When Friendship Followed Me Home (15 page)

45

THE RAINBOW GIRL AND THE FLYING TRAPEZE

The next day I was pretty psyched coming home from school, not just because it was Friday but because Halley and I were going to work on
The Magic Box.
I was pretty close to threatening her that if she didn't tell me what was inside it, I wouldn't be friends with her anymore. If it could save a whole planet, the magic had to be something that could spread, like a song that made you feel taller when you heard it. My phone blipped.

Aunt Jeanie. It was a sticker of a cartoon cat waving its paw. I waved back to her with a dopey-looking dog. She wanted to take me to dinner next week. I was sort of afraid to sit down with her. I didn't want to know about Leo, about what was happening with him with the counseling or whatever. I just didn't want to think about him. To remember the way he kicked Flip. But I texted,
Sounds great
.

Halley and Flip were waiting for me on the steps
outside the Lorentzes' apartment building. She was smiling but looked tired. She patted the step next to her, and I sat. “Mom's freaking out up there. Mercurious is trying to calm her down. I had to get outside, you know? See what you got yourself into, Coffin? Welcome to the drama.”

“What'd I do?”

“Why do you always think it's you?”

“It just usually is, is all.”

“Not this time.” She took out her phone. The screen was chart after chart of all these numbers in columns with weird headings like
T-Cells
and
Alpha-fetoprotein
.

“What does it mean?” I said.

“It's back. Look, don't freak, because I'm not. I'm totally kicking this thing's butt. I am, Ben.”

“You so totally are, I know,” I said, but I didn't know anything.

“I knew just now for sure when the doctor called,” Halley said, “but I
knew
the day of our bookstore tour. I woke up feeling different that morning. It's like this weird warmth in my lower back.”

“Is that how it felt the first time, last winter?”

“No, that time I woke up with blood in my pee and this stomachache that wouldn't go away. I had to go straight into surgery. It was a six-pound tumor. I made the doctor show me a picture of it. I couldn't believe it was inside of me. It looked like a giant's fist, gray with black veins. So look, the
chemotherapy I'm going to take this round is a brand-new medicine, and it's a lot stronger, which is awesome, because it's going to completely burn the bad stuff away. It's also going to make me feel pretty sick for a while—like sicker than I'd normally get. I have to start the chemo right away, tomorrow, so I need you to take me to Luna Park today.”

“Right now?”

“We'll just bring Flip back upstairs, then we'll go. There's no better time. It's already October, and it'll be closed for the season by the time I'm back to a hundred and eleven percent. I want you to fly with me.”

“Fly?”

She grinned. “We need to take a ride on the Boardwalk Flight.”

• • •

It was basically a mix of skydiving and a slingshot that threw you two hundred feet into the air at a speed of sixty miles an hour. The attendant strapped us into the safety vests. “I probably should have told you, but I'm terrified of heights,” Halley said.

“Which is why your heroine from
The Magic Box
is a trapeze artist,” I said. “Makes perfect sense.”

“It does, if you really think about it,” she said. “I might barf all over you.”

“This would have been good to know before we got on the ride.”

The cable whipped us upward—and backward by our ankles—to the top of the tower. Halley screamed and laughed. “Holy ship, my stomach!”

“Oh boy.”

“Do
not
let go of my hand, Ben Coffin!”

“I won't, I promise, even though you're breaking my fingers. Uh-oh, here we go.” We swung down toward the boardwalk and then up toward the sun.

“Don't let me fly away! Hold me!”

“I am! I got you!”

“And I got
you
! Ben?”

“Halley?”

“We're flying! We really are! This is so freaking spectacular!” And it was. It was.

46

DON'T BE SCARED

We walked the boardwalk slowly and didn't say anything, and the sun was warm on our faces, and she smiled. She flipped her leg backward to kick me in the butt.

“What was that for?” I said.

“Don't be scared, okay?” she said. “Everything's going to be totally fine.”

“I should be saying these things to you,” I said.

“But I'm not scared. I swear I'm not. Look.” She pointed into the funhouse mirror. It stretched us thin. We were aliens with big eyes and huge heads and we both looked like we were trying really hard not to look scared. Halley aimed her phone at the mirror and took a picture of us. The flash stayed in my eyes that night, especially when I shut them and tried to fall asleep.

