Dessert First (21 page)

“Of course. I'm very good at imaginary ice cream.” And, apparently, at sending it to imaginary boyfriends.

“You know.” He opened his eyes. “Our age difference isn't a big deal. If we get together in the real world. When I'm twenty-one, you'll be nineteen. Practically no gap at all. Unless I've been dead three years when I'm twenty-one. Then the difference gets fairly massive.”

“There's the three thousand miles.”

“No big. Maybe you could fly out this year, to solve the distance problem.” He smiled. It looked somehow nervous. “If we meet while I'm still alive, fewer awkward silences and probably more fun.”

I wasn't wild about where this was going. “Maybe. But it might not go well. You might want to kiss me, then die from it, because I didn't use enough hand sanitizer lip gloss.”

“I'm all for dying happy. There are worse ways to go.”

“Gosh. Thanks,” I said. “Besides, in person, you might find me totally resistible. Most guys do.”

“You sell yourself short.”

“Nah. I'm the world's foremost expert on being me.”

“Well, let's check. Why don't you come visit?”

“Live at least until summer and get your neutrophil count above 500 and I'll think about it.”

We chatted and he flirted while I had this nervous empty feeling in my stomach, until I finally had to log off, to get ready for school. Cancer and the Internet are a weird combination for making friends. If Hunter didn't have cancer, and went to my high school instead of his, there would be exactly zero chance we'd ever be friends, let alone spend all our time emailing and messaging back and forth and talking by Skype and pretending to be boyfriend-girlfriend. He was a senior and hot—even hairless—and a basketball star.

I was, technically, me. So the difference was fairly massive anyway.

My birthday came and went without a big deal. When you're unpopular, having a party would be small, depressing, and lonely.

Evan baked me a little cake and brought it to school, then he and Tyler and Calley Rose ate it with me at lunch outside. Evan also made me a nice card, with a UA movie theater pass inside, good for two admissions. That made me fantasize about whether Evan wanted me to offer to go to a movie with him.

Amber and Elizabeth came by, looking slightly awkward. “Hey,” Amber said. “Happy birthday.” Then she looked down, like she felt guilty or something.

For some reason, I thought about Hunter, and how life was short. Maybe too short to stay mad at people forever. “Come have some cake,” I said to both of them. There was enough left for a little piece for each.

“Are you sure?” Amber asked.

“Of course. You're totally invited.” I didn't even hassle them for not inviting me to their birthday parties last year after Tracie turned them against me. It's possible I'm maturing or something.

Mom cooked my favorite dinner that night, salmon from the Japanese fish market on San Pablo. It wasn't vegetarian, but Rachel didn't even sneer at it, and Skippy got the skin from the salmon, which he thought was awesome. Also, Mom made sweet potatoes and vegan-tofu-whatchamacallit-ooh-barf-just-shoot-me-now for Rachel, so it all worked out.

I didn't get anything from Hunter except birthday greetings, but he had a few other things going on that week, between a final chemo dose and a spinal tap. Plus, I never gave him my actual physical real world address. When he asked, I told him I was too embarrassed, since I actually lived in a mental institution, which—with Mom downstairs—was close enough.

A week after Hunter's birthday, I was Skyping with him after the morphine kicked in on his end, and he said it again.

“I love you, Kat.”

He tacked my name onto the end to make sure we both knew he was talking to me. A couple of prior times, under the late-night influence of morphine, he got confused about who he was talking to, even on Skype. (Once confusing me with his prior girlfriend, Leslie. And talking about the time “we” hooked up in a dressing room. Awkward.)

“No, you don't,” I said. “You don't know me. We've never met. I'm just a voice. And words. A picture on your computer.”

“I love your voice, then. And your words. And picture. That's all anyone is, really. I love you.” He gave me a dreamy look, like he actually was in love—and on lots of morphine.

I didn't know what to say. “I have to go. I'll text you. In the morning.” As in, tomorrow.

