Positively Beautiful (10 page)

It's all Faith needed.

I can feel the eyes on me as I pass and hear the whispers that follow in my wake. I'm sweating as I make it through the salad-bar line and look around for Trina. She is sitting with Chaz and a crowd of his geek friends, and she waves me over. I can hear the snickers as I walk across the cafeteria and I hear someone say, “There goes Va-jay-jay Girl!”

Chaz's table gets quiet as I approach. Trina is too busy trying to move people over so there's room for me to notice the eye rolling and smirks going around.

“Scoot,” Trina says to Chaz. “Make room for Erin.”

“Hey, no, don't move,” I say. “I was just coming over to say hi.” Which I totally wasn't. “It's such a pretty day I thought I'd eat outside.”

“Are you sure?” Trina asks. “You want me to come? I'll come. Hold on.” She grabs her tray.

“No, no, I'll be fine. Need to get some sun, right?”

As I walk away, I hear someone from the redneck table say, “She's trying to get sun where the sun don't shine,” and everybody laughs. I pass Molly Jenkins and her crew, kids I used to hang out with in elementary school, and she gives me a sympathetic shrug. Everyone's heard.
Everyone.

I'm hoping Trina will come sit with me, but she doesn't. Only seniors are allowed to sit outside, but there are too many kids for the monitors to know who is in what grade, so as long as you don't look like a giggly, clueless freshman, you're okay.

I wonder if Trina has heard the rumor and my new nickname. I still haven't told her about the BRCA gene. I feel mean and small, treasuring my secret and my resentment.
If she loved me she would know something's wrong.

I sit at a picnic table by myself. I'm not hungry but I don't want to sit there and look pitiful. I try calling Mom, but she must be sleeping, because she doesn't pick up. Her appointment isn't for another two hours. I reread the e-mail from Ashley!!!, the chick from the BRCA forum. I haven't e-mailed her back. I wasn't sure what to say.

Now I type.

My mom didn't plan on telling me about the gene until I was older. In some ways I wish she had kept it a secret, but then I feel angry at her for even THINKING of keeping something like that from me. But now I don't know what to do. She says she doesn't want me to think
about it. I don't think I can stand it. The waiting. I could get tested for the gene by that online place and Mom wouldn't even know.

Are you glad you got tested? Or do you wish you didn't know you are positive? I'm Pandora right now, wondering whether or not to open the box.

Ashley!!! e-mails back almost immediately:

I wish I had an answer for you. I don't.

Easiest would be not to ever know about the gene at all. That's the kid in me, I guess. Once I knew, there was no going back to oblivious. I got tested because I wanted to know one way or another. Now that I know, I try to live my life like it's a nonissue. When it's time, I'll do the surveillance.

Honestly? I don't think about death. I think about living.

Me:

I keep thinking of getting cancer like my mom. It's so hard watching her go through this. We're still waiting to see how bad the cancer is and it's so HARD to sit around and wait. I want to be doing something, anything.

Ashley!!!:

So … I went kite surfing yesterday. You stand on a board about the size of a surfboard and you hold on to a sail
and you go zipping across the water like you're not even connected to it. And sometimes you're not, sometimes you hit a wave and you go flying through the air and it's just like you're flying. You don't
think
when you're out there, you just feel.

But here's the thing. Yesterday was windy, I mean, REAL windy. It has to be windy to go kite surfing anyway, but it was seriously blowing. It was scary, and I'm standing on the shore trying to decide whether or not I wanted to do it. I hate to admit it, but I stood there a long time, trying to decide. And then I went ahead and did it, and it was scary, yeah, but not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. Really? The worrying was worse than the actual thing.

“You saving the whole table?” Michael straddles the bench so he's facing me.

“Watch out, you sat on my imaginary friend.” I look up and give him a little smile.

Michael pushes his dark hair out of his eyes. His lip twitches but he doesn't smile.

“One day I'll make you laugh,” I say. “Evidently I'm good at it. Evidently I make a
lot
of people laugh.”

“People are stupid. You can't worry about them.”

“Oh yes I can.”

He shrugs. “No one believes it, anyway.”

“Oh yes they do.”

He looks at me steadily. “Anyway, I just wanted to come say hi. So. Hi.”

“Hi,” I say. It's moral support and I'll take it.

He leaves and Faith comes out of the cafeteria in time to see me staring at his butt as he walks away.

If looks could kill, I'd be a bag of bones smoking on the ground.

I'm walking out to my car with Chaz and Trina after school, hurrying because I want to get home to Mom and hear what the doctor said, when Faith comes toward us.

“Chaz!” she calls.

“Uh-oh,” I say, “Dorkster Twins activate.”

I wait for the fist bump, but Trina is staring at Faith. “I like her outfit,” she says, almost to herself. Trina has been dressing more … normal lately. I hadn't really thought about it, but the red pantsuit she is wearing is pretty tame, even with her hair up in a high, bright blue ponytail.

She avoids my look of amazement.

“Heeeyy, Chaz.” Faith tucks her dark, shiny hair behind a delicate little ear. “Just wanted to tell you I'm throwing a little party at that school—what's it called? The one you and Michael took me to by EAV?”

