“We’ve been there, Mom. St. Jude’s twice. They’ve done everything they can do.” Cam was tired. She didn’t want to think about this anymore. She just wanted to sleep and forget for a few hours. The new, rubbery, custom patio cushions in parakeet green hissed a little as Cam let her head fall back. The Florida sun felt good on her face for a couple of seconds, but soon it started to feel less like warmth and more like radiation. “Dr. Handsome said I need a miracle.”
“Well then, Cam,” her mom said, sighing and then snapping a stale piece of Nicorette, “we’ll find you a goddamn miracle.”
“That’s not exactly a good way to start.” Cam opened her eyes and looked at the cloudless blue sky overhead. “You don’t damn God before you ask for a mira—”
“I’m not giving up, Campbell. I will never give up on you.” The last four syllables built to a crescendo, followed by Alicia’s hand slamming onto the glass table.
“Cancer’s not in my ears,” Cam mumbled. “Yet.”
“Dammit!” Alicia yelled and threw her coffee mug onto the cement pool deck. It shattered with an empty pop.
“You’re going to regret that. That was the Santa mug,” said Cam, unfazed. Her mom’s favorite coffee mug was printed with a faded, barely perceptible picture of Cam and Perry sitting on Santa’s lap taken ten years ago.
Cam was used to her mom’s outbursts. She had been living with them for years. Something had happened to Alicia in midlife, where every emotion—sadness, fear, joy, confusion, helplessness—could only find an outlet through her anger. It was especially prominent after her first cup of coffee in the morning. Her mom said it was hormonal. Cam thought it was just Alicial.
“Campbell, you have to believe me,” Alicia said, composing herself. “I am not going to let you die.”
“That’s reassuring. Really. I believe you. Now I need to take a nap.”
As Cam hugged her mother and walked back to her room, she realized she’d be spending the rest of her short life making other people feel better about the prospect of losing her.
FOUR
CAM HELD HER BREATH AND DUNKED HER HEAD BENEATH THE SURFACE of the water. She needed to drown out the sounds of her neighbors cheering as they caravanned to school for graduation.
It was too hot for a ceremony on the field, so each graduate could only invite two people to watch from the air-conditioned seats of the auditorium. Cam had stuck her tickets to the “Commencement Excercise”—with the word Exercise misspelled in expensive golden ink—between pages 218 and 219 of Anna Karenina.
Cam blinked her eyes open in the bright turquoise pool. It was harder to tell that you were crying when your head was underwater. Plus the cold water felt good on the lovely blue-spotted rash that she was developing all over her forearms, called “blueberry spots.” What a cute little name for a cancerous lesion.
The buzzing of the pool’s robo-vacuum vibrated up through her spine, and she let herself sink until she sat on the slippery pool bottom. Cam had decided to skip graduation today. She had missed so much school because of her chemo and trials that she had lost touch with most people there. And she didn’t want to hear about her classmates’ plans for the future, most of which involved working at Disney, at least for the summer. Alexa and her sidekick Ashley were waiting anxiously to see if they had gotten cast as one of the Cinderellas. Cam was a little jealous that people had futures at all, if she had to be honest. She didn’t want to think about the future.
The final straw may have been that no one on the faculty could spell exercise.
Cam sprang to the pool’s surface, taking a gasping breath. Then she climbed out and dabbed at the mysterious rivulets of tears that had merged with the streaming drops of chlorinated water dripping from the ends of her hair. She blotted them away rather than swiping because her nana had told her years ago that wiping your face causes wrinkles. As if. She laughed.
Luckily she had signed up for a shift at work. That would be a welcome distraction.
Cam loved mornings in the kitchen. A restaurant kitchen in the morning was like a gentle, yawning beast. Blinking, stretching, clicking, opening, closing. You could still hear distinct, individual sounds before things got going full steam and the beast recovered his fiery breath amid the cacophony of the cooking.
Joe, the cook, was always the first one on the job, and he and Cam had a system that worked. No one talked until noon. Joe needed his coffee to kick in, and they both enjoyed the silence before the chaos.