• • •

Saturday morning breakfast, the four of us held hands. Halley prayed, “God, thank you for this meal. Thank you for
us. I hope you get everybody here to see that nobody should stop living the heck out of life the next month or so. Each day is the best day from here on in.” She opened her eyes. “Ben, I need you and Flip to keep Read to Rufus going the days I'm not feeling so great. We can't let it fall apart. That's the one thing that will make me mad. Flip, high four.” He gave her one and surfed her lap. “Mom, look into his eyes. They're just like Harry's, right?” That was her dog who died. “What's he trying to tell us? Look. You see it, don't you? What
is
that?”

After, I helped Mrs. Lorentz wash the dishes. Out of nowhere she hugged me with wet dish gloves. “I don't know what we would do without you right now.”

“She's totally going to beat this thing,” I said.

“I know,” Mrs. Lorentz said, but she didn't know either.

• • •

Flip and I delivered my coupons and met up with Mercurious at the church and watched him finish his magic lesson with the little kids. A girl tripped and cried, “My knee hurts.” Mercurious sat her in a chair and sprinkled magic dust on her knee and made her pain vanish. “It works,” she said.

“That's right,” he said. He patted her head. “All better now.”

• • •

We got into the sparkly purple SUV and got on the highway. I strapped Flip into the passenger seat, in my lap. “He slept with Halley last night,” I said.

“Us too,” Mercurious said. “At about three this morning he came scratching at the door.”

“Sorry.”

“For what? That's his job. Warm everybody up, right?”

We didn't listen to music, we didn't talk. The sky was white, too bright. Halley and her mom had to go earlier so Halley could get a port put into her chest, whatever a port was. Maybe twenty minutes into the ride, Mercurious said, “Ben? Thank you for being here. Without you, this would be unbearable.”

47

SIRIUS

I expected more of a hospital-type place. We pulled into a strip mall right off the highway. The waiting room was pictures of horses and forests and this big one of a flower field. “Flip!” Halley said. Her beret that day was fuzzy orange.

Flip surfed and boxed for everybody in the waiting room and hopped into the lap of this little boy who was sitting next to Halley. “Ben, this is Franco. He's awesome.”

He was also bald. He kissed Flip and said, “He has bad breath.”

“We know,” we all said.

The nurse came out. “Okay, Halley, ready to rock?”

Mrs. Lorentz hugged Halley.

“Mom, relax,” Halley said.

“I am,” Mrs. Lorentz said. “I
am,
sheesh.”

“Can my friends come with me, Tall and Furry?” Halley said.

“Absolutely.” The nurse put out his hand. “Jerry.”

“This is Ben,” Halley said. “He's smarter than he looks.”

“He looks pretty smart to me,” Jerry said.

Halley held my hand. She was shaking all over. We went into a small room with two recliners and a huge TV. Halley sank back into one of them, and Flip hopped up into her lap and yawned. I learned that dogs yawn when they're tired, sure, but also when they're nervous.

Jerry slid down Halley's shirt a little. The port was right under her collarbone, toward the middle of her chest. It looked like where you connect the air pump to a bike tire, except it was white plastic. Jerry attached a tube that went into a bag of fluid hanging from a metal hook in the wall. The stuff in the bag was clear. It looked like plain old water.

“Here we go, Halley,” Jerry said. “Might feel a little cold at first.” He unscrewed this little plastic ring in the middle of the tube. He dimmed the lights and clicked on the TV but left the sound off. He handed me the remote. “See you guys in half an hour,” he said.

We stared at the TV. It was a Justice League cartoon.

“When last we saw our interstellar travelers Bruce, Helen, and Flip, they were nearing the planet of Mundum Nostrum,” Halley said. “Well, now they're almost there. It's in the most beautiful place in the galaxy. So quiet out here. So pink and clean. We're flying right by Sirius now. We're swinging in so close it's all we can see. There's no sky, just the star. You can look right into it, and it doesn't hurt at all.
It burns cool and blue and even Rayburn can't be sad now. There's a breeze, whispery. It's Tess's voice. ‘You're so close now,' she says. ‘So close.' Ben? I'm not worried.”

