Page 25 of We Are Just Us

Kieran was fifteen. He remembered standing behind her in the bathroom, both of them staring at the sink like it had committed a crime. She lifted a handful of hair from the drain, stared at it, then laughed.

“Well,” she said. “That’s dramatic.”

He didn’t know what to do.

“I can buzz it,” he offered, too fast. As if action could save him from feeling it.

She turned and looked at him, then nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s do it.”

He shaved her head slowly, using the beard trimmer kit she’d bought him the Christmas before—“proactively,” she’d said, convinced he might sprout a full beard any day now.

He still barely needed it. But it was what they had.

The clippers buzzed loud in the small bathroom, echoing off tile. She watched herself in the mirror the whole time, her face giving nothing away.

When he finished, she ran her hand over her scalp and smiled. “I look tough.”

“You do,” he said, and meant it.

She wore scarves after that. Bright, loud ones. She refused the neutral cancer aesthetic. If she was going to be bald, she was going to be unmistakable.

Kieran learned to compartmentalize his life.

School. Friends. Girls he “dated” because it was easier than explaining anything else, girls who liked him well enough and never pushed too hard. Girls who thought he was kind and thoughtful and a little distant.

He was distant.

He was always elsewhere—mentally pacing hospital hallways, running contingency plans, calculating emotional costs.

An only child with an only parent.

Once, during a fight when he was seventeen—about something stupid, something adolescent, and sharp—she lost her temper.

“You’re being a fucking faggot,” she snapped.

The word stung, an invisible slap across his face.

Her face changed instantly. “Oh my god,” she said, hand flying to her mouth. “No. No, I didn’t mean—Kieran, I’m so sorry. That was awful. I’m so sorry.”

She crossed the room in two steps, reaching for him as if she could take the word back with her hands.

“I didn’t mean that,” she said again, frantic. “I don’t think that. I would never…”

He nodded. Too quickly. “It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. But it was also telling.

She’d known. Or suspected. Or felt it in the way mothers sometimes did, without ever asking. And she apologized so fast, so completely, that it almost hurt more than the word itself.

Of course he forgave her.

He also decided, quietly, that he would never put her in a position where she might think she’d failed him. Or that he’d failed her.

So he stayed silent.

He told himself there would be time later.

There was always time later—until there wasn’t.

The illness came back harder the last time.