“Charlie, you can’t wait. If the cancer’s back, it could be spreading. You know every day matters.”
“I’m not missing the camp. All the good coaches will be there. Coach Franklin thinks it’ll up my chances of getting recruited for Duke or Vanderbilt’s team next year.”
“But couldn’t you go to the doctor and still go to the camp after that?”
“Not if I’m sick again.”
“But if the cancer’s back, the camp won’t make any difference!”
Charlie flinched.
“I’m sorry, I just mean, if it’s back, you probably couldn’t play next year anyway, right?”
“You don’t know that. If I get accepted, I could defer for a year.”
“God, Charlie,” I said, my voice cracking in frustration.
“Just give me these two weeks, okay? I promise, as soon as the camp is over, I’ll tell Mom and Dad and I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Travis. But, Parker, you have to let me do this on my own terms.”
Charlie’s voice was desperate, and I had to look away.
I took a step back, hugging myself, shaking my head. “No.”
“Come on.”
“No.”
“Parker, if you ruin this for me, I will never forgive you,” he said, his voice choked up, a mix of fury and heartbreak.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Tell Matty I said happy birthday. I’ll see you at home tonight.”
“Parker!” Charlie yelled as I left, but I didn’t turn back, just started walking toward home.
As soon as I got there, I told my parents.
Before Charlie even got home that night, they had booked him into a nine a.m. appointment with Dr. Travis the next day and blood tests later in the afternoon.
I don’t know how he took the news, if he was as furious with our parents as he was with me. I was too busy hiding upstairs in my room, afraid to face him, unable to shake the feeling that even though I’d done the right thing, I’d still done something really wrong, the type of wrong you could never come back from.
Four days later, Em and I were at the mall, hanging out on her break from the yogurt stand, when Mom called from the hospital to tell me it was official: Charlie had relapsed acute lymphocytic leukemia.
After I hung up, I was trying so hard to be matter-of-fact, but as soon as I told Em, her face screwed up and her eyes welled up, and then I couldn’t look at her, because I knew if I did, I’d lose the little bit of myself that was still holding the rest of me together.
Our parents withdrew Charlie from the baseball camp, told Coach Franklin the news.
I did everything I could to avoid Charlie, while he did everything he could to indicate how much he hated me.
Our communication was limited to the basics of simple human interaction: Good morning. Can you pass me the milk? Good night. When I did meet his eyes, his gaze was so leveling, so devastating, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all my fault: him missing the camp, the cancer coming back.
That September, Charlie started chemo again for his reinduction therapy. Mom began leaving metal pots around the house again—by the couch, at the foot of Charlie’s bed—for when his treatments made him throw up. Dad took on as much overtime as he could get to help with the bills. I mailed off my Harvard early-action application packet.
In November, Mom and Dad told me that Charlie was taking off at least the first half of the year so he could focus on his treatments, meaning he wouldn’t graduate with me and Matty and Em. That night, I heard him crying quietly on the other side of the wall. I raised my hand, wanting to send him our old knock, but my knuckles froze inches from the wall, unable to bear the possibility that he might not knock back.
The day my Harvard acceptance packet arrived was our first snow of the year. Nothing heavy, just delicate December flakes, the type that make you forget the piles of gray snow that will come later in the winter.
As soon as I opened the letter, I felt my future solidify in front of me, edges sharp, colors bright: green rolling lawns, redbrick buildings, a stethoscope, scrubs, Dr. McCullough.
“I got into Harvard,” I heard myself say to my parents.
“Holy cow!” my dad yelled, doing an enthusiastic fist pump. He pulled me into a hug that crushed my ribs against each other, letting go only so Mom could hug me too.
I gulped hard, trying to swallow, and at that second, I thought of the Wicked Witch of the East, the one who gets crushed by a house right at the beginning of the movie.
Dad put his hands on my shoulders. “Heck, let’s go out to celebrate! Skyline Chili?”
I wanted to say, A house has landed on top of me. There’s something wrong with me. Something bad is happening. But my head bobbed automatically, my mouth moved into a smile automatically, instinct taking over, and I nodded.
“If we go now, it won’t be crowded,” he said.
“I’ll see if your brother feels well enough to join,” Mom said before following Dad upstairs, calling Charlie.
I sucked in my breath and it got caught on a tangle inside me, and I held my head down on my lap, trying to find oxygen in the dark tent of my arms.
Harvard.
Premed.
Dr. McCullough.
It was what I’d always wanted.
But my heart felt sweaty, and my legs felt jumbly, and I couldn’t get out from under that house.
“Parker?”
My head jerked up. Charlie was standing in front of me.
It was the first time he had looked at me in months when his gaze didn’t make me shrink, didn’t make me hate what I’d done.
“I got into Harvard,” I said.
“Is this what you want?”
I stared at him. He looked gaunt, and I saw the new patches where his hair had come out in clumps. “Yes.”
He didn’t react, just turned and left without another word, not joining us for dinner that night.
At the time, I had hoped the being-crushed-by-a-house feeling was just nerves, being excited.
But afterward, I started dreaming about the helium people again.
I dreamed about them flying near my window at night, tapping on the glass pane.
I dreamed about them following me when I walked outside, pulling on my hair as I curled my toes against the earth.
I worried about their insides being exposed, convinced it couldn’t be good to show your heart out in the world like that.
Each time, late in the dream, I realized (or maybe just remembered) that Charlie was standing next to me too, right as one of the helium people took his hand, lifting him off the ground.
He always looked so happy, yelling, “Happy Birthday to us, Parker!”
And each time, I grabbed his foot, circled my hand around his bony ankle, tried to keep him tethered to me.
But I couldn’t keep him close—the helium people were too strong—and with a cry, I watched Charlie break free, leaving me behind, my gravity feet on the ground.
I always woke up with loss aching through me, a sense of missing something so essential, it took me a while to remember where I was, even who I was, to remember I hadn’t done enough to save my brother.
It was never enough.
Twenty-Seven
WHEN I ARRIVE FOR my first shift at Carla’s, the four older ladies from the previous day are already there, this time painting what appear to be small shallow dishes.
All of them except for Alice, that is. This time she’s actually sitting at the same table as the other three, but she still isn’t painting. Instead, she’s staring at her hands in her lap, neatly folded. The crabby one from yesterday, Harriet, just grunts, but the other two murmur hellos.
Right then, the front door opens behind me, and both Carla and Finn come in, boxes stacked in their arms.
Finn stops in his tracks when he sees me.
My heart does a weird optimistic surge, hoping maybe what happened the other night between us wasn’t as bad as I remember, but he only nods, walking past me.
“Parker! Good to see you,” Carla calls out, following him toward the back staircase. “Just give me a few minutes. We have to bring some clay downstairs.”