
-ning?”

“I should work hard and pass the test?”

He grinned so big I could practically count the greasy chunks of Big Mac caught in his molars. “See, Alper? I knew you weren't as dumb as that big ol' five-oh-four plan said you were.”

Charming guy, that McGrath. But by the time he sent me home with a CD of math flash card soft
ware and orders to practice the drills until I could do them in my sleep, he almost had me be-
lee
-ving I could pass the test.

On the way home, since I was out and about anyway and my parents were at work, I almost rode my bike over to Lindsey's. But then I thought maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to try the math practice program, so I went straight home. I ate some popcorn as soon as I walked in, but then I pretty much went straight to my room, fired up the computer, and worked on math speed drills until my head was spinning.

It's strange. My father had been bugging me about practicing with flash cards for years, but I always thought he was just being mean and bossy. Then, as soon as my gym teacher gave me a pep talk and told me to work on those same exact facts — even though he actually
was
kind of mean and bossy — I ran home and did it. But, you know, he wasn't my dad.

When my parents came home, they had a million questions about my after-school class. I told them the basics, but didn't mention my special moment with Flash McGrath. I don't know why. Then Mom asked if I had seen Tad around school, and how he seemed. I told her he was fine, and she exchanged some kind of mysterious look with my dad. “What?” I said. “Nothing, Jeffrey,” she replied. “Aren't I allowed to look at my handsome husband once in a while?”

Thanks for saying that, Mother. It didn't make me
too
uncomfortable
.

Luckily, Lindsey called me right then, which allowed me to flee to my room. I swear, if my parents had started kissing or something, I would have had to rip my own eyes out of my head to make the pain stop.

The next Monday I said something I shouldn't have. I was talking with Lindsey during a science lab. We were measuring water, then boiling it for a while, then measuring it again, then boiling it again, et
cetera. Lindsey was the boiling-and-measuring person, and I was the timer. Again.

I don't know why the spacey kid is always the timer. And then Mr. Laurenzano wonders why our results don't make sense.

But anyway, the boiling took a few minutes each time, so we had long stretches with nothing to do. Lindsey was filling me in on what was going on with her friends back in California. To tell you the truth, I couldn't keep all the Tiffanys and Alexises straight from the Ferns and Topangas, but I tried really hard to nod at the right times.

I must have messed up, though, because all of a sudden, Lindsey was stomping her foot and looking mad, but I had no idea what we were discussing. “Isn't that, like, so wrong?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah. It's, like, super-wrong. Ultra-wrong, even.”

Then she laughed. “I just told you that Brittany-with-a-
y
has a cat, and it just had new kittens. I knew you weren't listening, you big goofball!”

I don't know how she can stand me sometimes. She just shrugged it off and continued, though. “No, really, I did get a little upset about one thing that happened. Remember I told you about Brittanie-with-an-
i-e
, and her ecology project?”

“Uh, maybe?” I said hopefully.

She elbowed me in the gut, but smiled so I knew it wasn't an angry elbowing. “She's the one who watched the toads in the pond on that vacant lot? And that company was going to build six hundred condos right over the pond?”

“I totally knew that, Linds.”

She snorted. “Anyway — ooh, the water is boiling! Quick, write down the time!”

While I was writing and she was measuring, she said, “Well, it turns out that those toads are endangered, and that the pond qualifies as a protected wetland. And Brittanie-with-an-
i-e
's dad is this high-powered lawyer. So he filed an injunction at the county courthouse, and now the developers can't
build anything there! She's, like, an environmentalist hero. Oops, watch that burner!”

“Yikes!” I said, yanking my sleeve away from the open flame.

“So I was thinking about it, and I just got a little bummed.”

“Wait, I'm confused.
Why
are you bummed again? Are you, like, anti-frog or something?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, I'm not anti-frog. And they're toads, anyway. It's just that Brittanie did something big. She turned a school project into something that really made a difference in the world. I wish I could do that. I have this project due in May for Mrs. Delpriore's English class — I'm supposed to make a video documentary on an issue that matters to me. I want to make it important, you know?”

