Sharing Sam (8 page)

Miguel took my hand and we stood there silently, staring out at the water. Laughter floated from the living room. An old Stones song boomed from the CD player. I held on to Izzy’s parents and they held on to me. I knew they were wondering why I, someone else’s daughter, should live and theirs should not.

“I’m sorry,” I said, because it was all I could say, and because I was wondering the very same thing.

The next day Izzy went back to school. After a while we started to get the hang of being around a person with cancer. Turns out it’s just like being around a person without cancer.

That is, unless you know her prognosis and she doesn’t. Or maybe she does, but you’re afraid to ask and she doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to bring it up.

It wasn’t like Iz was in denial or anything. We talked lots about how scary everything had been and what a general pain in the butt being sick was. But it was general scariness, not specific I-might-die scariness.

I tried to get her to ventilate; I wanted to be there if she wanted to talk. I tried like crazy to sense what she wanted me
to say and do, but mostly she seemed to want to go back to being just plain Izzy.

I still hadn’t gotten around to telling her about Sam. I wanted to, I tried a dozen times, but she seemed so infatuated with him after the party, I just didn’t have the heart to hurt her. Who cared if he’d kissed me or if we were going to the Valentine’s Day dance? Making a big production out of it seemed so small-minded, so irrelevant, in the face of everything Izzy was going through.

On Thursday evening I’d just gotten off the phone with Izzy when the phone rang again. It was Sam.

“I just wanted to make sure we’re still on for that dance thing Saturday,” he said. I could hear the shyness in his voice, and it made me smile.

“Looks like you’re stuck,” I said. “I already bought a dress.”

“Good. That’s good. I … I’m glad you didn’t change your mind. Morgan kind of forced you into it.”

I lay back on my bed, twisting the phone cord around my finger. There was something very mysterious about talking to a guy on the phone, I decided. It was all imagination, no eyes, no lips, no gestures. All voice. I could have listened to Sam’s voice all night. It had a soft urgency, like the wind parting the palms by my window, like that brief miracle of a kiss we’d shared.

“How is Morgan?” I asked.

“Not so great. We’re having a rough week. But it’ll be cool. I’ve got it all under control. My neighbor Jane is going to keep an eye on him Saturday night.” He paused. “Well …”

“I should hang up,” I said. “I’ve been on the phone all night with Izzy. I’m starting to feel like I’m glued to the receiver.”

“She seems pretty good, under the circumstances. She going to the dance?”

I tried to ignore the hollow spot in my chest. “No. I wish she were.” I cleared my throat. “I guess Izzy’s so gorgeous she kind of scares guys off.”

“That’s too bad. She’s a great girl.”

There was a pause. “I should go,” I said again, although I didn’t want to.

“Good night,” Sam said softly, so softly I could barely hear him.

I hung up the phone and sighed. I had to tell her. I knew I had to tell her.

By the time Friday rolled around I was frantic. The Valentine’s Day dance was the next night. Lunchtime, I decided. I would bring it up casually, a throwaway remark: “By the way—you won’t believe this, Iz, it’s got to be some kind of miracle—but I’m going to the dance with Sam. No, really, it’s no big deal.…”

That day the honor society was selling carnations in the lunchroom to would-be romantic types. A white carnation signified friendship, pink was liking, red was all-out lust. Girls sent them to guys, guys to girls, and all day long they were delivered to classes by members of the honor society.

“I hate all this Hallmark schmaltz,” Izzy commented at lunch. She sighed. “So how come nobody sends me anything?”

“Maybe because you hate all this Hallmark schmaltz.”

Izzy grinned. She was wearing a Marlins baseball cap that day. I thought she looked a little paler than usual.

“I’m getting some more juice. Want some?” I asked.

Izzy shook her head. “You know, the Valentine’s Day dance
is tomorrow. Remember how I was going to ask Sam? Whatever happened to that?”

I stood and grabbed my wallet.
Say it, Alison
.

“I guess I lost my nerve,” Izzy continued. “Do you think he was flirting with me at the party? Or was that just pity? He borrowed my French notes yesterday, did I tell you? Talk about the blind leading the blind. He’s missed more school than I have. I wonder what the deal is?”

“Be right back,” I said, retreating.

Tell her, you idiot, tell her
, I scolded myself. Standing there in the stewed-cabbage stench of the lunchroom, it all seemed so obvious. I may have had good intentions originally, but now those good intentions were just going to make things a whole lot worse.

