“What just happened?” Em asks, joining me. Matty’s not far behind.
I shake my head. “I can’t.” My breath hitches, and I hold myself tighter.
I hear Charlie call out, “Anyone have any bourbon?”
Em wraps her arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. “He’s super drunk, Park. Whatever he said, he didn’t mean it.”
“He’s being a dick, Em,” Matty mutters, but she shushes him.
“That’s not helping right now.”
The three of us watch as someone lifts Charlie into a keg stand, and even from here I can see the outline of his ribs.
“I have to go. I can’t be around this,” I say, turning to leave.
“I’ll go with you,” Em offers.
“No. It’s your night. You should stay. I’ll be fine, okay?” I can’t meet her eyes. This night was supposed to be our last really good night, and thanks to Charlie, it’s ruined. “Matty, have a good trip, okay?”
He hugs me, and I can feel my sadness mirrored in him, even though he isn’t my twin.
“I’ll get him home tonight, okay?” he whispers.
And then Em pulls me into a hug, and it’s hard, the way she hugs, fierce and furious strength against the smell of her strawberry shampoo, and for a second I let my shoulders fall.
“I’m going to miss you so much,” I say against her hair.
“Will you promise to let me know if you need me? Like, seriously promise. Anytime, anywhere, okay?”
“I promise.”
“Cross your heart?”
“Cross my heart,” I say.
“I’ll call you before I go tomorrow, okay?” she asks.
I nod and then I leave, finding my way to the path into the woods, back toward home, leaving everyone else behind.
Thirteen
THIS TIME, I SKIP over the creek with ease, which is ironic because both of my feet are already wet from trying to rescue my not-needing-to-be-rescued brother.
The moon is silvery from behind the trees, reminding me of nine-year-old Charlie staring at his stomach in the same light, the red spots all over his belly, and Charlie now, how he came up from the river like something from one of his zombie shows.
I don’t know why tonight surprised me. When Charlie went through remission the first time, not only did he come back from the hospital skinny and bruised and bald, but he came back mean. He got irritated with our parents, didn’t want to see Matty or Em, pushed away the hand-drawn cards from the kids in our class. Each time he found out he had to go back to the hospital for another stay, he cried hot furious tears and refused to talk to any of us.
He especially didn’t want to hang out with me.
I brought him stickers and library books. Em and I choreographed an elaborate celebratory dance routine. I told him about all the stuff happening at school, making sure it didn’t sound like too much fun without him. I explained how I was going to be a doctor when I grew up. I even let him watch whatever he wanted on TV.
Charlie responded by sulking. He picked fights. He told me he wished he didn’t know me.
Mom told me to give it time, that it was probably hard for Charlie to see me healthy when he’d been so sick, that he still loved me no matter what. Dad told me that Charlie was lucky to have a sister who was going to cure cancer, that he’d realize that when he felt better again.
But I knew what had happened. Using his twin superpowers, Charlie had sussed out my secrets: that his bald head scared me, that I didn’t like the way his medicine made him smell like chemicals, that I woke up every morning and felt a tiny kernel of ugly relief that my cells were okay.
So I tried harder.
I used all my allowance to buy Charlie a set of cool colored pencils and a big sketch pad. I made Mustard sleep in his room, not mine. I let Charlie pick the movie every Friday night. I asked Em and Matty to come over so we could replicate our game-night marathons but with Charlie this time.
After a few months, his hair began to grow back, a lighter brown like chocolate milk.
After a few more, he and Dad resumed throwing the baseball around in the backyard.
His weekly doctor checkups got changed to monthly ones, then every two months.
He caught up on all his missing schoolwork with his tutor, starting fifth grade with Em and Matty and me that fall.
He stopped scowling.
I stopped dreaming about the helium people.
Even now, looking back, I can’t say if things over the next years got easier, or if we just got used to it all: the fact of Charlie being sick, of Charlie having been sick.
By the time we reached sixth grade, Charlie had finished all his maintenance treatments. Our parents took us to a Reds game to celebrate the fact that his body was finally, finally cancer-free.
But here’s the thing: I don’t think we were.
I don’t mean any of us got cancer. No, it’s more like this: Cancer moved through our family like a river wearing away its banks. You didn’t notice it in the moment, but two years later, the essential shape of us was forever changed: rock worn away, movement altered, no going back to who we used to be.
I had become even more careful, a constant knot of worry in my chest.
Charlie, on the other hand, had become fearless.
He rode his bike with no hands, waving them carelessly in the air.
He skateboarded down the hill standing on one leg.
He tackled his opponents on the football field so savagely, he was routinely benched.
And then there was the day in sixth grade when he fell in the creek.
Thanks to a record foot and a half of snow overnight, we had a rare day off school. Charlie, Matty, Em, and I immediately bundled up and ventured outside, heading to the park, where we could sled down the big hill.
After an hour, our cheeks wind-burned, ice crystals frozen on all our eyelashes, I wanted to go home. But Charlie insisted we trek to the waterfall at the end of the creek, so Em and I trudged reluctantly behind him and Matty, already imagining the hot chocolate we’d have when we got home.
When we found the boys, they were investigating a freshly fallen tree. It spanned the width of the creek, a good six feet above the water below, a makeshift bridge.
“I dare you to cross it,” Charlie said to Matty.
“No way,” Matty said, and I felt relieved, because it wasn’t safe. It was way too high and icy.
But then Charlie shrugged and stepped forward instead, carefully placing one foot in front of another on the log bridge, snow crunching under his bulky snow boots, his gloved hands balanced out like he was a tightrope walker, a confident grin on his face.
“Charlie, come back!” I yelled.
“Relax, Parker,” he called.
“Charlie, maybe she’s right,” Matty said.
“I’m fine, halfway there!”
Em took my hand. “He’ll be fine,” she said.
I started to believe her. So much that I let myself turn away for just a few seconds. I was leaning down to grab a tissue from my pocket when I heard Matty yell and Em gasp and looked up to see Charlie’s arms pedaling in the air, his eyes startled like a deer’s, and then his body toppling backward, disappearing from my view.
The moment after Charlie fell, everything around me froze except for the snowflakes, still slow and lazy. An electric-blue current of fear started crackling around the edges of my vision.
I scrambled to the creek’s edge, Matty and Em behind me, convinced Charlie had split his head open or broken his leg or worse, only to find him lying like a snow angel in the creek, one foot and his hat in the water, ice creaking underneath, a smile as big as the moon.
He started laughing.
In that moment, I wanted to push him off the bridge myself.
I watched Em and Matty ease themselves down the bank to pull Charlie up, and as soon as Matty had secured my brother’s mittened hand, I turned and marched home, ignoring Em’s calls to come back.
Watching him tonight at the river—fearless, reckless—reminds me of watching him that day.
Except worse.