None of the Above (17 page)

“You should create a new Facebook profile,” Gretchen said. She'd been calling me a couple of times a week to check in. It kind of felt weird, like she was my AA sponsor or something. But it was also nice, like I had a big sister. “There's an AIS private group. Don't even bother telling anyone in your high school about the new account, and when you go to college you can use the new one instead.”

“I've got to delete my old profile. Or at least stop getting all those stupid notifications.” Maybe then I'd start emailing again.

“Make sure you save all the photos and messages you want first.”

“It's not worth the hassle,” I said.

“Don't be ridiculous. You can't just delete your whole life.” She offered to use my username and password to download my
photos to her computer, and when I remembered how I'd been tagged in some old pictures that my cousins in California had posted of my mom, I finally said yes.

“Hey,” she said after she'd logged in. “You have some really nice messages here.”

“What?”

“One from a girl named Rashonda. She says she misses you and hopes you come back soon.”

“Huh. It must be Rashonda Glenn.” Not that I knew any other Rashondas, but I remembered the look on her face when she saw me crying in Coach Auerbach's office. Though, when I thought about it, shocked disgust looked pretty similar to shocked embarrassment.

“Was it a private message, or did she post it on my wall?” I asked.

“It was a PM.”

So she didn't have the guts to say it in public
, I thought.

“But you have a sweet wall post from Tamara Leffard: ‘Thinking of you this holiday season. I hope to see you next year.'”

Tamara was a student teacher, an adult. She didn't count.

“Then there's another message from a girl named Peggy Shah. She says, ‘Miss you, lab partner. Get well soon!'”

Peggy was a good egg. Not popular, but kind. I thought about her and Rashonda, and Ms. Diaz and Ms. Leffard. Darren and Jessica. Faith and Coach Auerbach. Were eight people
enough to go back to school for? If not, what number was? Twenty? Sixty? A hundred?

I was three weeks into my six-week leave of absence, and despite Dr. LaForte's best efforts I didn't feel any closer to going back. My dad still thought that to get my scholarship, I had to officially graduate. He'd mentioned it the other day, when he told my tutor that we'd probably only need him for a few more weeks.

“But Ms. Diaz said that we might be able to file for an extension,” I'd told him.

“Honey, you can't hide here at home forever.”

“No, just until college,” I'd said. My dad had sighed.

Gretchen got bored with scrolling through my wall. “Okay, I'm downloading your pics now.” I heard a bunch of mouse clicks on her end of the line. “You should join me and my friends some night. Here in Syracuse.”

“Really?” I'd almost forgotten what it was like to hang out, and have the biggest stress in your life be what kind of shoes you were going to wear.

“Sure. You need to get out.”

But I
had
gone out. I told Gretchen about Josh.

“So what happened after? Did you get his number?”

“Well, he asked for mine.”

“Did he call?”

“He texted. But I didn't exactly encourage him.”

Gretchen didn't seem to judge. “You know, a lot of girls
have reactionary hookups after their diagnosis. It's a way to prove their femininity. Not that I can relate. The one time I ever let a guy stick himself in me, it didn't make me feel like a woman. It made me feel like I was an electrical socket.”

I laughed, and Gretchen went on. “No, seriously. You know when I feel the most feminine? When I'm with Julia.”

We were both silent for a minute. And I wondered for the first time whether “feeling feminine” just meant feeling good in your own skin.

“Seriously, come out with me sometime. Do you like The Concept?”

That was the band I'd listened to in Darren's Dungeon. “Yeah, they're great,” I said.

“My friends and I are going to see them later this month, a week or two before Christmas. Julia's coming, and a bunch of other people. You can crash at my house if you're worried about driving home.”

“Umm . . .”

“I know you're trying to come up with a reason not to. But let me tell you from personal experience: it's exhausting to always have to come up with new excuses. Trust me, you're not going to be able to think of one that sticks.”

I believed her. I penciled the date into my calendar, otherwise empty except for doctor's appointments. Then, after Gretchen had hung up, I did something more daring: I traced over it in pen.

The next day, my caller ID brought up an unfamiliar number. A few weeks earlier, maybe I would've let it go to voice mail. But that day, I took a deep breath and answered. It was Darren, asking for a ride to the clinic. Jessica would be missing the next few weeks because she was the lead in
Much Ado About Nothing.

“I'd drive myself,” he said apologetically, “but we only have one car and Tuesdays are my sister's Zumba class. I'd probably end up as body parts in our deep freezer if she can't go. It's her only form of relaxation since Leighton was born, and my mom's looking forward to some quality grandma time.” Darren's sister Wendy had gotten pregnant right before graduating.

“Bet your mom's an amazing grandmother.”

