The End, page 7
A worn plaster statuette of the Virgin Mary, painted in bright colors, rests on the nightstand. I pick it up and inspect her mild smile. Rays of gold shoot out like feelers from her head. A heart ringed with flowers hovers in front of her chest. Judette never used to keep Catholic items around before. I wonder if this small statue has followed her all the way from Dominica. In that case, where has she been keeping it since then?
My moms have found their own relationship to God together. It’s a loving God who wants the best for everyone. He doesn’t meddle too much, but is there when you need Him. He forgives everything and judges no one. A perfect parent.
But finding Him took a long time. Their own parents believed in a different God. Stina’s father was a priest of the old-school sort. He was against homosexuality, against female priests, against Stina. If he were alive today, he would probably be a Truther. Still, Stina tried “meeting him halfway.” It was the joy he took in her divorce that finally prompted Stina to cut him off. And now he’s gone. Judette’s dad and brother still live in Dominica. I’ve never met them. Their God is sending Judette straight from the devastated Earth to the flames of hell, just for marrying a woman.
I’m glad my moms found their God, and that He’s the one I grew up with. I liked listening to their stories about the Bible, liked praying together before I fell asleep. When I was a kid, I believed in God in the same way I believed in Santa Claus. But now I’m not so sure. When I try to pray, it feels like no one is listening.
I think about Tilda’s dad. I wonder if Klas is one of those hypocrites she was talking about.
Stina turns the volume down in the living room. I consider leaving Emma’s room and asking her what she thinks of the True Church—how someone like Klas could join it. But I don’t have the energy. I know she’d blow it out of proportion. She’d be overjoyed that I finally wanted to talk to her about something big and important. Her happiness would make me feel guilty for never giving her what she wants.
I walk to the bookshelf instead and feel a thrill when I see the titles, just like when I was a kid.
Pet Sematary. The Silence of the Lambs. American Psycho. Exquisite Corpse. The Night Eternal. Uzumaki. Locke&Key. Reading the descriptions on the back used to be enough to make me scared of the dark. But now my eyes are drawn to the shelf of children’s books. One of them is called Comet in Moominland.
I pull it out. Unsurprisingly, it’s a book about the Moomins. It’s so old, it must have belonged to Stina or Emma’s dad. The cover shows three characters walking on stilts in a mountain landscape. A burning orb is hurtling across the sky.
The smell of dusty paper hits me when I flip through the pages.
“I don’t think we’re particularly brave,” Moomintroll mused. “It’s just that we’ve grown used to this comet. Almost familiar with it. We were the first ones to find out about it and we’ve watched it grow and get bigger. Imagine how lonely it must be . . .”
“Yes,” said Snufkin. “Imagine how lonely it must be if everyone is afraid of you.”
I shut the book and put it back on the shelf.
“If we ever want to dance, we have to do it now,” Stina says from the doorway. I turn around. Look at her inquiringly.
“Snork Maiden says it. In the book. You should read it.”
“It’s a kid’s book.”
“It’s full of wisdom for adults, too,” Stina says, and sits down on the bed. “A comet is heading straight for Moomin Valley. Everyone is very terrified, of course. But they also make sure to do everything they feel like doing while there’s still time.”
She looks at me expectantly. Her eyes are bright with longing. I can’t stand it. It feels as if the walls are closing in.
“I was going to go to a party tonight,” I say. “If that’s all right?”
“I want you to stay home,” Stina says.
“That isn’t what I feel like doing.”
Why am I so fucking mean to her? She presses her lips together in a thin line. I brush some dust from my fingers and mumble that I’m taking a shower.
I rush out of the room. Lock the bathroom door and try to rinse the panic away with hot water. I turn up the heat until I can barely stand it, just to feel my own body again, where it begins and ends.
When I get back into my room, I look at the most recent picture Tilda has posted. It was taken during the soccer game. She and Elin are standing in the middle of the crowd. A black-and-white filter. Tilda is laughing at the camera. She looks happy.
One hundred percent fucked up.
I check the pictures Tilda has been tagged in, a total of four from the game. No photos from earlier that same night. No photos after it.