I paid for my cranberry juice and was making my way back down the aisle when I noticed Sam. Sam’s back, actually. He was standing at the carnation table, bent over, writing on one of the little cards they attached to the flowers. Next to him stood Steve, Izzy’s physics partner, all earnest concentration.

For me?
I thought for a split second, then,
Please, no
. That wasn’t how I wanted Izzy to find out.

I rejoined Izzy. She was checking her reflection in a knife. “Is it just me, or do I have a little bit of a Morticia thing going here with the white face?”

“Pinch your cheeks,” I advised.

“Check it out.” Izzy nudged me. “Sam and Steve at the flower table, did you see?”

I glanced over my shoulder and shrugged, nicely indifferent.

“I briefly entertained the notion that Sam was buying something for me, but I don’t think conjugating
aller
makes for a real commitment. Do you?”

“You never know. Aren’t you going to eat your cake?”

“Not hungry. Steve’s there, too. He’s probably buying my traditional white carnation. We send each other one every year so we don’t feel left out.”

“Maybe there’s more to Steve than meets the eye,” I suggested.

“Steve? No way. We’re just good buds, you know that.”

“You sure? He has a pet name for you.”

“Dumbo is not a pet name. It’s a term of ridicule.”

“Still—”

“Nah. I’ve tried to look at him that way, but I can tell it would be like NutraSweet love. You know—you convince yourself it’s okay, then there’s this weird aftertaste.” She nodded toward the carnation table. “Now, with Sam over there, it’s a different story. Look out, he’s coming.”

“Who?” I asked, knowing.

“Sam the man.” She turned and waved.

Sam smiled as he approached, a nice, generic, collective smile that encompassed us both. He handed Izzy a gray notebook.

“Thanks,” he said. “You saved my butt.”

“I can’t think of a butt I’d rather … Oh, never mind,” Izzy said with laugh. “I just can’t pull off the Mae-West-meets-Madonna thing.” She pulled back a chair. “Join us?”

“I’ve gotta get going,” I said quickly, standing. It was way too easy to imagine where this conversation could lead. “I’ve got to clean out my locker.”

“Me too,” Sam said.

“What? Are we having an inspection?” Izzy asked.

“No, I meant I have to go,” Sam said. “As in off campus.”

“Cutting class again?” Izzy chided.

“I’ve got a reputation to uphold. I’ve already had a nice heart-to-heart with Lutz about my unexcused absences.”

“Well,” I said. “Gotta go.”

“I’ll walk out with you,” Sam offered.

“Give me a sec, I’ll come too,” Izzy said.

“No,” I said quickly. “When I said go, I meant, you know—go.” I pointed to the rest room in the corner.

Izzy looked at Sam hopefully. “You could keep me company while I don’t eat my cake,” she suggested.

“Sure,” Sam said, giving me a confused glance. “For a minute. Then I gotta get moving.”

I beat a quick retreat to the bathroom. I stayed in there a long time, long enough to talk myself yet again into doing what I knew I had to do. I would explain the whole thing to Izzy, how I’d wanted to protect her, how it hadn’t worked out exactly the way I’d planned.

I gathered up my books and was just about to leave when the door burst open, nearly flattening two sophomores lavishing attention on a shared Marlboro. Izzy stood in the doorway. She held up a huge bouquet of red carnations triumphantly.

“Read the card!” she screeched. “Read it nice and slow, so I can take in the exquisite poetry of it all.”

She handed me the little card with a Xeroxed heart and arrow on the cover, courtesy of the art department.

Love, Sam
.

I looked up at Izzy’s deliriously happy face.

“ ‘Love, Sam,’ ” I read.

“Say it again.”

“ ‘Love,’ ” I said, extra slowly, “ ‘Sam.’ ”

It was one of those pictures that lock into your mental
photo album forever. Izzy, in a cloud of Marlboro smoke, her baseball cap just a little crooked, the bouquet cradled in her arms like a newborn. Smiling in a way that told you she’d forgotten, for that blissful, impossible moment, about being sick.

“You sure it says ‘love’?” she asked.

“It says ‘love,’ ” I confirmed.

