The End, page 6
I race to the dock, shouting for Boomer. He looks up at me happily before licking Lucinda’s cheek. She tries to push him away. I thought dogs had some kind of sixth sense for when people were sick, but that’s obviously not true with Boomer. The dock sways beneath my feet. I yank Boomer away as he playfully nips at my hand.
“Leave her alone!” I tell him sternly.
Lucinda wipes her cheek with her sleeve, and then reluctantly looks up at me.
There’s something weird about her face. It takes me a moment to realize that she doesn’t have any eyebrows. Her cheeks are hollow in the hard white daylight. Still, she looks healthier than before. More alive.
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t see him run.”
“It’s okay.”
Her shoulder blades are clearly visible beneath her hoodie. And now I see that the hair poking out from the thin hat is short and downy.
I wish I could just leave. I know she wants me to. And still, I sit down next to her. I have to find out if what Boomer did is serious.
He’s still trotting happily behind us. I turn around and shout at him to lie down. Incredibly, he obeys me, shooting me an affronted look while breathing so hard, the dock shakes. I lean out over the water, splashing my face and neck before looking back at Lucinda.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I say.
“It would have been worse if a human had licked my face.”
“I’ll try not to.”
It’s a bad attempt at a joke, but she smiles faintly.
“How are you doing?” I say, and hesitate. “You look better.”
“I stopped taking CTX.”
“What’s that?”
“Chemo.”
I wince instinctively at the word and can only hope she doesn’t notice.
“Are you all right now?”
She glances at me.
“No. But the comet will probably kill me before the cancer does, so I might as well stop the treatments. So . . . yay.”
“Sorry,” I say, feeling like an idiot. “I should’ve understood.”
“No,” she says quickly and looks out over the water. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I’ve forgotten how to talk to people.”
I wonder how literally she means that. How lonely she’s actually been. Maybe she doesn’t know that Tilda and I broke up.
Tilda, who left me. Tilda, who Lucinda left.
She’s the only thing we have in common, and I don’t think either of us wants to talk about her.
A bird flies past us over the lake, so low it nearly dips its wings in the water.
“And how about you?” Lucinda says. “How are you doing? What happened to your eyebrow?”
“I went to watch the game last night.”
“Then you were lucky. Dad worked in the ER last night, and . . .”
She falls silent when my pocket vibrates. I pull the phone out. See that Tilda has finally replied to my message. I wipe my fingers on my shorts so I can unlock the screen.
EVERYTHING IS OK. YOU DON’T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT ME.
I try to think of something to write back, but I don’t know if there’s anything to add after last night. In the end, I send her an emoji of a koala bear.
We used to do that when we wanted the other person to know we were thinking of them. It began when Tilda said I hugged her like a koala bear in my sleep. Then we found out koalas often have chlamydia. It only got funnier after that.
I put my phone back into my pocket. Lucinda’s looking away politely. I try to think of something else to say before I leave. Something simple to make the situation less awkward.
“How are your moms?” Lucinda asks suddenly. “What are their names again?”
“Stina and Judette,” I answer, surprised. “Have you met them?”
“Don’t you remember? We were in the same class in first grade. It was only for a few months, before I moved.”
I think back, suddenly recalling the feeling of someone disappearing. A vague image of a girl with long blonde hair and watchful eyes.
“We came to your house to learn about Dominica,” Lucinda says.
I groan aloud, because I remember that day all too well.
It goes without saying that it was Stina who came up with the idea of inviting the entire class over to our place. They were going to see that we were a regular family, despite the fact that we seemed different on the surface. Judette had made food from the island. Yams and cassava, a variety of stews and homemade bread. But I didn’t want to join in. I didn’t understand other children, didn’t know how to talk to them, and I definitely didn’t want them to invade our home.
It turned out to be even worse than I’d imagined.
Lucinda must be able to imagine what I’m thinking, because she snickers.
“Stop it,” she says. “It was so much fun.”
“Not for me. Everyone kept asking how two moms could have kids together. And of course, Stina had to tell the class about it in detail. No one understood what she was talking about.”
“I told my dad I wanted to be a lesbian when I got home,” Lucinda says. “Your place seemed like way more fun.”
“You’d find it less appealing now. They got a divorce. But they’re living together again.”
“Oh? How’s that working out?”
“Surprisingly okay, actually. They agree on most things. Like they both want me to stay at home more.”
“Why don’t you?” She cuts herself off. “Sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s fine. I just don’t know how to explain it.”
In the water, I see murky shadows of fish swimming with jerky, nervous movements.
“I wish they hadn’t moved back in with each other again for my sake,” I say. “We had just settled into the new routine. I enjoyed spending time with each of them separately. Now it’s like I’m the one who has to make this whole living-together-again thing seem worth it and . . . and that’d be okay, if it wasn’t for . . . It’s like everything we do has to be so meaningful. You know? It just feels unnatural.”
“That’s how my dad acted when I first got sick. Like some never-fucking-ending seize the day with no breathing space.”
