Invincible

  My legs threaten to walk away without me. My hip is engulfed in a white cold fire. I am burning up from the inside, but instead of flame, I am made out of ice. My bones are brittle with icicles. I will never be warm again. You could crack me open and see the frozen rivers inside me.

  I have come too close to pressing send on the wrong texts to Marcus, words written by desperation: Are you sure you don’t want to try a few Norcos with me? Are you sure you can’t get me any Oxy? Just a little? Just immediately? Just RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE BEFORE I TEAR MY FUCKING HAIR OUT? Are you sure? Are you sure? ARE YOU SURE? All erased, just in time. All of it, other words for Help me.

  But he is not the one to help me. Not with this. Marcus knows the other me, the one who is fearless, the one who glides through water. He cannot know this puking, shivering girl. He must never see her.

  He is the reason I’m doing this. He is the only reason strong enough for me to endure this. Because I made a promise. Because he’s taking a chance on trusting me.

  I want I want I want

  I need something to take this pain away.

  “This is a bad flu,” Mom says, her voice far too chipper for the end of the world. “I really hope the rest of us don’t catch it.” She knits the angora of my hair with her fingers.

  Mom is happy. She has something to do now. She has her sick daughter back. She knows how to do this. There are things mothers do that no one else can do. Her fingers in my hair. Her directionless humming. But she cannot help me. No one can help me but a pharmacist or a drug dealer.

  She leaves to get me some Advil from the kitchen and I make plans to jump out the window and rob the nearest drugstore.

  I have the flu, I text Marcus. I feel like I’m dying. I want to tell him to bring me drugs. I want to tell him I’ll take anything. Why hasn’t he written me back yet?

  How is this even possible? How is it possible to want something this bad?

  I should be back in the hospital. This could be the cancer come back for revenge. Except now it’s in my heart. Now it has broken my soul and thrown it around the room and I can’t get it back, I can never get it back.

  I’m dying. I’m dead. I’d rather die than feel like this.

  This is the definition of hell.

  Last night I dreamt of Stella. She was running through the Oakland streets, dodging the honking, screeching cars, her middle finger raised in salute, her big black boots shaking the earth with their stomps. She was dancing with danger. She was so fast, so graceful; she was practically flying. I called her name but she couldn’t hear me. We went up and up until we were on top of the world, until all of our problems were tiny specs far, far away. And I thought, This is it! This is what we’ve been waiting for. But she kept going, she kept flying up, even though there was no land left, even though I couldn’t follow, and she was singing, she was so happy she didn’t even notice I wasn’t coming with her, and I called for her but she couldn’t hear me, and she kept flying up until she was only a spec, as tiny as everything else, and then even farther, until she was nothing.

  I was on the ground, full of rocks, so heavy I couldn’t move, I would never move, I would be stuck in that place forever as my punishment. I have stolen something that wasn’t mine to have, something that should have been Stella’s. It was me who was supposed to be the disappeared one. It was me who was supposed to be taken. I was the one who stopped treatment. I was the one who had already given up. Stella never stopped fighting. She should still be on the ground, dancing, singing, running through traffic. It should be me flying away, becoming invisible. I am the one who was supposed to die.

  I woke up screaming, drowning in a pool of sweat. “Oh, Evie,” my dad’s voice said in the dark, then I felt his arms around me, and I let myself soften into a seven-year-old version of myself, a tiny girl my dad could still love, a girl who hadn’t yet done anything to terrify him, hadn’t yet pulled on his hope and terror and disappointment, a girl who was still innocent. He held on to that girl and I almost believed I could stay as her. “Daddy,” I said, and for a second I believed I was worthy of his forgiveness.

  But then I remembered why I was sick. I remembered I am not innocent and never will be again.

  “Stella!” I cry now. It is day, but it is still so dark inside me.

  “Oh, honey,” Mom says. “Oh, my love.”

