“Naked. How are you?”
“Trying not to think about you naked, which is exceedingly more difficult when you disrobe in here.”
I lean back, smiling to myself. “Sorry,” I say, even though I’m not. “Since you’re here and I’m assuming you still feel guilty about a whole mess of things, can I ask you a question?”
“Gaining information by holding guilt over my head is not the key to a healthy relationship,” he chides.
“This isn’t arelationship,” I shoot back. “Listen, I know you don’t want to tell me, but…you know a lot more about me than I do about you. I deserve to know more. What was the deal you made? What did your sixteen-year-old brain think was so important that you needed to sell your soul?”
He’s quiet for a while. So long that I think he’s left, but then he says, “It’ll be easier if I show you.”
“Thank you. Let me get dressed.”
I take myself out of the tub, and then glance at the clothes I was wearing before. I was in the outfit Kit chose prior to our little adventure with the vengeful spirit—jean and a fitted T-shirt. Putting jeans back on sounds like actual torture. I wonder… I squeeze my eyes shut. When I reopen them, I’m in sweatpants and a loose T-shirt. Much better. I sit on my bed.
I say, “Ready.”
kit
. . .
Twenty Years Ago
In the pristine white hallways,I passed people in scrubs and white coats, kids, both bald and with full heads of hair, in wheelchairs and using walkers. It was a place I’d become quite familiar with—the pediatric oncology ward of UC Davis Children’s Hospital.
I turned the corner into a room lit brightly by a combination of the fluorescent overhead lights and wall-to-wall windows letting in the sun. Except even with all that light, the room still felt dim. My nephew, Xander, was sound asleep in his hospital bed, head covered by a beanie. He was so small that he didn’t look more than five years old, but he was six, pushing seven.
I hardly glanced around the room before I started to dig around my backpack. Even though he was asleep, I spoke to him like he was awake. “I brought my DS. I don’t have a lot of games for it yet, but I should be able to buy some more soon.” I set the dark-blue handheld game console on his bed. “I canbring the PSP next time, but I think you’ll like the games on this better.”
I looked up at my sister. Breanne was crying silently, the tears slipping from her eyes like she didn’t even realize they were there. She glanced up at me and gave me something that once upon a time could have resembled a smile. Now, it was no more than an acknowledgment of my presence.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, wondering if it was something more than what was already amiss.
“He’s not getting better,” she whispered, eyes locked on her son. “The chemo, it’s not…it didn’t do anything. The cancer is still…” She trailed off and shook her head. “It’s getting worse. They said it’s getting worse.”
My entire body sank. “Is there…? What else can they—willthey do?”
Breanne shook her head. “Nothing. There’s nothing else they can do. He’s dying.”
“No,” I said, as though that single word would change anything. As though that single word could make everything okay, rid Xander of the cancer. “Breanne, there has to besomething.”
Breanne shook her head again, looking so young. Shewasyoung. Twenty-two. No age is the right age to lose a child, but to lose one when you yourself are hardly more than a child…
I sat beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders, not saying a thing. I stared at Xander, his tiny body so weak and damaged. I had to do something. I didn’t know what, butsomething. This could not be it. I could not allow him to die. I could not allow Breanne to go through that.
I stayed a while longer with Breanne, but Xander neverwoke up. Before I left, I tightly hugged my sister goodbye. I exited the hospital and found my bike where I had hooked it up outside, hopping on and riding home, parking it in my garage. The house was empty when I walked in, unsurprisingly. Mom and Dad were still at work, and my younger brother Cody was at camp.
I headed straight for the pantry and crouched to the ground. On my hands and knees, I reached to the far back and pulled out a full, unopened bottle of vodka. I was in need of a little liquid courage. I cracked open the bottle and poured it into a water bottle the size of my head before immediately departing the house again and jumping back on my bike. My destination was the local library. We had one computer in my house, and I didn’t want my family to see my search history.
I ran in and found an open computer. Dropping my backpack on the floor beside the desk, I sat in front of the box-like desktop and creamy-white keyboard with huge buttons and took a few hearty sips from my bottle. The vodka burned my throat as it went down, but the sharp pain helped me focus. I got on the internet, the webpage automatically opening to Yahoo!. The red logo and the overrun screen with links to email, “hot jobs,” blue news links were a familiar sight.
The first thing I searched washow to cure leukemia.
I clicked through a few results, but nothing I was seeing was anything new. I grumbled and went back to the search bar. I took another few swigs of vodka, my head buzzing and empty stomach sloshing.
This time I typedhelp a sibling deal with grief.
My finger slammed down on the backspace button. Not yet.