I laugh when she rolls her eyes.
“Exactly,” I say. “But it might be getting better soon. My sister, Emma, is staying with us for a while, so they’ll have someone else to focus on.”
Boomer heaves a deep sigh, watching us with his head resting on his front paws. I look over at the waterslide. When I was little, Emma told me it was closed because someone had taped razor blades to it and anyone who went down was slashed up.
The parents would wait in the pool for their kids . . . First the blood came pouring down . . . Then the rest of them.
The image of the red water rushing down the slide is so clear in my mind that it feels like a real memory. I haven’t thought about it since I was a kid. I wonder if it was an urban legend or something Emma came up with herself. She loved to scare me. And, oddly enough, I liked it, too. My sister epitomized everything exciting to me: sneaking cigarettes on the balcony when the moms weren’t home; wearing dark clothes and pools of black makeup around her eyes; making secret phone calls at night; laughing at things I couldn’t understand.
I turn to Lucinda to ask if she’s heard about the razor blades, too.
“Emma is pregnant,” I hear myself saying instead.
“How far along is she?”
“Six months,” I say, and without warning start to cry.
Lucinda goes stiff beside me, but I can’t stop the tears from streaming down my cheeks.
“Sorry,” I say. “It’s just . . .”
“No, no. I get it. Of course.”
But I can tell she’s uncomfortable. Fortunately, Boomer shows up to soothe me. He whines, worried, and puts a paw on my shoulder, distracting us from the awkward mood.
“What breed is he?” Lucinda asks while I ruffle his fur.
“Landseer. They’re in the same family as Newfoundlands.”
“Are you sure he isn’t a pony?”
I laugh.
“Why’s he called Boomer?”
I sniffle as discreetly as I can before telling her that I named him Boomer when I was little and we’d just gotten him from the breeder. He overturned chairs, fell over his huge paws, and crashed into doorframes.
That makes Lucinda laugh, finally easing the tension between us.
After a while, she tells me that she’s started posting to TellUs.
“I don’t think anyone out there is going to read it,” she says with a nod at the sky. “But it’s sort of like therapy.”
I wonder if it’s her way of saying I should try it. I probably seem like I need therapy.
“I’m mostly trying not to think about what’s going on at all,” I say. “It’s not going very well.”
She smiles, and suddenly I have a vision of her younger self: gaps from lost teeth, a pink sweater. Her standing in front of the class.
“Now I remember,” I say. “You always said you were going to become a writer.”
“Did I?”
“The pooping giant made a powerful impression on me.”
Lucinda laughs. “What pooping giant?”
“You wrote a fairy tale that you read aloud to us. The giant ate everything in the village, depriving the people of food. Then he pooped in the river so they couldn’t drink the water anymore.”
Lucinda’s cheeks go pink.
“You were so pleased about the fact that your story was actually about destroying the environment,” I continue. “You taught us that it was called a metaphor.”
Now we’re both laughing.
“I must have been unbearable,” she says, and then gets up abruptly. “I have to go home now. But it was nice seeing you.”
I find myself agreeing with her. But I also find myself staying put, rather than offering to join her, not wanting to risk our conversation turning awkward and uncertain again.
“See you around,” I say.
It used to be a completely normal thing to say, but not anymore. Who knows if we’ll ever see each other again?
“Maybe,” she says, as if the same thing has just occurred to her.
NAME: LUCINDA
TELLUS #0392811002
POST 0006
Walking to the lake was more difficult than I thought it would be. I got tired and shaky halfway there. I tried to tell myself it was the humidity making me drip with sweat, but I knew better. A smarter person would have turned back and gone home. This person continued on.
I sat on the swimming dock to try get my strength back, but I was already considering calling Dad and asking him to pick me up. It was the worst possible moment for me to run into anyone from my old life, so naturally, that’s exactly what happened. And naturally, it wasn’t just anyone. It was Simon, Tilda’s ex.
He was out for a brisk jog, and smelled like sweat and fresh air—smelled like health—and I wondered what I smelled like. I’d slept in the T-shirt I was wearing underneath my hoodie, and sometimes I think that I smell like chemicals, but I don’t know if it’s just in my head. I only know that I wanted him to leave. I could tell that he was trying not to stare at me. I tried to crack some jokes, but they kept coming out wrong. All I could think about was what Tilda must have said about me. She must hate me. I would hate me.