  Stella, we are sitting side by side getting chemo again. It is your hand in my hair. You are telling me a joke and I laugh even through the sickness.

  “Do you want me to call Will?” Mom says. “Do you want him to come over?”

  I say yes. I need someone who knows how to love me when I’m sick.

  Help me help me help me

  “Will,” I say, and let him wrap me in his arms.

  It is months ago. It is before everything changed. It is back when I was dying, back when everything still made sense. Death is simple. Death makes everything clear. It uncomplicates love.

  “I missed you,” I say, and it doesn’t feel like lying.

  I am someone who still loves Will. I am someone his embrace makes safe. I am someone who says “I’m sorry” until he kisses my wet forehead. We make sense like this. When I am dying and weak and he is healthy and strong, and he is in love enough for both of us.

  The worst of it is over now. It’s been five days and my stomach is starting to feel normal again. I’m finally able to eat a little. I’m finally getting over that flu. It should be obvious what it really was to anyone who’s ever watched a TV cop show or seen a PG-13 movie. My parents aren’t stupid, but they choose what they want to see, and no one wants to see their kid going through opiate withdrawals.

  One second I’m a cancer survivor, the next I’m a drug addict. How did I ever let this happen?

  Most of the physical symptoms are gone, but I’m exhausted and the cravings still knock me over with their power. They come out of nowhere, a tidal wave of sadness and desperation and need and every bad feeling imaginable, tons and tons of it, headed straight for me.

  I feel emptied. I am hollow. I am only half here. The other half is in some different dimension I can’t even imagine, let alone find. But I have to get used to this. I have to if I’m going to be good again.

  I want to. I want to be good. At least I think I do.

  The house is the calmest it’s been in a long time. Even Jenica felt sorry for me while I was sick. Kasey came to visit, and seeing me sweaty and pale and weak made her forgive me. Will resumed his place at my bedside and was everything solid I came to rely on during my year of cancer. I let him hold my hand. I let him rub my back. I don’t want to get back together, but maybe there’s room for something else, something like friendship. Maybe there’s room to let him love me just a little.

  He asked me to go to prom with him and I said yes. I made it clear that we would be going as friends, and he said he understood, but I’m not sure he really believed me.

  Being sick has made me salvageable. Like cancer, the flu only has victims. It is not controversial, not a matter of will or moral character. No one ever deserves it. So I get to resume my familiar role as victim and give everyone a chance to love me again. I don’t deserve their sympathy, but I’ll take it. I’m getting another second chance.

  Marcus calls but I don’t know what to say to him. I hear his voice and I want to taste it. I want to run away into the night and light the sky with him. But I am still too sick. I don’t want him to see me like this. And I don’t trust myself yet to not beg him to find me more pills. I have to wait. I have to be patient. But I crave him almost as much as the pills.

  I still want them. God, I still really want them.

  I’m going to try to be good now. I really am. Maybe there’s an Evie I haven’t tried yet, one who can be two people at once. Maybe there’s a way to make everyone happy. There’s the girl who still wants to find a comfortable little place somewhere inside my old, clean world. Then there’s this girl I’m just starting to get to know, the one who wants to live on t
he edge, the one who belongs with Marcus. Maybe they can share a body. Maybe they can share a soul.

  Maybe.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  twenty-five.

  I’VE CREATED A MONSTER. WILL IS TELLING EVERYONE we’re back together again. He was at my locker this morning with a dozen of his red roses, and I realized what a perfect example they are of everything that’s wrong with our relationship—raised in a hothouse to look pretty and perfect, so far removed from nature and anything that’s real.

  I tried studying last night but everything I read looked like a different language and I had to give up after ten minutes. I tried to hide my fidgeting while we all watched TV, a tentative step back toward family togetherness. Then everyone went to bed, and I spent the night smoking pot and staring out the window, waiting for my pulse to slow down and trying to breathe like a normal person. Without the pills, I’m finding it impossible to sleep. My body forgot how.