NAME: LUCINDA
TELLUS #0392811002
POST 0008
Iwrote that you’re the only one I can be honest with. That’s not completely true. There are a lot of things I don’t write about because they feel petty or pathetic. Like that I still think it sucks that I barely have any hair. What does it matter when we’re all about to burn to death?
The algorithms that control my social media channels suggest that I join a group called “Those of Us Who Don’t Want to Die as Virgins.” I’m sad to say I almost fit the bill. The first and only time I had sex hardly counts. It was with a mind-numbingly boring German boy at a training camp in Rimini. It didn’t really hurt; mostly, it was uncomfortable, and I really only did it to get it over and done with. (And to tell Tilda about it afterward. He had a pointy little tongue that darted in and out of my mouth, and I kept thinking about how I’d describe it to her, so I started laughing in the middle of it. He was so pissed. But that didn’t stop him from sending me playlists for six months, half-demanding I admire him for his taste in music and infer from the lyrics what a wonderful guy he was.)
Another group’s called “‘Virginity’ is a Social Construct,” which I suppose I agree with, but it doesn’t change the fact that I want to have sex. I want to have sex and enjoy it. I want to know what it’s like. So fucking embarrassing that that’s something that really makes me feel sad, out of all the things to feel sad about. There are people on this planet who’ll never have full stomachs, and still, I feel sorry for myself.
I’m babysitting Miranda again tonight. I let her do pretty much whatever she wants. It isn’t easy to get someone to brush their teeth when they’re never going to get cavities, anyway. She’s finally fallen asleep now, and I can’t stop thinking about honesty.
I’ve been reading my old diaries. Almost everything is about swimming. I don’t think I’d quite grasped how much Tilda and I sacrificed. We rarely went on vacations, because every time we had a break from school, we were sleeping on air mattresses in school gyms. At the camp in Rimini, we swam four hours a day in a freezing pool and didn’t even go to the beach. We were cold all the time. We got up at five thirty in the morning in February, were cold all the way to the pool, and froze when we leapt into the water. We went to competitions even when we weren’t swimming ourselves. We hardly hung out with anyone who wasn’t on the team.
There’s a lot about my body, too. I trained it, I slathered lotion on it since it was always dry, I was obsessed with what I put in it. I thought about food all the time. We burned so many calories that we were always famished. The others on the team bought fast food and candy from the swimming pool cafeteria, but I wanted to be like Tilda. We always stuffed our bags with bananas and protein bars and raw food snacks so we wouldn’t be tempted. And I thought a lot about how other people viewed my body. I loved being in the water, but I hated standing by the pool’s edge listening to Tommy’s lengthy lectures while I shivered in swimsuits that revealed absolutely everything. Despite having turned my body into a perfect machine, I was unhappy with it.
It’s there in my diary, but between the lines. Only I can read it.
I rewrote history. I didn’t lie, exactly, but I made myself out to be a little braver, a little bit less interested in what other people thought of me. I’ve always been too trapped in my own head. I’ve never been able to let loose in a way that seems to come so naturally to everybody else. But in the diaries, I always tried to embellish things. Improve them. I don’t even think I was aware that I was doing it.
I didn’t even want to admit that I was sick.
If I’m going to write things here, I’m going to do it properly. Otherwise, there’s no point.
I’ll do what I can to be honest and truthful. And I know just where to start. Next time.
P.S.: Simon said that when I was little, I told everyone I wanted to be a writer. But in the diaries, which start a few years later, I couldn’t even admit that to myself. I only mention my writing in passing. Short stories I’d begun, fan fiction I’d published anonymously online. I didn’t even tell Tilda about it. If I’d had an entire lifetime to do it, would I ever have tried to write a book? Would I have dared to risk failing at it? I don’t know. Failing would have been a greater defeat than placing last in any race.
4 WEEKS LEFT
NAME: LUCINDA
TELLUS #0392811002
POST 0009
It started out with a few bruises. It wasn’t anything I thought about too much.
There were other signs, too. I was more tired than usual. Got easily winded. Sometimes when I woke up, my sheets would be soaked with sweat. I’d get a stubborn fever, but I assumed that it was just the effects of a cold I couldn’t shake. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want to be forced to skip practices.
