Ray of Sunlight (4 page)

For that matter, CJ looked like he was having a ball too, and I knew what he looked like under that makeup. It wasn’t just a painted-on smile, either. That seemingly irrepressible twinkle was still in his eyes. How does he feel well enough to be here? I’d be curled up under my blankets and refusing to come out until Tuesday… at least. But here he was.

And he had finally seen me.

“Fresh meat! Come on over.” He waved me over as well as he could with a book in his lap and kids dripping off him.

“You’ve gotta stop calling me that,” I grumbled as I slinked over to the sofa near the tangle of little bodies.

“Nah.” He chuckled. “It’s too fun.” And he went back to reading.

One of the girls sitting nearby climbed up into my lap. I don’t think I had ever held a kid before, and I know none of the few I’d been around ever wanted to sit on my lap.

She was about five years old and was wearing one of those ubiquitous body suits that was supposed to be good for their burns or something, under her clothes. And the hair on the right side of her head was missing. The burn wasn’t on her face per se, and it—whatever had caused the burn—had missed her ear, but much of her scalp was burned, and I could see the scars disappearing down her back.

I had been watching her climb up and was trying to figure out just where to put my hands, so I hadn’t been looking at CJ. When I finally looked back, he was looking at me. And that beautiful twinkle was gone. Instead, his eyes threatened murder—slow and torturous—if I did anything to hurt the little girl’s feelings. I wouldn’t have thought he’d been around me enough to pick up on my dislike of people in general, let alone kids in particular. And, I wasn’t sure why it bothered me that he thought I might reject her. He was right to worry. My first impulse was to push her off—gently, but still…. So it shouldn’t have bothered me that he thought that. Usually I didn’t care what anyone thought about me. But him? For some reason it mattered what he thought.

But, that didn’t really help, because I had no clue what to do with the wiggling munchkin on my lap. CJ’s eyes softened again when he saw that I was—if not happy about it, at least accepting of having her on my lap. He nodded his encouragement, but I still didn’t know how to hold her without hurting her.

I decided to simply ask her. “Will I hurt you if I hug you?”

She smiled wide and shook her head, then grabbed my neck in a big hug. I returned firm enough pressure to let her know she was welcomed on my lap, but I was still unsure how far down her back that burn went, and I really didn’t want to cause her pain. I was an ass… but not
that
big of one
.

She seemed to approve of my response and wiggled closer to my chest while I kept my arms loosely around her. We turned back to CJ, who, of course had gone on with the story. The twinkle in his eye was back as he nodded in approval. I smiled at him.

By the end of the story, the little girl was asleep on my lap, and I had another dilemma. CJ seemed to notice my discomfort, and after shooing away all his minions, he came over to help.

Instead of taking her from me, however, he sat down beside me.

“You handled that well,” he commented, and I had no idea why his approval made me so happy.

“Thanks,” I replied, “but I’ve never been around kids much, and with her burn and all… I didn’t want to hurt her.”

“She’s pretty far along with the skin grafts, so the scars probably aren’t as painful as they seem, and she would have let you know if it hurt.”

I nodded, then asked, “What do we do now?”

He smiled. “If you’re okay with holding her awhile, I’d like to let her sleep. She hasn’t gotten much rest lately… nightmares… so it’s good that’s she’s catching up.”

“How do you know all of that?” I was truly curious. To hear Ms. Carol talk, he had memorized everyone’s goals—I mean
everyone
in the whole hospital, since he volunteered in all three wards. Granted, each ward only had about twenty beds so “everyone” consisted of sixty kids, maximum. But that was
sixty kids
!

He chuckled. “I pay attention. The kids tell me, the parents talk to me and have given the nurses permission to tell me stuff.” He smiled wider. “I’m kind of an honorary therapist. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do really, back when I thought there’d be a ‘when I grow up.’”

I could feel myself wince. I knew he had cancer, but he was saying he was terminal.