  It’s only a couple hours into my first day back and already I’m questioning my plan to be normal. There’s too much in my way. I’ve gone so far in the other direction, I don’t know if I can find my way back. A life isn’t something you can just slip back into after leaving it.

  My history teacher asks to see me after class. “I’m worried about you,” she says, but her old teariness is gone. I’ve worn out my Cancer Girl sympathy, even with her. Now I’m just bad. I’m not turning in homework, she says. Not participating in class. I only answered three questions on the last quiz and I didn’t even get them right. All I can say is I’m sorry. That’s all I can ever say. I walk out of the room without even waiting for a response. What can she say that will change anything? School’s over in three weeks and there’s no way I can catch up.

  I catch Kasey throwing up in the bathroom. Her excuse is that she needs to fit into her prom dress. She tells me this casually as she rinses her mouth out, as if it’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for deciding to have a deadly eating disorder. I don’t say anything about how I struggled to keep food down for most of last year. I don’t remind her about my wasting away, about needing to be fed through tubes. Another thing that’s not worth it.

  Then I get this text from Caleb: Hi Evie. Are you mad at me? Why haven’t you returned my texts? Ten minutes later: I really want to talk to you. Delete, delete, delete.

  It’s lunch now and Kasey’s not eating and all anyone can talk about is prom. The freshman girl who sits at our table is wearing a hat identical to Stella’s. Next she’s going to start walking around with a limp and chemo hair.

  Will has his arm around me all during lunch, even though I keep trying to wiggle out of it, even though I keep making excuses to get up. But every time I sit back down, his arm is there again, like he’s my keeper, like he’s afraid of me running off. All my subtle hints are wasted, so eventually I stop trying to escape, and I shrivel under the weight of his arm.

  I’m trying to be nice now, right? I’m trying not to make a scene. Is this what nice is? Letting people think things that aren’t true just to avoid hurting their feelings? Letting them get away with things you don’t want them to do? Being nice is dishonest. Being nice makes me a liar. What if, deep down, I’m just not a nice person? I’m pretty sure nice people don’t ignore the texts of friends with brain cancer.

  I squirm and Will whispers in my ear, “I’m not going to let you push me away this time,” and it makes me sick, like actually physically nauseous, like I am trapped in the trunk of a car and being driven over speed bumps and potholes for miles and miles and miles, and no matter how hard I push and kick and scream, I can’t get out.

  I want to push and kick and scream. I want to run out of this lunchroom and this school and this life and never look back.

  I want to take what I said, what I promised, when I was sick and half out of my mind and thought maybe this could be my world again.

  “Do you have your dress yet?” someone asks me.

  “No,” I hear myself say. “Do you?”

  “Well, yeah. Obviously,” she says, like I’m an idiot.

  “Evie,” Kasey says, her face crumpled in concern. “Prom is this weekend.” The whole table looks at me like I’ve told them I have cancer again.

  I don’t give a shit about prom. I wish I’d never told Will I’d go with him. I wish I’d never let him rub my back while I was sick. I wish I wasn’t still sitting at this table with these people. Why did I ever think I could find a way to fit back into their world?

  I was wrong about there being room for two Evies. The old one has to go. The new one is stronger, bigger, and she does not want to share space with that silly, pathetic girl any longer.

  I text Marcus and tell him to pick me up on Telegraph when he gets out of school. I skip the rest of the day, just walk out the front door and spend the next couple of hours wandering around downtown Berkeley. I walk by People’s Park four times, each time barely talking myself out of approaching the group of seedy-looking kids to ask about getting some pills. It is scary how close I get. I feel giant magnets pulling me in their direction. I feel the hole in my heart threatening to swallow me. The kids don’t notice me, but their dogs do. The dirty pit bulls stare me down with their beady eyes, taunting me. They say, “We know what you want, girl. Just say it.”

