After she left, we got to work on his arms and didn’t stop until he had a full sleeve on his right side and a half sleeve on his left. The joy on his face when he saw himself in the bathroom mirror warmed me inside. He wrinkled his brows, narrowed his eyes, and stuck his lips out a little, trying on a tough guy persona. I gave him one of the grape lollipops, and the white stick angled from the corner of his mouth like a fat toothpick, then I took a quick picture on my phone to text his mom later.
“I have a few more suckers,” I mentioned casually. “Does Amelia like grape?”
“Only one way to find out!” His confidence was adorable. The sleeves of his gown were rolled up to better show off his badassery, and with candy in hand, we strolled down the hall, IV pole in tow.
Three doors to the right, he rapped on the door twice before sauntering in with so much attitude and swagger, he even gave Marco a run for his money. I bit my lip to hide my smile and hung back in the doorway, happy to let Eli do his thing.
“Amelia, you know what makes chemo like a million times better?”
A waif-thin girl with huge pale green eyes and a port connected to an IV pump just like Eli’s gave him a blinding smile. “What?”
“A view like this.” He struck a pose, flexing his biceps like a bodybuilder. She cracked up so hard she got short of breath and had to take a couple of deep pulls from the oxygen in her nasal cannula. “And this.” Eli performed an elaborate bow, presenting her with a lollipop like it was a rose.
Amelia accepted it gratefully, hugging it to her chest before tearing off the wrapper and sticking it in her mouth. Chemo wrecked your taste buds, and some had the worst metallic aftertaste. It was one of the weird facts you didn’t learn until you went through it—that chemicals pumped through a tube almost straight into your heart had a taste. A little candy could be a life saver sometimes, if the nausea wasn’t too bad. The perfect sugary distraction.
“My hero,” she said around the stick. “And I like the ink.”
“I know. I’m pretty hardcore these days.”
I stifled my giggle.
“And that’s not all,” he continued. “If you’re not too tired, I have UNO cards in my room. Want to play a few rounds?”
Her eyes shone. “I love UNO.”
“I know.” His voice was shy this time. “I asked my mom to bring a deck so we could hang out.”
An hour and five rounds later, with Amelia the decided champ with three wins compared to my and Eli’s single win each, she was running out of steam and Eli was squirming enough that I suspected he needed to pee but didn’t want to miss a moment of time with her.
“Miss Amelia, it was a pleasure to meet you, but I need Eli to escort me back to his room now.” I leaned close and finished in a stage whisper, “Those tattoos of his scare all the bad guys away. He’s my bodyguard.”
Eli puffed out his chest as he gathered up the cards, and neither kid argued with me putting an end to things.
“Tomorrow,” he told her, “I demand a rematch. I was trying to be all gallant and stuff today and let you win because you’re a girl, but a man can only take so much. I won’t take it easy on you next time.”
She nodded solemnly. “I would expect no less.”
When we got back to his room, he wrapped his arms around my waist and squeezed surprisingly tight. “Thank you,” he whispered. “That was awesome.”
“You were awesome.” I fought back the sting of tears behind my eyes as I tucked him back in bed after he used the restroom. He was beyond ready for a nap.
Nothing compared to the way I felt when I left the hospital after hanging out with the kids there. And yes, I called them kids, not patients. Too many people there saw them as a disease first and a person second. I refused to even think of them in those terms. They were just kids caught in shitty circumstances.
As I walked down the hospital corridor, I pulled my phone out. I’d had it on silent during my visit.
Nothing from Laird. I guess our little sleepover didn’t mean as much as he said it did. Nothing except three texts from my mom, asking what I’d eaten for lunch, if I’d remembered to take my multi-vitamin, and if I needed her to order more sunscreen via Amazon for me.
I ignored all three.
And when I turned the corner and Laird was only six feet away, heading in the direction I’d just left, I treated him the same way he’d treated me all day. I ignored him too.
Laird
I couldn’t stay.
That dream. That wonderful, awful fucking dream. Wonderful, because I got to see him again, in sharp, bright, high-definition clarity in my mind. And it had been long enough since he passed now that, between dreams, he’d started to blur a bit around the edges. I’d forgotten about that cowlick he had, just above his left ear. And that his smile always tipped at that certain angle. And that he was too motherfucking young to go through any of it.
And it was awful because every time I dreamt of him, I kept getting older. The conversation was always the same, except for what he asked for. Would he get to play the drums too? Would he learn to drive someday? Would he get to graduate at the top of his class?
I lied every damn time. Yes, Garrett, yes, you’ll get to do it all.
Leaving her bed was the hardest and easiest thing I’d ever done. Easy, because I’d never let a girl see me cry. And Garrett brought the tears.
But there was no place in the world I wanted to be except pressed next to her like a sardine in a twin-sized bed, her thigh over mine, her head over my heart, and her hand over that inked G.
That dream was why I found myself watching the sunrise from a graveyard, sitting in a puddle while the rain fell around me. I traced the numbers that spelled out the length of his life, the dates far too close together. He didn’t even get two handfuls of years to be my brother. But I’d be his forever.
My clothes clung to my skin, annoying but not cold. It didn’t matter though. It could’ve been the middle of winter and I wouldn’t have budged until I was ready. The discomfort of being wet or hot or cold was nothing compared to what he’d endured. Nothing.
The early morning text from the band director cancelling practice cemented the conviction that I was exactly where I was supposed to be in that moment. With my brother.
The only concession I made to the rain was the baseball hat I’d pulled low over my face. Not that it mattered. My cheeks were as wet as the rest of me.
By the time I finally rose, the thunderstorm had cleared. The violence of it had helped somehow. The angry vibration of the thunder, the sharp, painful crack of the lightning. The endless, endless rain. I understood all of it.
I embraced all of it.
And when it ended, it was time for me to move on too. To go back to living for both of us. Trying to turn my lies into truths. Until I dreamed of him again one day.
When I got back to the Wrangler, the chill from the AC raising goose bumps on my skin, my phone was dead. It didn’t matter. I had nowhere to be today with practice cancelled.
Except the hospital.
Maybe there, I could keep Garrett close to me a little bit longer. There were always pieces of him lurking in the depths of their eyes. Parts of him I recognized in their actions. Remnants of when I thought I could save him if I just loved him enough, behaved enough, achieved enough.
But I couldn’t. My mom left one year to the day from when we buried him here. I never heard from her again. My dad, he’d stuck around physically, but he’d never been the same. Since love had already failed him twice, he’d come up with new tactics to deal with me. Lists of impossible demands, the strictest of schedules, regimens for both my diet and exercise, and more after-school activities than one person could ever enjoy. He kept me at arm’s length, never closer, never farther. And he never, ever said my brother’s name again.
I wanted to hate him. So bad. But he was the only connection I had left to Garrett.
And there was nothing I wouldn’t do for my brother.
Consequently, I listened to Dad’s lectures, did just enough to keep him off my back, and did my best to live my life in what little space remained.
Like drumline, which he’d always considered a colossal waste of time.
I scrubbed my hands over my face, wishing I could wash away the reality of being a disappointment to the only parent I had left just as easily. And then I forcibly pushed him from my mind, refocusing on the present.