“You look pretty ‘grown-up’ already.” I had to say something and that was the first thing that came to my mind, but then I had to add, “Well, maybe not right at this moment,” and I gestured toward the silly clown get-up.

“Well, I think of myself as grown-up.” He smiled. “But society doesn’t think I’ll be an adult until August.”

So, he just turned seventeen at the beginning of the month. He was so much more mature than that. He was a little younger than me. I turned seventeen last April.

“You’re what? Junior? Senior?” he asked.

“Senior,” I answered. “I can’t wait to get out of that lame-assed school.” The stupid private school Allen insisted I attend always started back in August instead of waiting until after Labor Day like normal schools. We didn’t usually get out until mid- to late June, either. It was crazy.

“I finished up last year,” he admitted. “Tutors came here and worked with me. All that one-on-one attention helped me sail through stuff. They let me take whatever grade-level courses despite where my chronological age puts me.”

He wasn’t bragging. I could tell. He was just making conversation. Pete was sixteen and also a senior, having been skipped a grade in school, and he was forever rubbing my nose in it. If he had said any of what CJ had said, I would have busted his head… again—juvie be damned. But, I could tell CJ didn’t mean anything by it.

“You’re lucky. No more school,” I blurted out.

“No, I still have school,” he said, then laughed at my confused expression. “I’m taking online college courses. My tutor set it up and got the college to waive the participation requirement. Everyone else has to post to the discussion board so many times a week on different days. I can’t always guarantee that I can do that. But, I post as often as I can, and one teacher commented to me that I posted more than most… just not always spread out over as many days.”

I was actually finding that I was proud of him and happy for him. And I barely knew him. It was weird and totally out of character for me.

“Anyway, another perk to no participation requirement is that I can finish the courses in less time. I already finished the equivalent of one semester and got halfway through another, just over the summer.”

“Why so many?” I asked before I thought. “And over the summer no less. You wouldn’t catch me giving up my summer for school.”

“Well,” he said with a grin, “summer isn’t really any different for me, and I’d like to get my associate’s degree at least before… well, as soon as I can.”

“Why?” I really wasn’t thinking today. “What are you going to do with it?” I immediately regretted it once I thought about his situation. I really wasn’t trying to be a jerk. It just sometimes came naturally.

“Fair point,” he agreed, which made me feel even worse. “Probably nothing. But, it means a lot for me to just get it.”

I didn’t understand that. School had never been inherently important to me, but I could believe it was to him. The thought occurred to me that he had a lot more in common with Pete than he had with me, and for some reason, that really bothered me.

H
E
DIDN
’
T
stay with the kids nearly as long as he had the day before. I could tell he was worn out. He said he was going to rest some and “do the clown thing” for the kids on the oncology ward later in the afternoon. He teased that he was getting pale enough, in general, that he wouldn’t need to apply the white face paint before long, and that would save a lot of time. I didn’t know how he could tease about it. I would be railing loud and long to anyone who’d listen about how unfair it all was.

As the weeks went on and I learned more about his background, I couldn’t imagine why he wasn’t angry to the point of being hateful to everyone, let alone how he could spend his limited energy trying to make others happy.

I
WENT
to school the next day, did as little as possible, went home in the afternoon and wandered the streets until dark, then blasted my music intermittently for most of the night just to piss off Pete. The ’rents were all the way at the end of the hall, so they wouldn’t hear me. I timed it so that Pete had enough time to get to sleep, and then I’d blast the most annoying music possible, wait for him to pound on the wall several times, which of course I would ignore. Then he would finally come over and yell at me. I would then turn it off for a little while and start all over when I thought he was asleep. Somewhere in that next month, he wised up and started wearing ear plugs and turning on a noisy fan between his bed and the wall adjoining my room. I made a mental note to find something else to piss him off. I mean, what else did I have to live for? Right?