I disconnected in the middle of his “good-night” and stared at the computer, like it was a torture tool for scooping out my heart. Which was beating too fast, like I was panicking.

R U OK?
I texted Hunter in the morning.

Possibly dying,
he sent.
Otherwise really good.

Are _we_ OK?
I texted back.

We are great. Thanks for being my friend.

I'm glad I'm your friend,
I shot back.
And you're mine. I'll email after school.

Whew. Back to friends.

In soccer, the most basic—but really effective—move is the pullback. You're driving forward, then you pull the ball backward by putting your cleats on top of it and spin to reverse, to change direction again or pass.

That's what I did with Hunter. I wasn't sure I wanted to hear he loved me. My stomach clenched when he said it, and I couldn't lose another boy I loved to cancer so soon. And I liked him—a lot—but didn't Love-love him. I also wasn't sure what it meant when he did say he loved me, what with morphine, foggy chemo brain, and God-and-spinal-tap-only-knows how many leukemia blasts partying in his central nervous system.

So I went back to emails and text messages and Facebook private messages, not phone calls or Skype. If we texted, he'd have to be straight enough to type and hit send. And if we ran everything through a keyboard, maybe the computer's surge protector might protect my little heart. Yeah. Right.

It was still intense. We spent hours every night typing back and forth. It was like I was life and he wanted to hold on to me, and I didn't want to let him go either.

After a week in the no-Skype zone, Hunter sent,
Miss your voice
.

K:
Nope
.
It's right there in your mind. Like the taste of ice cream. You can totally hear these words in my voice.

H:
Wow. You're right. Cool.

Okay. Hunter definitely had morphine onboard. When you use words like “wow” and “cool” over imaginary voices, it qualifies you to sell tie-dyed shirts on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue, except bald cancer guys can't grow old-hippie gray ponytails.

H:
We should go back to Skyping again soon, anyway. You know, while I'm still alive.

At least
he
had legal painkillers for this talk. I typed back, before I could think better of it.

K:
So—how long is that going to be? When do you plan on dying?

H:
Don't know
.
But talked to my grandma last night.

That was a pretty random topic change.

K:
About dying?

H:
Not only. But she is dead.

K:
Then it must have been hard for her to keep up her end of the conversation.

H:
Not really. She was here. We talked. Don't remember everything, but she said it would be OK.

K:
That you're getting well?
There was an improbable electric surge of hope in my chest.

H:
No—that I'm dying. But it's OK. Death. She'd know, right?

*Sound of girl's heart breaking*
I typed, but didn't hit send. Instead, I held the backspace key down so long it should have erased not just those words but the whole last miserable year.

I started to type
how much morphine are you on?
but backspaced over that too. He'd give me the same answer he always did—lots, but not enough. And that wasn't the point. He was trying to tell me something. I was supposed to listen, not squirm away or joke or tell him he didn't know what he was talking about.

K:
Oh Hunter. Oh, my DBF
.

Then I put back in the sound effects, so he would know.

K:
*Crash then squish, as my heart breaks and quivers wetly*

What else to say?

K:
Tell your grandma it better go well for you, or when I finally get to where she is, I will kick her wrinkled dead behind for eternity. Tell her I know karate and can kick a soccer ball the length of the field when I'm pissed. Which I would be.

H:
LOL
.
That's why I love you, Sarcasm Angel. Love and xo, your DBF.

Ah, xo—kiss and a hug. Or a hug and a kiss. I was never sure. Other girls get actual soft lip-kisses from their so-called boyfriends. I got two letters that don't even qualify as a Scrabble word. Please don't go yet, Hunter. I cried for fifteen minutes after I logged off.

If Hunter was getting visits from his dead grandmother, I figured he didn't have long left. So I gave up, and started Skyping with him again. When I logged on, in the computer window Hunter was wearing the 49er hat I sent him.

“Hey, girlfriend,” he said. “Nice to see my Sarcasm Angel.”