“Uh … the John B. Gordon School?” Chaz is confused.

“That's it. I figured you could be there to show us how to get in, okay?”

Chaz frowns. “At the school? A party? Why?”
Snap
,
snap
go his fingers.

“I thought it was pretty cool. How fun and goth would it be all lit up with candles? Something different. My friends
have no imagination when it comes to parties. I wish I thought of it over Halloween.”

“You can't mess it up,” Chaz says, still perturbed. “You have to pick up all the trash.”

Faith smiles, her white, white smile. “Of course. I know how strongly you feel about leaving nothing but our footprints. I hear that all the time in my Sierra Club meetings. I get it. After you get us inside, why don't you hang out? And, you can bring your friend if you want.” She smiles all crocodile at Trina, who looks faintly stunned.

“Hey thanks, Faith, sure,” Chaz says. “Sounds like fun and yeah, we'll be there.” He's flustered enough to make it clear he's not used to this sort of attention from Faith. I wonder how she treated him when she was dating Michael.

“Thanks, Faith, that sounds like
loads
of fun,” Trina gushes. Someone has taken over her body.

Faith smiles queenly and lets her glance fall on me before turning away. No, I am not invited.

“Who gives a crap about your stupid party?” I say without thinking.

Chaz steps back from me like I might be contagious.

Faith turns around slowly. She says nothing for a moment while she looks me up and down.

“Who are you again?” she says. “The party is just for my friends. I'm sorry but I'd rather not have any losers there. You understand, right?”

This is said in such a sweet voice it takes a moment for the words to sink in. She's gone before I think of anything to say. Naturally.

“Oh no, Erin, why'd you do that?” Trina asks. “I told you you needed to watch her. God, I should have said something. I should have stuck up for you. What is wrong with me?” She grabs her ponytail and yanks on it, hard.

“Stop it,” I say tiredly. “It's okay.” I can't blame her because I didn't say anything either. But I do blame her, just a little.

“I won't go to her party,” Trina promises. “I don't even
want
to go.” But her tone is unconvincing.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “It's no big deal. You guys go. It sounds like fun.”

“Are you sure?” Trina studies my face.

I shrug and try to smile. “I've got to go. I'll talk to you later.”

“I wish you hadn't said that to her, Erin,” Chaz says as I walk away. “
Epic
fail.”

But I can't worry about it right then, because I'm too focused on getting home to Mom.

I should have worried, though. I should have realized Faith wasn't done with me.

“What did they say?” I blurt as I burst through the kitchen door.

But I can see it's bad. I stop, and it's like I'm waiting to get hit, my stomach muscles all tight and my breath coming in short punches.

“It's … a little worse than they thought. More extensive, more aggressive, more … everything.” Mom looks up at me, her face taut and pale.

“All right. What next?” I try for all upbeat, like
no big deal
.

“Chemo,” she says. “Then radiation. We'll beat it, it's just going to be a little bit harder.”

She's crying, and I'm crying, and I hug her, but it's hard because of the bandages and the tube and so we sort of rock back and forth as best we can.

The next morning before school I order a genetic test. The website says it will take a couple of days for the kit to arrive. Then I have to spit into a tube and send it back to them and it'll take two to four weeks to find out if I have the mutation.

I'm not sure I'm going to do it. I don't know if I want to do it.

But if I have the test, at least I
can
do it. I can't take the limbo anymore. I don't want to be standing on the edge of the water wondering how bad it's going to be. Sink or swim, I want to
do
something.

As I go to get up from my desk, a piece of paper flutters to the ground. It's the number for the flying school I got at Dino's, the day my mom told me she had cancer. I still don't even know why I got it.

I look up at the picture of Dad standing by his red plane with his dark, curly hair just like mine and the big smile on his face. That's what I remember about Dad. He was always smiling, always laughing. And yet he did dangerous things, like flying fighter jet missions over Iraq. After he got out of the military, he took up aerobatic flying as a hobby, which meant flips and rolls and stalls and all sorts of crazy stuff. He teased death every day, and one day death got tired of playing.

Do animals feel joy because they don't think about death or because they live with it every day?

I wish I could ask Dad. I think he'd know.

I remember how it felt when I was up in the plane. I loved looking down at the world from up in the air. It all made sense up there, somehow, even when we were flying upside down and doing loop-de-loops and my parents told me
they loved me, they did, but Mommy and Daddy needed to live apart
.

Flying with my dad was the best time of my life. How sad is that? The best time of my life happened when I was six years old.

I want to feel like that again.

Without letting myself think too much about it, I pick up the phone and dial the number.

“What the hell?” is the gruff answer.

“I, uh, want to sign up for flying lessons,” I say, confused. “Do I … have the right number?”

“At six thirty in the morning? Are you kidding me?”

“Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize …” I feel stupid, my cheeks glowing hotly. “I'll call back later.”

I won't though. I already know that. And it is kind of a relief. I tried, at least.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” the man grumbles right as I go to hang up. “How about Saturday, a week from tomorrow. What's your name? Speak up!”