It was our junioryear of high school. It had started to feel like maybe school would never end. Like life in Alabaster would never end. Like nothing major would ever happen or change and our lives would be the way they’d always been forever. That year, Romeo and I took to climbing out our windows and meeting in the park at night. Looking back, I have no idea why we found it necessary to sneak out. Our parents were cool. They’d probably would have let us go if we’d asked, especially since we usually didn’t do it on school nights. Sally probably would have packed us a little picnic, and my mom would have chased after me with a sweater and not been satisfied until she saw me put it on, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have minded or tried to stop us.
Anyway, for some reason, we did sneak out. I guess the clandestine nature made it more fun. We’d meet at Inferno, climb onto the rock, and lie back and look at the stars. Romeo wore eighties band T-shirts in those days,with faded flannel shirts he left hanging open. Sometimes, when he wasn’t looking, I’d take hold of the hem of his shirt and rub it between my forefinger and thumb. On still nights, we’d lie there, and I’d feel the delicate mass of Romeo beside me even though we weren’t touching. And if we kept still and stayed quiet for long enough, magic would rain down on us, and I’d start feeling like I really was flying.
The stories he told me had changed by then. Sometimes, they were still set in make-believe worlds, but mostly, they were set in the future.
“We’re going to get out of here, Jude,” Romeo would say. “You and me, we’re going to see things. This won’t be our life forever. Things are going to happen to us. Crazy, big, beautiful things. You’ll see.”
I smiled when he said it, closing my eyes as he started talking and images of the two of us with backpacks and messy hair, derelict French châteaus, and long, dusty Tuscan driveways danced across the night sky.
“And when we’ve done and seen things, we’ll move to New York. We’ll have an apartment with exposed brick walls and one of those cool, industrial-style kitchens.”
“Mm-hmm.” I let my head roll to the side so I was facing him. He was still looking up, so I let my gaze trace his profile, running slowly down his foreheadand nose, pausing and losing my train of thought when I got to the curve of his lips. “And how are we going to afford all this? D’you know how expensive shit like traveling in Europe and rent in New York is?”
“Fine, we’ll have asmallapartment in New York. A tiny apartment, with one brick wall, an industrial-style kitchenette, and nothing but a box of granola barswithraisins in the cabinets.” Neither Romeo nor I ate raisins. Him, because he thought they looked like dead flies when he was a kid and had never managed to get over it. Me, because I thought the sun shone out of Romeo’s ass and sometimes copied him to give myself a little taste of what my life would be like if I were him.
By then, I was aware that I loved Romeo, and in an abstract way, I might even have been aware that I was in love with him, but there was no anguish associated with the emotion. I had no fear of losing him or of him ever loving anyone more than he loved me. I didn’t think either of those things were possible, so they never entered my mind. Romeo and I spent every waking moment together. When we weren’t at school together, we were at his house or mine or somewhere in town, looking for something to do that we hadn’t done a million times before.
To me, loving Romeo was natural and easy, like breathing. It made as much sense as it did for the sun to come upin the morning. It seemed unavoidable. Inevitable. Eternal.
Yes, to me, loving Romeo seemed eternal.
I’d kissed enough girls by then that I’d started thinking maybe kissing girls wasn’t my thing, and by spring that year, Romeo finally kissed a girl too. Riley Laker, from two towns away. We were at Ollie’s house watching a movie. His parents were away that weekend. The lights were out and popcorn was strewn all over the carpet, but no one was watching the movie. Dan was there, too, and we all started hooting and hollering when Romeo leaned in. I’d given him a pep talk beforehand and told him I knew he could do it, and hand on heart, I felt nothing but pride as I watched him kiss her. I walked him home that night with my arm draped around his shoulder, like always. He was talking about Riley and the kiss, and I was laughing and slapping his back, safe and secure in the knowledge that no girl and no kiss could ever come close to what Romeo and I had.
A few weeks later, life turned on its side. It was the last week of school before the summer vacation began. It was a strange, bad time. Confusing, like being woken halfway through a long hibernation. The words no one ever wants to hear had landed on Romeo’s doorstep.
“Sally has cancer.”
Before my mom told me, she sat me down on one of the navy-blue sofas and gave me a glass of water. I saw her lips moving and heard the words, but it was as though they were unable to penetrate. Like they got lost in translation somewhere between my mom and me. They rang in my ears as I ran through the park to Romeo’s house. I ran in that too-fast, scared way that makes your lungs burn. I was winded when I got to him, panting and trying frantically to steady my breathing as panic rose in my body. Romeo was on the front step, sitting with his knees bent, drawing in the dirt with a stick. He looked up before I got to the gate, like he’d been waiting for me.
When he saw me he held out his forefinger and pointed to me. His face was hard and serious. Harder and more serious than I’d ever seen it. It stopped me dead in my tracks.
“No,” he said calmly, reading my thoughts and answering as if I’d spoken aloud. “This isn’t that. She’s going to be fine.”
He said it with such certainty that my spine caved and I doubled over. I took two deep breaths, and when I straightened, everything was better. Everything was fine. It was all going to be fine. Romeo and his dad, Mike, had taken the same stance on cancer. It could fuck off. It chose the wrong person. Mike even ordered a cap that saidsomething to that effect for him and Romeo, and when I complimented him on it, he ordered one for me too.
It was all going to be fine. Sally had a lump in her breast that needed surgery, and she was going to have a course of chemo after she recovered to make sure the cancer didn’t come back, but they’d caught it early and it was a treatable form of cancer. It wasn’t great, no cancer is, and it was going to be hard, but it was going to be fine.
Sally was going to be fine.
The morning of her surgery, my family and a few of our neighbors formed a line on both sides of Romeo’s street, holding up signs and balloons that had things likeYou Rock, SalandGet Well Soonwritten on them for Sally to read as Mike drove her to the hospital. When he got to us, Mike stopped the car and Romeo got out. Romeo, Mike, and I were all wearing our Fuck Cancer caps. Sal got out too. She hugged my mom first and then me.
“Love you, Sal,” I said before I let go.
She pulled away, cocking her head so she could get a good look at me, and said, “I love you too, Jude.”
I must have visited that memory a thousand times over the years, looking for something. A knowing. A foretelling. Some clue that she knew what was coming. I never found it. Her eyes were clear. Powder blue. At least two shades lighter than Romeo’s and dreamy in a totally differentway. They carried a message for me. The same message as always. A message that didn’t need to be said in words.
Look after Romeo.
“‘Course I will,” I whispered. “Always.”
Romeo and I walked to school together that day, like any other day. We had double math, which was a drag, but we all agreed it would be better for Romeo to be busy at school than sitting in a hospital waiting room for hours and hours. In the last period, his name was called on the intercom, and he was asked to go to the office. We were expecting the call, so we didn’t think anything of it. I squeezed his shoulder as he packed his things and told him I’d come over later.
I didn’t think anything was wrong until I saw my mom in the parking lot waiting for me. She fetched me sometimes if the weather was bad or we had somewhere to be, but usually, because we lived so close, I walked or biked to and from school. Her waiting for me wasn’t the thing that made my blood run cold though. It was the fact she had her sunglasses on, and when I got closer, I noticed her knuckles were white from how hard she was gripping the steering wheel.
I’d never felt horror before. I thought I had, but I hadn’t. Not really. I’d never felt the kind of dread that makes your limbs heavy and your reactions slow, but I felt it when I sawmy mom in the car, and I felt it again, even worse, when we got home and I saw my dad. He was crying. His eyes were red in a way that looked so wrong it almost looked violent.
I’d never seen my dad cry before.
