I tell myself that if I can make myself finish the whole bowl, Charlie will come back and selflessly offer me the car, or Mom and Dad will come back with a set of shiny keys for a new car of my own, or my previously MIA fairy godmother will suddenly appear and conjure up a whole new life for me.
But instead, Mustard the cat enters the kitchen and wraps himself around my legs. I can feel his throaty purr against my skin. He stops and licks my exposed ankle, and his tongue is all dry and scratchy, and then he stands on his hind legs, getting ready to jump into my lap, and I know he’s going to shed all over my pants.
“Sorry, buddy,” I say, pushing the chair back, giving up on the HealthWheat. He lets out a crabby meow. “We can’t always get what we want.”
I trudge upstairs to brush my teeth. If this is indeed the first day of the rest of my life, it’s off to a sucky start.
Five
AS SOON AS WE hit I-71, it’s clear Charlie’s mood hasn’t improved. He’s going well above the speed limit, his crappy jam-band music filtering through the car. It doesn’t help that Mom’s ancient Tercel has black vinyl seats and no air-conditioning, that even with the windows down, I feel like I might melt.
“You’re going too fast,” I say, but Charlie doesn’t slow down. If anything, he speeds up.
I lean over, turn down the music. “You’re going to get a ticket.”
He doesn’t say anything, just turns the music back up.
I grip the side of my seat.
There’s sweat trickling down my back. I mentally curse my decision to wear the white oxford and dark pants instead of a dress. I’m going to be thoroughly drenched by the time I get there.
Right then, Charlie slams the brakes, and the Tercel jerks to a halt behind a line of stopped cars in front of us, the seat belts yanking us back.
Charlie barks out a curse.
“God, Charlie! I told you to slow down!”
He mumbles something that sounds like “sorry,” finally turning down the music, and I try to catch my breath.
We’re stopped by the exit for the mall, and maybe it’s the near-accident moment we just had, but I’m hit with a sudden wave of nostalgia for the Delaney kids, which is weird, because they were pretty much the bane of my existence last summer.
At first, the twenty dollars an hour Mrs. Delaney offered me to babysit her two sons seemed generous, extravagant even. But after my first hour with Todd and Ryan, I quickly came to the realization that two thousand dollars an hour wouldn’t have been nearly enough.
They were, hands down, the worst kids I’d ever met.
Within the first week I watched them, Todd almost set the basement on fire (claiming he wanted to see if the fire extinguisher really worked), and Ryan intentionally locked himself in the bathroom for the better part of six hours. They both called me “Farter” instead of Parker, and the one time Emerson pinch-hit and watched them for me, she refused to talk to me for the next two days, accusing me of grossly misrepresenting what she was getting into.
Even with all that, I realize I would have done it again this summer. Once I learned their MOs—the way Todd would get real shifty and secretive when he was planning something, and how Ryan started talking super loud when he was up to no good—I was a pretty good babysitter.
But I have my internship.
The internship I really, really wanted, the internship I beat out numerous other applicants for, the internship that’s currently making me nostalgic for two near-homicidal children?
The line of traffic starts easing forward again, and for a while Charlie and I are both quiet.
I sneak a glance at him, wondering if he’s thinking about Matty going to Europe—how Charlie was supposed to join him before he got sick again this past fall, how Em took his place instead, leaving us both without best friends for the summer looming ahead of us.
“Huh,” Charlie says. “Look at that.”
I lean forward to see what he’s pointing at: bright-red capital letters spray-painted across the edge of the bridge: IS YR TIN CAN COMFORT PLUS.
“Wow. That’s weird. What do you think it means?” I ask as we pass underneath.
“Not a clue.”
“And how in the world could someone paint that up there without getting caught?”
“Maybe it was Spider-Man.”
“Yeah, right,” I say.
“Do you have a better theory? Seriously, painting that without falling into the traffic below? That takes some serious superhero mojo.”
“And a total lack of concern for personal safety,” I add. “Plus, would Spider-Man really do something illegal?”
“Maybe he got sick of fighting villains and rescuing people. Maybe, for once in his life, he just wanted to be someone else.”
For a second I get it, but before I can agree, Charlie leans over and turns up the terrible jam-band music again, letting it fill up the space between us.
Six
AS CHARLIE PULLS UP to the Children’s Hospital visitor entrance, my breath sticks.
Other than driving by on the way to Em’s favorite coffee shop, I don’t think I’ve been back to the main branch of Children’s Hospital since Charlie was sick the first time, when we were nine. When the cancer returned earlier this year, he went to Bethesda—it was closer, and since he was almost eighteen, his doctors thought he should transition to an adult cancer facility. And my internship interview (which I nailed, talking about Charlie’s history and how it was why I wanted to be a pediatric oncologist) was at the Liberty Campus in the suburbs.
Up until this moment, I didn’t think it would be weird coming back here. In fact, the thought never even crossed my mind.
But as Charlie slows the car by the front entrance, it’s a punch to the gut, my stomach literally turning at the sight of the blue-and-white logo of children holding hands, the pale tan color of the brick, even the shape of the font for the hospital’s marquee.
And for the first time in years, I let myself think about that day in fourth grade when Charlie got the bloody nose.
Em and I were sitting cross-legged in a line of girls on the blacktop during recess, each person braiding the hair of the person in front of her. Except my hair was too short and too thick to do anything with, so I was at the end, sitting behind Em, trying to tame her soft blond curls into a neat French braid.
I don’t know how long we’d been at it when we heard shouting and then saw our teacher, Ms. Dros, running across the blacktop toward a group of kids circled around something.
“I bet there’s a fight!” Emerson said, turning to check it out and disrupting her braid in the process. I carefully angled her head back in front of me. I wanted to make the best French braid ever, if only to make up for my own hair.
But then I shot a quick glance over my shoulder, curiosity getting the better of me, and saw my brother bent over, his hands clenched around his face.
I dropped Em’s braid, the strands unfurling like they were in slow motion.
By the time I got over to the group, Charlie was going inside with Ms. Dros and Matty, and the playground monitor made me stay outside with the rest of the class.
Caroline Bates, the class loudmouth, stood in the center of the lingering crowd, hands on her hips, telling everyone that Charlie’s nose had started bleeding for no reason at all.
This I could imagine: bright-red life pouring out of his right nostril, down his Iron Man shirt, over his hands, just like last year when he tripped on the playground and fell on his face.
But Caroline also said Charlie started bawling.
This I didn’t buy for one single second.
Charlie never cried.
So when she took it to the next level and called him a crybaby, I called her a shithead, a word I’d heard Dad use only when he was super mad about work.
Miraculously enough, I didn’t get in trouble. With all the chaos of Charlie’s bloody nose, no teachers heard it. And since everyone liked Charlie, no one tattled on me, not even Caroline, who seemed to know she was in the wrong.
I couldn’t wait to tell Charlie.
For once, I felt brave. For once, I didn’t cry.