For a moment, I think maybe I can be happy tonight. I am drunk and stoned enough that it may be possible to salvage this night and have a little fun. So I dance as well as I can with a leg that only half works. Will seems satisfied enough with my performance. People dance around us like we’re the centerpiece of this strange party, smiling at me like I’m making them proud. Look at Evie, she finally cheered up! She’s one of us again! She finally pulled that ungrateful stick out of her ass and is having a little fun!
But then Kasey grabs me by the wrist. “Calm down,” she says. “You’re making a fool out of yourself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re acting weird.”
“I’m dancing. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing?”
“Are you on something?”
“God, Kasey. Shut up.” I keep dancing. I dance away so I don’t have to look at her pouty face.
“Are you okay?” Will says, so I dance away from him, too.
The sound changes. The music stops. Someone is talking and her voice is coming from everywhere. People clap. The room is not pulsing with movement. Everyone is facing the Eiffel Tower. The Arc de Triomphe has been made into a stage. A giant projection of the smug, eyebrowless Mona Lisa stares down at us. A familiar-looking girl has a microphone and is saying something, beaming her college-interview smile. More clapping. More smiling. More talking. I lean on someone for balance, but I don’t know who.
The student-body president, that’s who she is. But what is her name? I know I should know her name. She says, “Drumroll, please,” and people make noises that sound nothing like drumrolls. She takes a piece of paper out of an envelope. She says, “Oh, what a surprise,” with a sickly sweet sarcasm and a look on her face the exact opposite of surprise. Then she says my name.
“I am proud to crown our new prom queen and king: Evie Whinsett and Will Johnson.”
The room erupts in applause. I feel Will’s arm tight around my waist. “Come on,” he says, but I can’t move.
“Evie and Will, come on up to the stage!”
The crowd starts chanting “Evie, Evie, Evie.” The floor vibrates with my name. I think I’m going to be sick.
Will pulls me and my legs manage to work well enough to get me onto the stage. I stare into a sea of faces, all these people I’ve known for years but who are now strangers. And they’re saying my name, like it means so much to them that I’m standing up here, and I wonder, What have I done to deserve this? What have I done to earn their admiration? I survived when I should have died. I’m alive by mistake. I’ve turned into a monster, and this is what I get? A crown? A standing ovation? What is wrong with these people?
Everyone cheers. Their faces turn into black empty holes. I look at Will and he’s got his big, proud grin, and his arm around my waist is the only thing keeping me up. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want all these people looking at me, wanting me to be someone different, someone I used to be, wanting me to be someone they can believe in, someone inspiring, someone who deserves to be crowned. But I’m nobody. I’m nothing. They’re cheering for an imposter, a thief.
The edges of the room start to blur. All color drains away until the only thing I see is the glow of Christmas lights, and then even they go out, and everything is black, and Will’s arm is too loose, and my head is too heavy, and the night is too crowded, and the last thing I think is, How is it possible to be so lonely in a room so full of people?
When I come to, the first thing I notice is the spongy chorus of “Oh my god”s all around me. I am on the operating table, waking up from the anesthesia. The first thing I think is, I survived. Then relief. Then disappointment. What did I survive for?
But these are not doctors looking down at me. They are not wearing surgical masks. A hospital would never have this kind of lighting. There’s Will. There’s Jenica. They would never be allowed in the operating room.
“You’re wearing makeup,” I say. Jenica looks confused, worried. “You look beautiful,” I say. Then a single, mascara-blackened tear falls from her cheek onto mine.
“Evie, are you okay?” Will says. How many times have I heard him say that?
“Should we call 911?” says the student-body president. Michelle. Michelle Chang. That’s her name.
“No,” I say. My voice sounds distant. It rattles inside my head. “I’m okay.” I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay.
I push myself up to sitting. There’s Principal Landry rushing toward us, worrying about lawsuits. There’s one of the teacher chaperones. The grown-ups have been summoned out of hiding. “I’m fine,” I say before they have a chance to ask. “I just got excited, I think. Just a little light-headed. I didn’t eat any dinner.”
No one bothers to smell my breath. No one asks if I’m on anything. Anyone else passes out at prom, and alcohol and drugs would be the first suspicion. Anyone else falls down on the cardboard Arc de Triomphe, parents would immediately be called, maybe even the police. I’d be arrested and expelled, or at the very least, suspended. But cancer makes me untouchable. I can get away with anything.
“Do we need to call your parents?” Principal Landry says. Then, in a quieter voice, leaning in, “Do you need a doctor?”
I can’t help but laugh. I look around and people have their hands clasped in front of their mouths, their eyes wide with worry. All for a girl who smoked too much weed and drank too much booze on an empty stomach. What a waste of sympathy. It might make me sad if I could stop laughing.
“I don’t understand,” Principal Landry says, the poor woman. “Why is Evie laughing?”
“I’ll drive her home, Ms. Landry,” Will says, taking my arm. He and Jenica help me to stand. Then the dance floor erupts in applause.
“Are you fucking serious?” I say. “What is wrong with you people?”