But this morning, Joe could not shut up.
“So maybe I’ll put some tarragon in the sauce,” he said. “What do you think, Cam? A little mustardy bite to the sweet and sour?” He was stirring a stainless-steel vat of the stuff with a big wooden paddle. Joe’s hoarse and staticky boom-box choked out his favorite Zeppelin track. He had figured out years ago how to disconnect the magical mood music piped in through the infinite sound web that reached every corner of the park.
“You need to stick to the recipe, Joe. It’s only a temporary move, remember? So you can have some health insurance for the kids,” said Cam without lifting her gaze from the cutting board. She sliced through another pineapple, halving it perfectly with one swing of her mouse-ke-cleaver.
“Right,” he said. “No tarragon.” Joe was a brilliant chef who hoped to move quickly up the ranks to one of the Disney restaurants that actually had a menu. The Polynesian Hotel served meals banquet-style, which was boring—the same dinner for everyone for two seatings in a row—but it was a step up from the food court at the All-Star Sports budget hotel. Cam was trying to convince him to audition for one of those chef reality shows where you could win your own restaurant, but they couldn’t imagine what role he could play. He was completely nondistinct, a Midwestern, khaki-wearing guy of average height and weight, with light brown spiky hair.
“But that’s who you could be,” Cam would argue. “The completely nondescript Midwestern guy who comes from behind and shocks everyone with his brilliance in the end.”
She hacked through another pineapple. Her cleaver made a satisfying thud as it lodged itself in the cutting board.
“So what are you doing this summer, Cam? Have any big plans?” Joe asked as he poured a three-gallon jug of coconut milk into the vat.
“No. Not really. Why are you so chatty, Joe? I don’t like the new chatty Joe.”
“I am? I hadn’t noticed. Just making conversation, I gue—”
But before he could finish his sentence, the whole cast of “Aloha” suddenly burst into the kitchen dancing to the music of the tom-tom. Women’s hips hopped back and forth, and the men stomped in time with the deep, hollow rhythms. Her mom held the biggest steaming chocolate volcano dessert Cam had ever seen, and they all yelled, “Congratulations, Cam!”
This was much better than attending any ceremony.
“Thanks, everyone!” said Cam, blushing.
Her mom handed her a graduation gift—an iPhone—and then someone in a Tigger suit came bounding in and handed her a big check. The wonderful thing about Tiggers, thought Cam, is when they hand you a big, fat check. The bigwigs at Disney had somehow heard about her plight and had written her a graduation check. It wasn’t even in Disney Dollars.
“We can use that for Tijuana,” said her mom.
It had been a month since Dr. Handsome’s prognosis, and Alicia had been true to her promise. She had practically quit her job to take on the role of miracle hunter. It was a miracle that Cam was able to come to work today and that she didn’t have an appointment with a “healer” of some sort.
“I’m not going to Tijuana,” said Cam. Many of the miracle cures her mom had researched involved trekking to some shady, expensive clinic in Tijuana, where they injected you with all kinds of crazy shit.
In the past month Cam had been to an acupuncturist, a Reiki practitioner, a reflexologist, an herbalist, a hypnotist, a taulasea—a Samoan medicine woman who made her drink breast milk—and had had a phone call with a “distance healer” from New Z
ealand named Audrey. They had paid eighty-five dollars Australian, plus the cost of a phone call to New Zealand, to hear Audrey hum into the phone for a while and then send Cam an e-mail with the “results” of the healing, which included bar graphs measuring the strength of her aura.
At least they got a good laugh out of it.
Cam had vowed that that was it, though. She was done trying stupid New Agey crap. In fact, if she heard another note of Yanni or Enya or anything on the harp, she was going to lose it.
Tigger removed his enormous head to reveal the friendly smile of Jackson. Everything about Jackson was broad. He had broad shoulders and a smattering of Irish freckles across his broad Samoan nose. When he smiled Cam could see the tiny chip in his front tooth that he’d gotten when they were seven and spinning too fast on the teacups.
“Congratulations, Cam,” he said.