But anyway, the boring routine continued—all of that during the week and “volunteer” at the hospital on the weekends between noon and 5:00. The only bright spot of my life was CJ. No matter how many treatments he had, or how bad he felt, he was in clown getup as often as possible and performing for some group of kids or another. He had asked Ms. Carol, who seemed to be my immediate supervisor, if I could be assigned to help him with all his performances. She ran it by Groucho—Mrs. Barton—and they both agreed it would “be good for me,” so that’s what I did most of the time.

I was getting used to the little rug rats and actually started looking forward to having them around. Throughout the rest of August, all of September, and some of October, I got to know each one by name and picked up some of their PT goals from CJ. I helped more and more with their goals, as well as simply being at the show with CJ. Some of the kids in the burn unit still called me fresh meat, and I vowed I would never forgive him for that. I tried to say I preferred the other two wards because they didn’t call me that, but I think CJ knew I didn’t. I had a little bit more of a bond with the kids in the burn unit. They were the first ones I’d met, after all, and it seemed to me that we played the clown shows there a little bit more often. CJ said that it all worked out, and the shows were about as frequent in each ward. I didn’t argue with him… but I still thought he leaned toward the burned kids just a little more.

M
EANWHILE
THINGS
were going to hell in a hand basket at home. Allen seemed to hate me just on principle. Nothing I did was good enough. I didn’t do the chores fast enough, or I didn’t do enough chores, or I didn’t do them well. I didn’t eat enough, or I ate too much. I didn’t tell my mother that I liked her cooking—which I didn’t—or how nice the house looked. Or, my compliments were insincere. I didn’t get along with Pete—which was actually true, but not all my fault. He didn’t get along with me either. And, I didn’t appreciate Allen’s efforts on my behalf. Which was also true. I didn’t, but only because I never actually saw any.

All of that was par for the course.

But when I brought home all Fs on my progress report in mid-October, the shit hit the fan.

“What do you do all day at that expensive school
that I paid for
?” He shouted that last part.

He always brought up that he used his hard-earned pay to make sure I went to the best schools so I could make something of myself. How dare I repay him by being a worthless juvenile delinquent who couldn’t get passing grades if they were handed out for free?

It wasn’t like I had
asked
him to send me to that lame-assed school. Having my younger “brother” in the same class, in a relatively small school where everyone knew each other, was bad enough, but everyone there knew of my juvie record too, and of course, it was big news that I had so much community service to work off and no one ever let me forget it, either.

But, my dear stepdad was waiting for an answer. “Answer me, damn it. What do you do all day?”

“Sleep.” Well, he wanted a truthful answer. Of course I slept all day. I hated school, and I had no intention of doing an ounce more than I needed to… which, in my opinion, was nothing.

He hit the roof. Not quite literally, but close enough. He put his fist through the drywall near where I was standing. I launched into him. I was taller than him but far too willowy. He was a stocky guy and all muscle. I don’t know what made me attack him, except my long abiding hatred for the man, but I knew it was a mistake as soon as I threw the punch.

He sidestepped the swing, but I delivered several blows to his stomach. I may have realized the whole fight was a bad idea, but I was committed now, and I was going to win or die trying. He simply stood there and laughed. He blocked most of my punches with ease, but the ones I landed didn’t seem to faze him.

I heard my mother screaming, something about calling the cops, which I knew would land me back in juvie, but I didn’t pay much attention to her. Until she hit me with a bat. It was probably meant for the back of my head or my shoulders, but I turned toward her at exactly the wrong moment, and it caught a glancing blow on my jaw. Fortunately for me, she was a tiny woman—five foot two and ninety pounds soaking wet. So, she didn’t have much power behind the swing. It was enough to stop the fight, though. I ran up to my room, slammed and locked the door, and waited for the police to come and drag me out.

They never did.

I had thought Mom said she
had
called the cops. But, she must have just been saying she was
going
to if we didn’t stop. I wasn’t actually giving her my undivided attention at the time. At any rate, the cops didn’t show up.