To her enduring amazement, he said yes.
There are a few places you don’t go to if you live in New York. Everyone who visits you will expect that you have gone to them—that you in fact go to them all the time, spend every possible free second at them. They include: the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, F.A.O. Schwartz, the skating rink at Rockefeller Plaza, Times Square (unless you have to change subways there, but then you never go above ground), and any theme restaurant. It was a source of constant bafflement to Scarlett as to why the Powerkids always seemed to end up at these places. It wasn’t like cancer turned you into a tourist.
Eric, as an outsider, hadn’t gotten any of these memos. He was delighted to be at the Hard Rock. His enthusiasm made Scarlett view it in a more charitable light, as they negotiated their way through the huge gift shop with its 20,000 varieties of T-shirts.
“Do you come here a lot?” he asked.
If any of her friends had asked her that, she could have smacked them with impunity…but there would be no smacking of Eric.
“With Marlene, sometimes,” she admitted.
“God, I wish my life in high school was as exciting as yours. I wish I grew up in New York.”
Scarlett looked over a vista of Hard Rock shot glasses, unsure how to respond. He was so impressed with her now. What if he found out the truth…that everyone else in New York was leading a much more exciting life than she was? He would learn soon enough. Until then, she was ready to embrace the Hard Rock in all its kitschy glory.
The Powerkids were seated together at a massive, long table. The parents and escorts were relegated to whatever seats were left in the general area. Scarlett and Eric were given a small table by the kitchen door. Scarlett got hit in the head with a tray twice, but Marlene couldn’t see her, so it was a pretty good trade-off. It was just the two of them, tucked in a corner.
“Can I ask you something that’s potentially kind of rude?” he asked, after they had ordered.
This sounded very promising.
“How is it that you live in a hotel in New York, but you aren’t rich? From what Spencer’s told me, it’s kind of hard for you guys right now.”
Okay. Not what she was expecting. Still, a fair question.
“You could say that,” she said.
“I don’t want to pry, but I’m just curious about your life.”
“My dad’s family started the hotel. I don’t think my dad wanted to run it. But then they had us, and my grandparents wanted to retire, so that’s what happened. I think things were okay—not great, but okay—until…”
She looked down at the ketchup, unsure whether or not to continue.
“Until?” Eric prompted.
Scarlett nodded in the direction of the table of Powerkids.
“Until that,” she said.
This was the truth never spoken among the Martins. No one talked about the fact that the financial troubles were directly related to Marlene’s long illness, the piles of bills that medical insurance didn’t cover, the single injections that cost thousands a dose, the hospital costs that ran into the hundreds of thousands. Obviously, there was no price too high for her cure—but it had taken its toll. If Marlene had been well, life would have been very, very different.
“Oh…right,” he said, understanding.
“She doesn’t know,” Scarlett said. “We’re never supposed to say it. I mean, she’s alive.”
“That must have been so scary,” he said. “I can’t imagine my brother getting that sick.”
“It kind of wasn’t,” she said. “Actually, that summer was kind of fun. I knew something was going on, but they didn’t tell me the whole story until she had to be moved into the hospital.”
“Kind of a tip-off that there was a problem.”
“Yeah. Kind of. I always felt bad, though.”
“About what?” he asked.
There was real concern in his voice. Eric was having a conversation with her—a real one. She never talked about the Marlene stuff except with Spencer, and occasionally with her friends, but never in much detail. There was one fact she often left out of those talks.
“For not feeling worse,” she said.
“You feel bad for not feeling bad?”
“My parents told Spencer first,” she explained, “since he’s the oldest. He just went into his room for a while. I think he really got it, how bad it was. Then they told Lola, and she got really upset. My parents couldn’t calm her down. That was bad.”
The food arrived, but he waved his hand to show he was still listening.
“Everyone was terrified of telling me,” she said, “but I’d figured it out by then, and I guess I was…okay with it or something. I just thought that if you got sick, you went to the hospital and someone made you better. Which is kind of what happened. I’m the mean one, I guess.”