“Me either,” I said.

“I didn't sleep so great with this hairy little bug kicking at me. I'm just gonna close my eyes for a bit, okay? Let's take a nap, the three of us.” She closed her eyes. Flip closed his and burrowed under her sweatshirt and she smiled. “This dog,” she said with her eyes still closed. “He is so freaking amazing.” She looked healthy. Her cheeks were even pink that day. It just didn't make any sense. “You know what?” she said. “On second thought, can you find the music channel and dial up some rap?”

48

I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A VAMPIRE

She threw up in the car on the way home. I was in the back with her and held the bag. Flip didn't mind the smell. He cuddled right into her and wagged his tail. When we pulled up to the apartment, Mrs. Lorentz said, “He's a lifesaver, right Halley?”

“Good job, Flip,” I said.

Halley rolled her eyes. “Again, she was talking about
you,
dope.” She threw up as soon as we got into the apartment. I rubbed her back while she was bent over the toilet. Her fuzzy orange beret fell into the water. I took it out.

“Sorry,” she said.

“I don't mind.”

“No, that you have to see me like this. Puking. Bald. I'm lucky I have a totally gorgeous head.”

“You do.”

“Oh, I know. Yeah. I always wanted to be a vampire.”

“I can't see you ripping apart somebody's neck to suck their blood.”

“I wouldn't. I'd be a nice one. I'd be a medical lab technician and drink what they were going to throw away. I will soon, though.”

“Become a lab technician?”

“Look like a vampire. You'll see, when I lose more weight. I might cry now. In sixth grade I was voted Best Hair. Me, Halley Lorentz. I'm sure to get into Harvard with that on my application. Okay, I'm actually
not
going to cry, it seems. Phew.”

She leaned on me into her room and flopped down onto her bed. “Cover me up fast with all the blankets. Thanks. Ben, I stink and I'm gross, so Flip's the only one who can stay, okay? You're the only one, Flip. His eyes, Ben. See?”

I left them in there. Mrs. Lorentz was passed out on the couch with her arms over her eyes. Mercurious was making soup. “Need any help?” I said.

“You're doing just fine,” he said. “On second thought, you can taste this for me.”

“Tastes healthy.”

He laughed, sort of. Mercurious had a very quiet laugh, more of a smile, the kind the superhero has at the end of the movie, when all is right with the world again. “I'm thinking this might be a little
too
healthy for you and me. How'd you like to order a pizza?”

“I'll go pick it up,” I said. “I have to walk Flip anyway.”

On the way there I texted Aunt Jeanie that I was going to have to postpone dinner. I had a really busy week coming up.

• • •

Halley slept straight through until the next morning. Her mom made her drink some cold peppermint tea with honey, and she threw it up. She slept. By four o'clock Sunday afternoon, she was up. She was too stiff to stay in bed, but too tired to work on
The Magic Box
. We played video games. Her phone buzzed with a text. It had been buzzing practically nonstop.

“They're all demanding to see me now. My friends from school. Yes, believe it or not, I am fantastically popular and just chock-
full
of friends. They've
been
demanding to see me, ever since that first trip to the emergency room last winter, but I keep blowing them off. I know that's mean, not letting them help me, but I can't see them right now, you know? I want to be a hundred and eleven percent. It's not because of the way I look. It's because of the way they'll look at me. That sadness in their eyes. That fear. You and Flip, you guys never look that way. Maybe you look a little sad, but you're not afraid for me.”

She was right. I wasn't afraid for her. She was tough enough to handle anything. I was afraid for
me.
Of what it would be like without her, the world. It would be like a planet that lost its orbit and got chucked into space and everything's
cold and you can't breathe. “I have a present for you,” I said. “It's in the other room.”

“Your room?”

“I'll be right back.”

It was a rainbow-striped cap. I bought it on the street from the man who sold socks and phone cases by the subway. She put it on her head and checked herself out in the mirror. “I love you, Ben Coffin. I'm never taking it off, even after my hair grows back.”