“Thank god they can’t hear you,” Jenica says.
“Where’s the microphone? Get me the microphone.” I want to tell them. I want them to know how foolish they are.
“Come on, Evie,” says Will, and they whisk me off the stage.
I wave good-bye like a good prom queen. “So long, suckers!” I say, but they can’t hear my insult over their applause.
Kasey is waiting by the front door, her arms crossed, her face angry. “Kasey!” I say, reaching out for her, but she pushes me away.
“Well, that little performance certainly got some attention,” she says.
“What’s her problem?” I ask my attendants.
“What’s my problem?” she says. “God, Evie, you’re a mess. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
“Let’s get you home,” Jenica says softly, so unlike her, and I could kiss her for her kindness.
“Maybe you guys can talk in the morning when Evie’s feeling better,” Will says. My savior. My knight in shining armor.
“No,” Kasey says. “I have things I want to say right now.”
“You’re jealous you’re not prom queen,” I say. “You try so hard to be popular, but you’ll never be able to compete with cancer.” I think I mean it as a joke, but then I see the wave of sorrow wash across her face, and I realize that’s what I wanted; I meant to hurt her.
“Evie, stop,” Jenica says. “Kasey, she’s drunk. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“You’re not the same person anymore,” Kasey says. She is trying to sound strong but I can see her bottom lip trembling. “You used to be so positive. It felt good to be around you. But now you’re so, I don’t know, angry or something. You’re mean. You’re someone I don’t think I even like anymore.”
I feel nothing but the syrupy disorientation of my body. I will focus on the nausea of my empty stomach so I don’t have to really hear what she’s saying. “Will, are you going to take me home or what?” I break free from his and Jenica’s grasp and start stumbling in the direction of the parking lot. “Where’s your car?” I shout into the night. “Where’s my car?” I can feel eyes on me, students who came
outside for a breath of fresh air who didn’t know they were going to get such a show.
I can hear Kasey crying. I know the sound of her cry. I have heard it so many times during our quiet nights together—when her dog died, when she found out her parents were getting divorced, so many times during the cancer. But now it’s different. I am not the comforter. I am the reason for her tears.
“Will, come on!” If I yell loud enough, I will not cry.
As soon as I feel him next to me, before he even gets a chance to open his mouth, I tell him I don’t want to talk.
“Fine,” he says with a tired voice. Now even he’s given up.
I fall asleep on the drive home and wake up in Will’s arms as he carries me to the front door. For a moment, I feel so cozy and safe, but then I’m filled with a surge of anger. How dare he just pick me up? How dare he carry me around without my permission?
“Put me down,” I say. But he doesn’t. I try to wriggle free, but that makes him hold on tighter.
Mom and Dad are standing in the open doorway before we get there. “Jenica called,” Mom says. “She said you were coming.”
“What happened?” Dad says.
I am so tired. I am too tired to be angry. “Will you put me down now?” I say with as polite a voice I can.
Will is so gentle. Part of me doesn’t want him to let me go. It is cold outside of his arms. My feet touch the cement of the front steps and I want to be in the air again, held by someone strong.
I do not look up. I do not want to see my parents’ faces. I can imagine their disappointment, and that is all I can take right now. Actually seeing it is more than I can deal with. I blindly make my way to the bathroom without bothering to speak for myself. I will let Will report the events of the evening. I am too tired to lie. All I want is a toilet to lean on. That is all I deserve. I may not even deserve that.
I throw up the measly contents of my stomach. I listen to myself retch and dry heave so I don’t have to hear Will tell my parents how worried he is about me. I feel the sting of stomach acid, taste the poison of so many kinds of liquor. I smell the toilet’s faint trace of urine and toxic cleansers mix with the sour contents of my stomach.
There is something so satisfying about this kind of vomiting, something so cathartic. There’s a feeling of getting something done. Not like chemo, where the vomiting accomplished nothing. It didn’t get any of the poison out. It never made me feel any better. It was just a sign of my body destroying itself.
But I do feel a little better now. Empty. Purged. The cool, hard porcelain of the toilet base is comforting in my arms.
I hear the door squeak open. “You ripped Jenica’s dress.” It is Will’s voice, with a hard edge I’ve never heard. “There’s a huge rip down the side.”
“Arghmmn” is what I think I manage to say.
I feel a blanket draped across my shoulders. He throws a pillow on the floor next to me. “Here,” he says. “Your mom gave me these. She was too mad to come in here herself.”
Mom, mad? What is he talking about? Mom doesn’t get mad.
I lift my head and open my eyes enough to see the blurred outline of him in the doorway. “Can you turn off the lights?”
“Anything else?” he says after the room goes dark.
“Will you rub my back?”
“Jesus, Evie,” he hisses. “How did you get so horrible?”
Nothing so mean has ever come out of his mouth. Nothing has ever been said with so much anger and disgust.
I hear the door close behind him. I hear his footsteps as he walks away, back into his own life. I hear the murmuring of his and my parents’ voices. And I am glued to the floor of the bathroom, shivering under the blanket that is far more kindness than I deserve.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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if.