“Whoa, Jackson, moving up in the world. You got the Tigger job, huh?”
“Yeah. Just for the summer.” He blushed. It was the perfect job for him. He didn’t have to speak.
Jackson was from a show family like Cam’s. Both of his parents danced in “Aloha,” so he and Cam had grown up together, playing in the volcano pool at the Polynesian while their parents worked. They even had an act together when they were five, mimicking the moves and postures of the grown-ups while the audience sighed, A wwwwww. How cute. Little island kids.
Jackson was ultra-shy now, though. When Cam had tried to kiss him once on a dare while they were in line for Space Mountain in Tomorrowland, he’d gotten so nervous, he’d refused to talk to her for months.
That was Cam’s entire love life. One aborted kiss in line for Space Mountain.
“You can use this check for your future,” said Jackson, which was so sweet, but kind of pathetic at the same time.
“I’ve been to the future with you, Casanova, and there wasn’t much going on there, remember?”
“I’m sorry about that,” Jackson said, blushing. “Want to go back there tonight? To Space Mountain?”
“Dance with me first,” said Cam, and the whole party moved to the stage, where they danced some traditional storytelling dances from Hawaii and Samoa. They started off slow, with nuanced, flowing movements in their arms and hands, taking big, rolling steps, like waves. Then the Tahitian girls took the stage and things got wild. Those girls could move with their varus and fa’arapus. Hips were flying everywhere. Cam did the best she could to keep up, but she got tired after about ten minutes.
Later she and Jackson lit their fire knives and spun them around a bit. Cam loved the smell of the lighter fluid and the extreme heat of the flames swinging by her face. It astounded her every time that there was something even hotter than the summer heat in Florida. She let Jackson take the lead and made sure to stay just one step behind him. She didn’t generally demur. Demurring was not in her bag of tricks, but Jackson was being so sweet, acting as her date, she didn’t want to do anything to crush his ego.
Even as she was juggling fire, she couldn’t help noticing that Jackson was filling out, the muscles of his thighs bulky and defined beneath his cargo shorts. He would look great in his lava-lava in a few years.
The music began to die down, and people drifted to their posts to prepare for the real show at five thirty. After it was over, each family stopped by Cam’s table and gave her a gift wrapped in siapo, sacred Samoan cloth made out of bark and painted with a special pattern that was unique to each family. The cloth was said to be life-giving (legend had it that if you wrapped someone’s dead bones in it, the person could come back to life) and to provide miracle cures, which was sort of a joke to Cam, but she accepted them politely and promised people that she’d sleep with them. The siapo reminded her of her dad. He couldn’t remember what the family pattern of his siapo looked like, so he had one made with the face of Mickey Mouse on it.
“Ready to go?” asked Jackson. He was back in his Tigger costume, holding the head under his right arm.
“You’re wearing that?” asked Cam.
“I have to return it to wardrobe, and I can’t just carry it on the monorail in a bag. Kids would be devastated.”
“God,” said Cam. “All right. Let’s go, then.” Every Disney employee’s family got a passport good for free entrance to the park at any time. It was like having the golden ticket in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and it was, Cam had to admit, a pretty fun way to grow up.
They walked across the lush, tropical rain forest of the lobby, complete with its own waterfall, and upstairs to the sleek, cement monorail track that passed through the hotel. The track and the futuristic train provided a stark contrast to the natural wood and foliage and traditional arts and crafts that made up the heart of the Polynesian. It was Disney’s plan to create a world where past and future were slammed together in disjunctive harmony, and nowhere in the park was that more evident than the monorail track at the Polynesian.
Cam stood on the platform with Jackson, watching him get mobbed by sunburned kids who wanted their picture taken with Tigger. Her phone buzzed.
Lily: Happy graduation! Where R U?
Cam: On a date.
Lily: ☺!!! If you don’t at least get to second base I’m going to kill you.
Cam: Second base? What are you, 11? Who sez 2nd base anymore?
Lily: Just do it.