  But I don’t. It’s a miracle, but I don’t. I keep reminding myself of the promise I made Marcus. Not my parents, not Dr. Jacobs. I don’t care about getting caught or in trouble. I don’t care about being a loser or an outcast. Marcus and his trust in me, that’s what keeps me strong.

  As soon as he pulls up in Bubbles, the world instantly makes more sense. I get in the car and must kiss him right away, a long, desperate, gasping kiss that only ends because the car behind us honks.

  “I guess you’re happy to see me,” he says.

  “You have no idea.”

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better. I missed you.”

  “What’s that?” I say, noticing a pile of clothes at my feet.

  “Oh, that’s my uniform. Feel free to step on it all you want.”

  “I forgot you wear a suit to school,” I say, inspecting the black slacks and jacket, the white button-down shirt, the striped tie. “That’s hilarious.”

  “Yeah, real funny.”

  I relax more as we drive to César Chávez Park by the Berkeley Marina, as we set up his blanket in a secluded spot on the hill, as we smoke weed and lie in the sun. We watch people flying fancy kites. We laugh at the white boys with dreadlocks doing bad capoeira. We make up stories about the private lives of the fat squirrels climbing in and out of holes. I don’t ask about the secrets Marcus left untold last time we were together, and he doesn’t ask me about mine. I’m not in the mood for anything heavy today.

  So instead, we pick dandelions. We make tiny bouquets of grass and weeds. I think of Will’s expensive roses stuffed in my locker at school, how they must be infusing everything with their sticky, sweet perfume. I think of how much more beautiful Marcus’s and my little arrangements are.

  “Who decided a dandelion is a weed and not a flower?” I say.

  “Probably some old straight white guy,” Marcus says, sticking one behind my ear.

  Being stoned makes me philosophical. “The only difference between a weed and a flower is that a weed is strong and can take care of itself, and a flower is weak and fragile and needs someone’s help.”

  Marcus smiles. “So which one are you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re even stronger than a dandelion. And way more beautiful.”

  I laugh and we kiss, and for a moment I feel good enough to forget about the hole inside me where the pills no longer are. I forget about how good it felt when Will held me when I was sick. I forget about my pledge to be good, to stop getting in trouble, to try to fit back into my old world. It seems so long ag
o, so distant, like it was a different person entirely who made those empty promises.

  Not even a day back and I’ve already given up.

  I guess I know who I really am now.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  twenty-six.

  IT’S THURSDAY NIGHT, PROM IS ON SATURDAY, AND I DON’T have a dress. This is quite possibly the stupidest problem a person could have. And yet, it is mine. Of all the problems I’ve ever had, this is the one I have to deal with at this moment. I don’t know which is worse, having to scrounge at Jenica’s door for help, or having to go to prom at all.

  I wish I could tell Will I’m not going. I’ve picked up the phone to call him, but it never happens. I’ve even thought of texting—the ultimate coward move—but I can’t bring myself to do that. At least I’m not that much of an asshole. Not yet, anyway,

  I swallow what little pride I have left and knock on Jenica’s door.

  “Yeah?” she says.

  “Can I come in?”

  It takes her a while to decide to answer yes.

  She is sitting on her bed studying when I walk in. “What do you want?” she says, visibly tensing, getting ready for a fight.

  “I was wondering if you still have your prom dress from last year.” I can’t look her in the eye as I ask this. I don’t want to see the hatred I know is there.

  “Um, yeah.” Her voice is softer. I can hear her surprise.

  “Do you think I could maybe borrow it? I don’t have a dress and I know money’s tight so I don’t want to ask Mom and Dad. It’s okay if you don’t want to. I’d understand. It’s just—”

  “Yes. Of course,” she says. “Of course you can borrow my dress.” I look up and am surprised to not see the angry, irritated face I’m so used to. There’s an imposter in my sister’s place—someone kind, someone sympathetic. “I’ll go get it,” she says.