“You too, DBF. Great hat.”

“My cute girlfriend sent it.”

“Oh, crap. Now the cancer's affecting your
eyesight.
”

He laughed. I could almost always make him laugh. “I'm graduating from Chemo U. No more chemo after this series. One more radiation course, then they top me up with borrowed blood and send me home.”

“What's your blast count?”
Please say zero.
I knew it wasn't close to zero.

“High. So I'll wait at home for a miracle, instead of hanging around here. You want to visit, and see if that helps?”

“I don't get the right miracles. Or the miracles right.” I sat there in shock, while he filled me in on details. Not yet. No, no, no. They were going to let his immune system slightly recover from its whacking-by-chemo and then send him home. To wait for a miracle. Or, more likely, death.

• • •

So Hunter and I went back to watching movies on Netflix “together”—at the same time. We picked mostly romantic comedies. Our lives were such a series of disasters, action movies were redundant. We shot messages back and forth. (
Weak. He should kiss her. Oh. Right. Maybe he should stop being a jerk first, then kiss her.
) A few nights after we'd started talking again, I was Skyping with him when our movie was over, just before 10
P.M.
his time.

“So,” he asked, from the window on my computer. “Are you going to change your relationship, too, on Facebook?” He smiled, like he had a surprise for me. So I split the screen on my computer and opened Facebook on the other half. There, Hunter had changed his Facebook status to “in a relationship.” In response to the questions in the comments, he'd posted he had a “long-distance online girlfriend named Kat in California.” His friend Michael commented that it sounded like having an invisible, nonexistent girlfriend from Canada. Ouch.

But that pretty much nailed it, even if we watched the same movies “together.”

I didn't know what to say. After referring to himself as my DBF and saying he loved me a bunch, Hunter had announced I was his actual girlfriend. Okay—wow. No pressure, being a guy's possibly last girlfriend, ever.

My silence went on so long he jumped back in. “If you agree to be my girlfriend, I promise to stay alive for at least two weeks, so we can call our relationship long-term.” He looked nervous and small, in the little Skype half-window on my screen.

“Sure. Of course. When you throw in a long, happy life, how can I resist? Swoon.” I put my hand on my forehead. “I'll change my status.”

He broke into a big grin then, like that was a huge relief.

But not for me. I didn't know what my status was. I got tingly sometimes, when I thought about being around Evan. But when I thought about going out to see Hunter, or even calling myself his girlfriend, I mostly got scared.

Fortunately, Facebook is like a multiple-guess test and there's a catchall none-of-the-above category. So I changed my status to that: “It's complicated.” Which summed it up: Complicated.

Evan kept hanging out with me at lunch. “How are things going with your dying boyfriend?” His mouth twisted into a worried frown.

I completely did
not
want to talk about Hunter, as my boyfriend, to Evan. But even though most of what Hunter and I sent back and forth was by private messages, some of it was by public posts, so a fairly large tip of an iceberg was jutting into view. “I don't think he's really my boyfriend. But I have no idea.”

“You don't know if he's your boyfriend?”

“If my life made sense,” I said, “it wouldn't be mine.”

“Well, uh, how's it going?”

“He's dying. So this is the exciting, swoopy part just before the plane hits the ground and everything gets painful and horrible.”

“Oh. When? Will he probably . . . die?”

“Weeks. Or if he gets an infection, days.”

Evan's eyes widened. “Whoa. Will you be okay?”

I teared up. About Hunter. About Beep. Maybe even about me. I probably wasn't going to be okay. “I'm counting on my sense of humor to save me. When everything else fails—chemo, radiation, prayers, borrowed bone marrow—that's what's left.”

“Is that enough?”

“I pretend it will be. But it might get so dark, even I can't keep it light.” I looked over at the fence by the tennis courts, like I was looking for something to climb, to escape from my life. I was behind on my paper, which was my last hope. “I'm flunking out, Evan. By this time next year, we'll be in different grades. If I'm still in school.”