Dear Stella,
I’m done with school and I’m done with this family. I’m done with Will and Kasey and lunch-table friends. I’m done with concerned teachers and homework and tests and thinking about my future. I’m done with caring if I fail junior year. I’m done with giving a shit what anyone thinks about me. I’m done with giving a shit about anything.
I don’t care if I get in trouble, if I get grounded, if Dad looks at me like I’m the biggest disappointment of his life, if he slaps me across the face in front of Mom and Jenica, and Mom is finally so sick of me she doesn’t even say anything, doesn’t even defend me, the one ally in this family I thought I had left, and the sting of it goes from my skin to my bones to my blood to my heart and freezes up any of the love I still had left, so cold that it shatters into a million pieces, but there are no screws, no titanium rods, no smart doctors to sew up this fracture; there is just me and my fury and the ice in my veins, just the people I used to love screaming at each other about the best way to punish me, my family turned into monsters because of what I have become, their sweetness turned sinister, their love turned rancid.
I am the kind of girl who deserves to get slapped by her father. I am the kind of girl who deserves to sleep on the bathroom floor, to be kicked awake by Jenica’s slipper, even though it should have been a stick or a sword or a knife or a gun; I should have woken up to real pain, real punishment, something worse than being grounded for eternity, something worse than a hangover, something worse than spending a Sunday in the comfort of my room. I deserve something harder, harsher. I deserve something cruel, something that leaves a mark, something irrevocable. Because the damage I’ve done can never be taken back. The bridges I’ve burned cannot be rebuilt. The love I’ve chewed up and spit out and ground into the mud cannot be cleaned up and made whole again.
I feel sick. God, I feel sick. But I know I deserve to feel even sicker for all the disease I have spread. I am contagious. I make everyone around me sick. I’ve made my family sick. And you, Stella. I made you sickest of all.
I’m not going back to school. I can’t face those people again after what happened last night. I’m never going to visit poor Caleb in the hospital; I’m not going to let him think I’m someone worthy of his devotion. I’m doing Will and Kasey a favor by not begging for their forgiveness, not begging for them to give me another chance. I’m doing everyone a favor and getting out of their lives.
They are my history. They are before, yesterday, behind me, gone. The future is a vague “maybe”; it will only happen by accident. It is nothing I can count on.
There is only now, only this moment. There is only me and there is only Marcus. He is all I have left. He is the only person who matters. Without him, there’s nothing. I’m nothing. I’m just scars and history. Without him, I evaporate. I turn into dust.
This prison of a room cannot contain me. The window is open and the ground is not too far down. It is night and I am an outlaw and Marcus is waiting for me down the street with his car running and he has no idea what I’m leaving behind.
Love,
Evie
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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thirty.
JUMPING INTO MARCUS’S CAR LIGHTENS MY GLOOM immediately, but even his kiss can’t get rid of my headache and hangover. I need something stronger.
My jaw still stings where dad hit me, but I can forget about that now. I can leave it in that house to fester with all the other family drama. I don’t have to take it with me. I don’t need to bring it into my world with Marcus. He doesn’t need to know. It does not need to spoil our perfection.
“Are you okay?” Marcus says as he pulls away from the curb.
“Yeah, I’m great,” I say, trying to make my voice sound as cheerful as possible. “Why do you ask?”
“You look kind of tired.”
“Didn’t anyone tell you you’re never supposed to say that to a woman?”
“Oh, sorry,” he laughs. “But you do. Look tired.”
“I’m fine. Just a little hungover.”
“What’d you do last night?” he asks, and I know there’s nothing behind his curiosity, but still I feel exposed, embarrassed, like somehow he already knows what a fool I made of myself last night.
“Just hung out with some old friends,” I say. “Nothing special. I wish I had been with you instead.”
“Yeah,” he says, smiling, his eyes locking on mine. “Me too.”
“Hey, watch the road!” I say as we swerve slightly and barely miss side-swiping a parked car.
“You’re just so beautiful I couldn’t take my eyes away.”
“Yeah, sure. Where are we going, by the way?”
“You’ll see,” he says. “You want to know what I did last night?”
Strangely, I don’t. As much as I don’t want the rest of my life infecting our world, I don’t want his, either.
“I got stoned and ate Taco Bell and watched my friends Dan and Edwin play video games.”
“Wow. Sounds thrilling.”
“Yep. My friends sure know how to party.”
“I can’t believe that’s what you did instead of hanging out with me.”
“I know. It’s pathetic. But they made me promise to do a guys’ night with them because I haven’t really seen them much lately and all I ever do when I see them is talk about you.”
“Oh yeah? What do you tell them?”
“I tell them how smart and funny and beautiful you are. How I’ve never met anyone like you. How I feel more alive when we’re together. How when you look at me I know you really see me.”
My chest flutters and I’m so happy, I don’t mind that we’re driving through a part of Oakland where boarded-up houses are covered with graffiti and dark, shrouded figures are hunched in doorways. “You told them all that?” I say.
“Well maybe not in those exact words. I had to translate it into dude language they’d understand. But they know I’m crazy about you.”