Cam clicked her phone off and Jackson shooed some children away playfully. He grabbed Cam in his soft furry arms, dipped her, and pretended to plant a slobbery Tigger kiss right on her lips. This spurred a wild, tinkly wind chime of giggles from the kids. Cam loved how assertive Jackson could be when in disguise.
He posed for a few more shots with the children, and Cam made sure to sneak at least one of her body parts into each of the pictures, putting her fingers in a V over Tigger’s head. But when the last camera flashed, Cam felt herself getting dizzy and nauseated. She fought to stay conscious. Her vision tunneled, the green of the rain forest closing in on her. She looked at the mahogany and teak carved ceiling tiles above her. Their patterns moved in and out and back and forth in her field of vision.
“Hey Jackson,” she said weakly, but Jackson was busy with his Tigger-lovin’ public.
“Jackson,” she said, more loudly this time. “I need to go home. Can you drive me home?” she managed to say before doubling over with a horrible, stabbing stomach pain.
Jackson got Cam to the parking lot, where he de-costumed and threw the Tigger head into the backseat. He sped home in Cumulus, and by the time they got there, whatever it was that gripped her had subsided. Enough for her to speak at least.
“I’m sorry,” Cam said. They sat in her driveway, dusk falling around them. Heat lightning flashed and lit up the inside of the car like a slow, intermittent strobe. Cam loved heat lightning. It reminded her that she lived on a planet. With each flash she caught the Tigger head in her peripheral vision—that famous underbite and the beady eyes locked in a constant state of surprise. Would he ever know anything? Cam wished she could be like Tigger—in a perpetual state of ignorance.
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” Jackson mumbled. At least that’s what Cam thought he said. He fiddled with Cam’s Scooby-Doo keychain before handing it to her. His rough, calloused fingertips grazed hers. She loved his hands. There was nothing worse than soft man-hands.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“Never mind,” he said. “It’s a bad quote from a bad movie. I’m not very good at this.”
“Love Story. Nineteen seventy. Starring Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal,” Cam said robotically.
“It’s pretty bad,” Jackson admitted.
“Yeah, but in a good way.”
“So do you want to go out some time?” he finally asked.
“God, Jackson, is your mother putting you up to this?” Cam could see the light blue collar of his Dunder Mifflin T-shirt sticking out of the stripy fur of his Tigger costume.
“No. I mean, not really.”
?
??Please. You don’t have to be the nice boy who dates the dying girl. Don’t make that part of your identity. It will be hard to shake off. Believe me. It will stick, and you’ll never get the hot blonde.”
“I like you, Cam.”
Well, it’s a little late for that, Cam thought. She couldn’t even look at him; he was just so well intentioned, it was heartbreaking. Sometimes, Cam thought, men really are the fairer sex. The more gallant and pure and innocent and upstanding. Perhaps because they didn’t have to fight so hard.
Luckily, Izanagi was walking out of the house as Cam and Jackson were getting out of the car.
“Perfect timing,” said Cam. “Drive him home, will you, Izanagi?”
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s go, kid.”
Cam gave Jackson a little wave. “TTFN,” she said, which was Tigger’s favoritest thing to say.
“Oooh,” said Perry when Cam came in the door. Perry wore a tight Hello Kitty T-shirt, short-shorts, and pink Uggs as she walked through the house texting someone on her hot pink phone. Two low, looped ponytails at the nape of her neck made her look like a Swiss Miss. “How was your date? Did you get any lip-lock or what?” she said, without looking up from her phone.
“What do you know about lip-lock?”
“More than you do, probably.”
“I hope not, you little tramp.”
“Mom! Cam called me a tramp.”
“If the shoe fits, honey,” sang Alicia, sweeping in, winking, and giving Cam a hug. She was in a good mood for some reason.
“Mom!” screamed Perry.
“Stop boo-hooing, Perry. You know she was joking. Go hug one of your unicorns.”
Perry was eleven and still had unicorn posters plastered all over her room, glass unicorns, porcelain unicorns, unicorn stuffed animals. Cam hated that stage in girls’ bedrooms when posters of rock bands coexisted with piles of stuffed animals. But who was Cam to judge? She’d just gone on a date with freaking Tigger.