“Let's just say, if
Iron Chef
ever held a gourmet puree competition, she'd win hands down.”

“Should I pick you up at your house?”

“It's in the wrong direction. It's easier to pick me up from school. Say, three o'clock in the east lot?”

I almost said no. I hadn't been on campus in weeks, and the east lot was the parking area closest to the football field. The team had made the playoffs, so they'd still be practicing. But as my mind contorted, sorting through different options and twisting through a maze of ways to explain to Darren why I wanted to pick him up at a different time and place, I realized that Gretchen had been right. Making excuses took way too much energy. So I said, “Three o'clock. East lot. I'll be there.”

Before I picked Darren up, I emptied my car of all my old drugstore receipts and put up a new air freshener. Not that guys usually cared about things like that, but what did I know? I'd never driven a boy around before. Whenever we went anywhere, Sam would pick me up in his Scion so I wouldn't have to drive my twelve-year-old Honda Civic, which had been my mom's.

When I pulled into school, I breathed easier when I saw that the football team was safely assembled on the far side of the field, so far away they looked like little blots of orange and blue. The parking lot had pretty much cleared out, too, and Darren sat alone on one of the benches with a book and a pad of sticky notes.

“Sorry about the sardine-can car,” I said as he squeezed in. Even with the passenger seat pushed back all the way, Darren's
knees were almost up to his chin.

“Hey, I'm just glad that I didn't have to hitchhike my way to the clinic. I would've had to borrow my sister's rape whistle.”

“Yeah, doesn't she need it for her Zumba class?”

Darren snorted. It was lovely to make someone laugh.

I turned the radio on as I navigated through town. “You care what we listen to?”

“Anything, as long as it's not by someone who rose to fame on a Disney Channel show.”

“Please.” I gave him the stink eye. “Give me
some
credit.”

“No judgment. I'm just giving you my trigger warnings, that's all.”

I couldn't remember the last time I'd been relaxed enough with a person to actually banter. Even conversations with Faith were awkward—she skirted the big issues like they were land mines, and I fell all over myself to not seem like a pathetic depressive.

With Darren, though, it was as if the undercurrent of our past history as almost siblings smoothed everything over. Or maybe it was just that I knew that he carried as much baggage as I did. The funny thing was, because our families had spent so much time together, I knew stuff like Darren's favorite soda (Dr Pepper) and way to eat eggs (poached, with A.1. sauce), but I didn't know a lot of nonsuperficial stuff, like where he really wanted to go to college (Columbia).

“Wow, Ivy League,” I said.

“It all depends on whether I get good financial aid. Though my dad said he'd help.”

“How's he doing, anyway?”

“He's fine,” Darren said in that automatic tone that you used when people asked questions you didn't really want to answer. I knew that tone well.

“My dad is starting to go back to his bachelor ways,” I said, to fill up the space in our conversation. “He hasn't seen anyone practically since your mom. Every weekend night is a date with the La-Z-Boy. If he's lucky, he'll go out for a poker night with his buddies, but lately he hasn't even been doing that. I don't know what he's going to do when I go to college. Start eating frozen dinners every night, probably.”

“Hey, my mom has a healthy-frozen-dinner service.”

“Yes, better that than condemn him to Aunt Carla's casseroles.”

There was only so much you could say about casseroles, and Darren changed the subject. “So, you've been running again?”

“Yeah. I liked your trail. Is that your usual run?”

“Yup. Every day except Wednesdays.”

“What's on Wednesday?”

Darren grimaced. “Promise you won't judge?”

“Why would I judge?” I asked innocently.

“Okay, now I
know
I'm not going to tell you.”

“Come on!” I laughed. “What could be that bad?”

He turned and raised his eyebrows. Then he coughed in his hand while saying, “Science Olympiad.”

I smiled, more at his embarrassment than anything else. “That's nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Yeah, because it's rated ten out of ten on the high school coolness scale.”

“Come on, what girl can resist an Olympian?”

“Actually, that
is
where I met Becky.”

“See? Smart is sexy.” I was happy for him. Really, I was. But I couldn't help feeling a little bit sorry for myself, too. Being single sucked when everyone around you was pairing up like it was Noah's ark.

Later, when we were in the clinic break room eating our dinner, Lisa, the nurse's aide, poked her head in.

“Mikey's here for his infusion,” she said.

Darren stuffed down the remaining half of his sandwich, grunted an apology in my direction, and scrambled out. I looked at Lisa. She grinned. “When you're done eating, go to the procedure room to check out Mikey's setup.”

It didn't take me long to finish my leftover lasagna. About halfway to the procedure room, a rat-a-tat that sounded like a machine gun filtered down the hall. Seconds later I heard a few explosions, and a boy's voice shouting, “No! Bring your guys in from the south!”