“It was so sweet! He walked away, very casual, and I was throwing my lunch in the recyclables bin, and all of a sudden this guy from the flower table comes over and says, ‘Weren’t you sitting over there a minute ago?’ And I say yeah, and he says, ‘These are for you.’ And when I got done peeing my pants, I read the card, and then I looked all over for him, but he was gone. Too shy to stick around, isn’t that cute?”

I closed my eyes, then opened them. Izzy was still standing there, clutching the bouquet. What was going on?
Why had Sam done this?

“It’s a miracle,” Izzy said. Her eyes glowed feverishly. Tiny beads of perspiration covered her upper lip.

I gave her a hug. The sweet-bitter smell of the flowers, crushed between us, filled the smoky air.

“ ‘Love, Sam,’ ” she said, amazed. And then her smile went flat and her eyes rolled back in her head and she slipped through my arms to the floor.

A
FTER THE SCHOOL
nurse and the crowds and the ambulance and the chaos, I ran to the phone in the lobby to call my mom and see if she’d drive me to the hospital. The ambulance guys had told me there was no way I could go with them. And I’d taken the bus to school that day so the car could have some carburetor work done. I was struggling to retrieve a quarter from my backpack when someone touched my shoulder.

“What happened?” Sam asked.

“I thought you were gone already,” I said, too frantic to think about the flowers he’d sent Iz.

“I was just pulling out when I saw the ambulance. Some guy in the parking lot told me it was Izzy.”

“She passed out. Damn it, I always have tons of change in my purse—”

“I could take you to the hospital.”

“Good, yes, that would be good,” I said.

I kept seeing her blank face, which had been the thin blue-white color of skim milk. “Her cap fell off,” I said shakily.
“You could see that awful scar. I made them put it back on her head before they took her out.”

Sam reached for my arm, and we hurried down the hall. We were almost out the door when I heard someone call my name. A hall monitor, I figured, but it was a stubby, nervous freshman carrying one white carnation.

“Are you Dumbo?” he asked.

“What? No, that’s my friend.”

He thrust the carnation at me. “Could you give this to her? We’re, like, totally screwed up on deliveries.”

I scanned the card. It was from Steve.

“Another secret admirer?” Sam asked as we headed out to his motorcycle.

I put on my helmet. “What do you mean, another?”

Sam looked a little hurt. “The … you know. The flowers.”

It took me a second, but it finally clicked.

They’d switched the flowers. Duh.

“Damn,” I said. “That’s all Izzy needs.”

Then I felt something awful: relief. The flowers had been for me after all. And I was glad.

“A simple thanks will do,” Sam said.

“Thanks,” I said. “But why couldn’t you have put my name on the front of the card?”

“What’s wrong, Alison?”

“It’s not your fault, Sam. It’s mine. Let’s go see Izzy, okay?”

As we rode to the hospital all I could think of was Izzy’s gloriously happy face as she’d clutched that bouquet.

How could I ever, ever tell her the truth now?

Lauren and Miguel were already there by the time we arrived. “She’s fine,” Lauren said. “Just too much too soon, and a
reaction to the medicines she’s taking. I knew I shouldn’t have let her go back to school.”

“She insisted,” Miguel reminded her.

“Can we see her?” I asked, breathing in the smells of disinfectant and sickness.

“They’re moving her to an upstairs room,” Miguel said. “You can see her there. Room 402, I think. We’re going to talk to the doctors, then we’ll be right up.”

“But stay for just a minute,” Lauren said. She gazed at the white carnation I was still holding, then at Sam. “You’re Sam, right? We met at the party.”

He nodded.

“She said something about some flowers you … It was nice, it meant a lot to her. Thanks.”

“Actually—” Sam began, but I tugged on his arm.

“We’ll see you upstairs, okay?” I said quickly.

By the time we were out of earshot he was shaking his head. “They screwed up the flowers, didn’t they? Since you were right there in the lunchroom when I bought them, that guy said, ‘Hey, don’t worry about it, I’ll just walk them on over now.’ But then Steve came by, and I have a feeling things got messed up.”

“Look,” I said, “just play along, okay? She was so thrilled, Sam. You should have seen her face.”

“But they were for you.”

“I know.” I touched his shoulder. “I’m glad.”

We headed toward the lobby, a cheery area painted in primary colors. “I’m going to call my mom and tell her what happened and that I’ll be here for a while. Can I bum a quarter?”

Sam fished in his jeans pocket. “Here. Alison, I can’t just let Izzy think I’m interested in her—”