I asked Simon questions about anything and everything I could think of so I wouldn’t have to talk about myself. I even asked him how his moms were doing. The whole class was invited to their house when I was little. I mostly remember being jealous of him. He had two moms, and I had none. Stina told us they’d chosen to let Judette get pregnant, since Stina had already experienced pregnancy. They picked a white sperm donor, so that Simon would look like a combination of them both. I was so impressed by the idea that they could choose like that. And you could tell they had fun together. I also preferred playing with girls rather than boys. Then and there, I decided to become a lesbian when I grew up. That didn’t end up happening. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
Back then, Simon was a shy little boy who liked to draw and mostly played by himself. By the time Tilda and I started high school and I spotted him in the corridors, I’d forgotten all about him. Everyone talked about how hot he was, with his high cheekbones and thick lashes, the tiny gap between his front teeth, his kissable lips. We wondered if he even knew how attractive he was. Amanda said something about how his mouth looked like it would taste like a raindrop, and Tilda scoffed at it. But I saw something in her eyes I hadn’t seen before. When I remembered that Simon and I had been in the same class for a few months in first grade, everyone wanted to hear all about what he’d been like. They thought it was so adorable that he’d been shy as a kid. Elin said it was cool that he had two moms. A girl from his class said she thought he was still pretty shy—he could be silent for long stretches, and seemed to think a lot. It was so sweet. Because this is how it goes: when someone is attractive, everything about that person seems glamorous and mysterious and thrilling.
Back to the dock. I made Simon cry. He told me his sister is pregnant, and I asked him how far along she was. In my defense, it’s a question that popped out automatically, but I really should have known better. Nowadays, all possible answers are sad ones. Who wants to bring a baby into this world? And who, like his sister, wants to carry a child that will never be born?
I could tell that Simon was trying to stop crying, but I don’t think he noticed that I was fighting back tears, too. It’s just so tragic, but it wasn’t for me to cry about. I know what it’s like to be sad or terrified and, at the same time, forced to deal with everyone else’s emotions. I didn’t want Simon to have to go through that. But I could have done something. I’m so fucking worthless in situations like that one; I get so caught up thinking about what I should do, and then there’s suddenly no time to do anything at all.
After I got back, I was completely exhausted. Dad was worried that I’d worn myself out on my walk, but that’s not the reason I was so tired. Except for the staff at the hospital, this was the first time in a long time that I’d had a conversation with someone other than my dad or Miranda. In the end, it was like someone had flipped a switch. I had to cut our chat off so quickly, it must have seemed like I was fleeing.
I fell asleep the moment I came home.
P.S.: I made a big deal about telling Simon that I don’t think anyone is going to read what I write here. That’s not quite true. More and more, I’ve started to think of you as real. As if you really exist. And you’re the only one I can be honest with.
Maybe I need to believe in you. So what if I and all the others who use TellUs are kidding ourselves? People have built their lives around believing in stranger things than you.
4 WEEKS, 1 DAY LEFT
NAME: LUCINDA
TELLUS #0392811002
POST 0007
The big news is that the six people onboard the International Space Station are returning to Earth. Not even their orbit—over two hundred miles above us—is a safe distance from the comet. They’d rather die back home.
Cut to a woman who was beaten up during the “festivities.” She was sitting at her kitchen table with a black eye, saying she’s too afraid to leave her house. “It feels like I’m going to stay here until I die.” Most towns (including ours) have canceled plans to screen the final two games. People will have to watch from their homes, instead. Experts in the studio discuss whether soccer should be canceled completely, but that would probably lead to even worse riots.
Cut to the news that several superstars are going to perform at a global charity gala that will be broadcast live from Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, New York, Paris, Tel Aviv, and Tokyo. The Red Cross will be collecting food and necessary supplies during the event. A lot of people need it. But, being a cynic, I can’t help but wonder if the main attraction for the artists is the chance to enjoy their final moment in the spotlight. Recordings of the show are being preserved. You might come and dig them up in a few million years. I wonder what it’ll sound like to your ears (if you have any).
Cut to me, who’s still tired after yesterday. It terrifies me, because this is how it started when I first got sick. But I’m okay. I have to be.
SIMON
Loud music wakes me up—one of Stina’s favorite songs from the ’90s. I pick my phone up from the floor and realize that it’s almost eleven.
Tomorrow, we’ll have four weeks left.
I sit up in bed. Try to focus on recalling what I dreamed. The memories are as sheer as cobwebs, impossible to get ahold of without tearing them. Johannes was in one of the dreams. We were playing the ice game, but his mouth was full of shattered glass. Somehow, it was my fault.
I get up and almost crash into Stina in the hallway. Her arms are full of clothes.
“Hello, honey,” she says. “You scared me.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m moving Judette’s things so Emma can have her old room back tomorrow.”
“Judette is sharing a room with you?”
Stina turns bright red.
“Yes,” she says. “It’ll be fine.”
I watch her as she disappears into the bedroom.
Once, after Judette had had too much wine, she said that she and Stina brought out the best and the worst in each other. The year before the divorce was definitely the worst. Stina’s self-conscious neediness made her more demanding than she realized. To everyone else, it was painfully obvious that Judette was pulling away. Stina begged, clung to her, tried to hold on—but Judette pulled away even more. And so it went.
But they had good times, too. I keep thinking about what Lucinda said yesterday. That our home seemed like fun.
I go into Emma’s room, unscrew one of the gold bed knobs, and peer into the small hole. It’s empty. My sister used to hide cigarettes and condoms in there. I would threaten to tell on her unless she got me candy.