When I pushed open the door to the procedure room, I saw a skinny, bald African-American kid wearing black plastic
glasses and an
I ♥ BOOBIES
T-shirt sitting in the infusion chair. He had one of the clinic laptops sitting on a metal instrument stand and was clicking away at his mouse and keyboard so vigorously I was afraid he'd pull the IV right out of his arm.

Darren sat across from him pounding away at his own laptop. “Don't worry, I've got reinforcements. But you need to get those upgrades soon!”

“Nice way to fulfill your community service requirement,” I deadpanned.

Darren didn't bother looking up, but raised his middle finger behind his back so Mikey wouldn't see it. “It's only a sixty-minute infusion. I consider it back pay for all the lunches I've worked through.”

I craned my neck to peek over his shoulder. “StarCraft Two, huh?”

At that, Darren froze for a second and looked at me. I heard Mikey scream as one of his buildings blew up. “What, you know how to play?”

“One of the kids I babysat for was obsessed with it.” I shrugged. “I know the basics.” I squinted at his screen. “Enough to know that you need some Vespene gas
stat
.”

“Crap!”

On the ride home, Darren told me that Mikey had been coming in for infusions every three weeks for the past two months. “They're trying to treat his bone cancer with chemo before surgery. Hopefully they won't need to amputate his leg.”

If I hadn't been driving, I would have closed my eyes. Instead, I just stared ahead, and counted the dotted lines on the highway median to keep my shit together. As awful as chemo had been for a woman with a ten-year-old child, how horrible must it be when it's the ten-year-old who's sick?

“Mikey's mom can't afford a computer, so I try to game with him as often as I can.”

“The clinic could be a lot better for kids,” I said. “Is there any budget to stock the waiting room? They should get a subscription to
Highlights
.” I had loved those when I went to appointments with my mom.

Darren shook his head. “The clinic barely even has a budget for basic medical stuff. Most of the supplies are donated, which is why there are, like, five different brands of exam gloves and none of them ever fit properly. That's one of the awesome things Jessica's doing—she's organizing a supply drive through the local hospitals.”

At the admiration in Darren's voice, I felt a pang of jealousy. It surprised me, because I wasn't normally the kind of person who did things to impress other people. My mom had drilled it into me that doing the right thing was its own reward. But after I dropped Darren off, I spent most of the ride home trying to figure out why his opinion of me suddenly mattered so much. I respected how smart he was, for sure, and I couldn't imagine a more stand-up guy. But after our parents broke up, I never went beyond the occasional small talk when I ran into
him. It wasn't like it was normal to hang out with the son of your dad's ex-girlfriend, right?

It was a new thing, having to go out of my way to make friends. Before, they'd just fall into my life, whether through Vee and Faith, or track. The last time I'd had to work to make friends was probably before my mom died, when I first started going to Sunday school. I dreaded the hour after the service, because the three other girls my age all went to school on the same bus and, as Aunt Carla would put it, were thick as thieves. It wasn't that they were mean to me—they just weren't exactly inclusive. When I mentioned it to my mom, she told me I should try to compliment their clothes, or invite them to a movie, or somehow impress them with a joke. In the end, after a couple of variations on “Wow, what a cute dress,” I gave up.

But now? I wanted to impress Darren.

Just a few blocks away from home, I took a little detour and went to Colonial Plaza. I wormed my way through the mostly empty lot, and parked by the used bookstore.

“We're closing in fifteen minutes,” barked the crusty old owner when I walked in. “No sales after eight p.m.”

“I'll be quick,” I assured him. And I was. I made a beeline back to the children's book section and picked up a set of Eric Carle books, an old copy of
The Snowy Day
, and a few Dr. Seuss classics. I almost whooped for joy when I found a Spanish translation of
Oh, the Places You'll Go!

The magazine section consisted of four milk crates filled
to the rim with a hodgepodge of titles, but eventually I found a dozen copies of
Highlights
that had barely been touched, a bargain at ten cents apiece. I added a couple of copies of
Seventeen
for the older girls.

When I got home, I crawled up into our attic and brought out the heavy artillery. The summer before sophomore year, when I had started babysitting hard-core, I'd found a big rolling suitcase from Goodwill and filled it with coloring books, stickers, Legos, and the occasional box of fruit snacks in case of emergency. I added in the books and magazines I'd gotten.

It seemed like a small offering, when I thought about the big-picture perspective that Darren had talked about that day we'd run up to the top of the hill. But then I thought of a different perspective—that of a ten-year-old girl sitting in a doctor's office, waiting for her mother to get called in. And I remembered how from that point of view, the right magazine or a good book was as large as the world.