Mr. Laurenzano said, “Lindsey, that is a splendid ambition.” Geez, don't you hate it when teachers sneak up on you? “That is, if you and Jeffrey manage to survive this experiment without setting yourselves or anyone else on fire.”

“No problem,” Lindsey said. “Stop, drop, and roll, right?”

If a boy had said that, Mr. L. would have probably launched into a big safety lecture. But he just gave that little teacher-pretending-he-isn't-really-amused-by-a-student's-joke chuckle and moved on to harass somebody else.

As soon as he was a table away, I made my big mistake. “Lindsey,” I said, “you sound just like Tad.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. A couple of weeks ago we had this whole big argument, because he wants to come up with some kind of grand gesture that nobody will ever forget. I told him he should just be nice, and it hurt his feelings. But the point is, Tad wants to do something important, too. Maybe you guys could — I don't know — save a tree or something.”

Look, it was just an innocent comment, OK? I was just attempting to show some support for my girlfriend, and maybe trying to show her that Tad cared about more than just trading insults with people. I
had no idea they were going to go off on some massive holy crusade or anything.

But as soon as I said that, Lindsey started staring off into space with a disturbing gleam in her eye. In fact, if our water hadn't boiled over onto my lab notebook at that exact moment, she might
still
be in the lab, brainstorming ways that she and Tad could turn my whole life upside down. But it did, and she got distracted for twenty-five whole hours, until she and Tad sat down for lunch the next day.

And began to make plans.

When I got home from school, the day of the boiling-water lab, I didn't feel quite right. It got worse after dinner, and by seven o'clock, I was violently sick to my stomach in the bathroom. Repeatedly. Now, one thing you have to understand about cancer survivors is that we have a lot of experience with, shall we say, reverse digestion. The people around us might get all flipped out about it, but pretty much any illness I get isn't a big deal compared to what I've already been through.

That's why I was calm, even when the fever and shakes started at around nine. Mom, on the other hand, was about as calm as Bambi after the forest fire. So, believe it or not, she took me to the emergency room. My dad stood in the doorway, gave me an awkward pat on the shoulder as we headed for the car, and waved stiffly from the porch until Mom and I turned the corner. Mom was sporting ragged sweatpants, some kind of horrendous do-rag on
her head, and the ancient tie-dye T-shirt that she slept in when her
good
ancient tie-dye T-shirt was in the wash.

As we pulled over on the highway for the second time in a mile so I could hurl in a hedgerow, I thought,
Wow, this is just like old times. Except back in the day, Steven would have been around to tell me I was going to be OK.

And then I thought,
I don't need Steven to tell me that anymore. I know I'm OK.

Huh, how about that? It's not often you have a major life-changing realization right in the middle of feeding the highway department's hydrangeas. Eventually I got back in the car, we made it to the hospital, and I spent the rest of the night having all sorts of unpleasantly familiar blood work. At about six
AM
, when my fever had broken and I was passed out on an exam-room bed, my pediatrician, Dr. Purow, came in to tell me that — surprise — I was fine. It was just a stomach bug.

Mom got all teary-eyed and hugged me, right in front of Dr. Purow. Sheesh, like this whole scene
hadn't happened every time I had a fever for the past eight years. Then she asked how many days of school I would have to miss. He told her the usual: no school until at least twenty-four hours after my fever went away.

And that's why Lindsey and Tad got to have lunch alone together, head-to-head, conspiring against me, for the next three days. For the first day, I mostly slept. My biggest adventure was in the afternoon, when I staggered downstairs to eat a plain cracker, which made me super-sick all over again. On the second day, between frantic phone calls from my mom ordering me to keep sipping Gatorade every twelve seconds, I spent a couple of hours doing math on the computer. Then I IM'd back and forth with Lindsey for a while:

On the third day, after school, I got a long e-mail from Tad. Life was just getting more and more interesting.