I let out a small surprised breath. As far as I’m concerned, he has a lot to apologize for regarding that night, but this would never have crossed my mind.
“I should never have done that. I’m glad he went to Europe without me. He’s the only one doing what he wants even though I had cancer.”
“What do you mean?”
He turns to me, and I can see his face in the light filtering out from inside. “Do you know Erin turned down a full scholarship to USC so she could go to school at Xavier? Ever since I’ve known her, Erin wanted to move to California. But I get sick again, and all of a sudden, she couldn’t be more excited to stay in boring old Ohio.”
He rubs his scalp.
“Why’d she do that?”
“I don’t know. I think so she could be close by, since I was sick,” he says.
“Oh,” I say, remembering a similar conversation with Dad last December, how I was prepared to defer Harvard a year if Charlie’s last round of chemo didn’t work. “That’s really thoughtful,” I add.
Charlie lets out an exasperated sigh. “This past year, I wasn’t her boyfriend,” he says. “I was her boyfriend with cancer. She dropped out of cheerleading because she was missing so many games. She skipped Homecoming and the Winter Formal because I was in the hospital, even though I would have been cool if she went with someone else. I even told her to go with Matty.”
“You were better by prom, though. Didn’t she want to go?”
“I didn’t want to go, so I didn’t bring it up. She didn’t ask. Instead we watched Die Hard. She doesn’t even like action movies.”
“So you’re mad at her for being nice and not pushing you to go to prom and watching a movie you wanted to watch instead?” I ask.
“I didn’t ask her to do any of that stuff, but she did,” Charlie says, his voice breaking in frustration. “It’s effing exhausting.”
I can’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. “Charlie, she loves you. That’s why she did all that stuff.”
“I didn’t ask to be the person everyone sacrifices crap for. It’s too much. I owe everyone too much already.”
“You don’t owe anyone anything—it’s not an exchange. That’s just what people do for the people they love.”
Right then a door slams hard upstairs.
Charlie laughs. “I never asked for any of this, Parker. Erin giving up her dream school, Dad taking a shit job, you becoming a doctor.”
“But I want to be a doctor.”
He snorts. “Sure you do. Matty’s the only one I can stand being around right now, to be honest.”
“That’s a really mean thing to say, Charlie.”
Charlie scoffs, but his voice isn’t angry. It’s sad. “God, it must be nice to live in your perfect world.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“Valedictorian? Full scholarship to Harvard? An internship you beat out . . . how many other candidates for?”
I don’t answer.
“What is it Dad would say, ‘The world’s your oyster’? It is, Parker. But it’s not mine.”
He stands, stretches, heads inside.
I want to call him back.
I want to tell him the truth about everything, how for the first time in my life, I dread things: the internship, our parents finding out the truth. How I’m pretty sure there’s something wrong with me, the terrible way my heart jumps too hard and fast. How my world is far from perfect.
And then I think about him being held back senior year.
About the cost of me telling our parents about his cancer coming back last summer.
About cancer, twice.
The knot of guilt tangles itself further in my chest, so instead I just sit there in the dark by myself, holding all the words in, letting them fade with the last of the light.
Twenty-Six
LAST JUNE, EM DECIDED to throw a surprise birthday party for Matty at Erin’s house so we could use the pool. “He’s always punking me—it’s my turn to catch him off guard.”
“Wow. That’s a pretty sinister revenge plot,” Charlie said to Em. “A secret pool party with his best friends? You’ll show him.”
“Shut up,” Em said, swatting him on the arm. “You’re not helping.”
The day of the party, everything was going as planned: Erin’s parents were out of town, and Em, May, Charlie, and I had gotten there early to help her set up. Charlie had the grill going, the guys from the baseball team had miraculously arrived on time (Em had significantly padded the arrival time solely for their benefit), and even though it was totally a mistake, we couldn’t stop laughing at the birthday message on Matty’s cake: HAPPY BIRTHDAY PATTY!
“Shhh!” Em said when the doorbell rang, holding up her phone to record Matty’s reaction.
When he slid open the patio door, calling for Charlie, and we all jumped out screaming “Surprise!” Matty let out such a high-pitched yelp, Em did a victory fist pump. “Totally posting this on YouTube right now,” she said, looking at her phone as she automatically held a hand up for a high five.
Everything was perfect that day, even the imperfect cake.
And then I saw Charlie.
I was by the pool, drying off in the sun, a warm towel wrapped around my shoulders, half listening to May talk about the political science classes she was taking at Oberlin in the fall, when Charlie passed in front of me, pulling off his Cincinnati Reds T-shirt and, with a wild whoop, cannonballing into the water right next to Erin.
I froze, watching him.
Erin shrieked as Charlie surfaced, scooping her up, threatening to dunk her.
“Charlie, I just got my hair blown out!” she said, but she was beaming at him, her arms around his shoulders.
I stood up.
“Park?” Em said.
“Just a minute,” I said, walking over to the pool, as close as I could get to Charlie without actually getting in. By this point, he and Matty had started their “synchronized swimming” routine, the one that involved them holding their noses and jumping up and down in tandem.
I rubbed my eyes, just in case I was seeing sun spots, but no, as Charlie bobbed in the water, I could see them all over his back: tiny broken blood vessels, just like the ones on his chest when he first got cancer. With all the chaos and sunlight and splashing, I guessed no one else had seen them yet.
I rocked back on my heels right as Charlie looked at me, swimming over and splashing me from the pool.
He squinted up at me when I didn’t move, his ears sticking out from his wet hair. They looked like they were getting burned, and I realized he probably didn’t put any sunscreen on his ears, and he really should, because of skin cancer, because of cancer, and I swallowed hard.
“Parker, you okay? You look like you’re going to throw up Happy Birthday Patty cake all over the place.”
The sun was too warm on my face and I could smell chlorine in my hair, and I hated what I was going to do.
“There are spots on your back,” I said, keeping my voice quiet.
“What? Bug bites?”
“No.”
“It’s probably heat rash or something.”
“Charlie, they’re like before.”
He craned his neck back, twisting his whole body, so he could see. I watched his face fall amid all the life around him: Matty jumping into the pool, Erin laughing at his belly flop, Em and May sneaking a kiss.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No. Fuck. No.” He pulled himself up out of the pool and grabbed a towel, wrapping it around his shoulders and yanking his T-shirt off a table before stalking into the house.
“Charlie?” Erin called from the pool.
“He’ll be back,” I said, following the trail of pool water until I found him standing in front of the bathroom mirror, angling his body to see his back.
The red spots looked like a map of constellations on his skin.
His eyes met mine in the mirror.
“My last blood test was good. I’m fine,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound like I believed it, like I wasn’t terrified. “You’re right. And I bet Mom and Dad can get you in to see Dr. Travis tomorrow and she’ll rule it out, and it’ll all be good.”
He pulled his T-shirt on, shaking his head.
“I can’t tomorrow.”
“What? Why not?”
“I’ve got the baseball recruitment camp in two weeks. I’ll go to the doctor after that.”