It wasn’t until my back started hurting that I spoke to my dad. He figured I’d overdone it in the pool. It made sense. I’d pushed myself too hard, that was all. I went for a massage. It got worse. I saw a physiotherapist. She noticed the bruises. And when Dad found out about them, I realized for the first time that he was worried.
He tried to hide it. That terrified me.
Then came the blood tests and the bone marrow biopsies. Then the diagnosis. And then time was of the essence.
I had drawn the short straw in the genetic lottery. AML. Acute myeloid leukemia. Blood cancer. The same thing that killed my mom when Miranda was barely a year old.
I had a central line surgically inserted in my throat. They pumped me full of cytotoxic agents and said that the treatment might make me infertile, so did I want to save some of my eggs for future use? They’re probably still in some freezer. I had blood transfusions until my blood had been completely replaced several times over, and I lost my hair—the eyebrows, the eyelashes, the hair on my body, which I’d spent so much time shaving and waxing for swimming. I had hair on my pillows, on my clothes, in the drain in the shower. And then I didn’t have any hair at all. It was all gone. My immune system gave up. I stopped going to school so I wouldn’t catch something, and I got tons of antibiotics, but infections and inflammations erupted in my body anyway. Once, I got a septic fever and nearly died. Everything that had touched my body was disposed of in bags for hazardous waste. After each chemo session, I vomited until I felt like I was turning inside out. I felt so sick that I actually wanted to die. In between, my mouth hurt so much I could barely eat, and they had to feed me intravenously.
But the worst thing was the uncertainty. Always new tests, always waiting for results. Waiting for a stem cell donor. No one wanted to tell me what would happen if they couldn’t find anyone in time. No one wanted to tell me how I’d die— if it would hurt, if it would be slow. And I didn’t know how to ask. I was constantly afraid, but couldn’t show it to anyone. Least of all Dad. I knew he was breaking. He’d already seen Mom die. He peppered the staff with questions, controlled every test result, followed every curve. I became a project. A failed one, at that.
I haven’t been able to cry in front of Dad since I got my diagnosis. There’s nothing noble or brave about it. I just can’t. His grief and helplessness make me feel responsible. Or maybe not responsible, but guilty. Remember what I wrote about eating oatmeal with him a few days back? I took an extra helping even though I wasn’t hungry, just because I know how happy it makes him when I eat. I do things like that all the time, like some kind of penance.
And Miranda. My wonderful sister. At the hospital, she mostly just sat and stared at her iPad. She seemed shy around me, as if I’d transformed into a stranger—something strange—a tangle of questions she didn’t know how to ask, and that I didn’t know how to answer.
There was nothing left of me. I was just the cancer. And my world kept shrinking. I let it happen; I just wanted to disappear. I pulled away from my friends. Pretended to be asleep when they came for visits. Closed my eyes and listened to their nervous whispers. Felt relieved when they left. They brought flowers I wasn’t allowed to keep in my room, chocolate I couldn’t eat. They took selfies with me when I couldn’t stand looking at myself in the mirror.
I said that I wanted everyone to behave normally, but I couldn’t bear listening to them talk about parties or plans for the future. I didn’t want to hear them complain about bad hair days when I didn’t have any hair. I didn’t want them to act normally at all; I wanted me to be normal. My weeks spent in isolation were almost a relief, and when I wasn’t in isolation, I made up excuses for why I couldn’t have visitors. I knew my friends only wanted the best for me—I knew they were trying—but I also knew they couldn’t understand what I was going through. I didn’t want to hear that I was “strong” and “brave.” I wasn’t any of those things. I just didn’t have a choice. They should have known how scared I was. How bitter I was. How unfair it all felt. I never thought Why is this happening to me? because that would be like saying someone else deserved it instead. But if I’d had the chance, I would have given my cancer to someone else in a heartbeat. That’s the truth.
Our coach, Tommy, never once sat down during the few occasions he came to the hospital. He stood next to my bed, hovering over me, talking about how I should “see this as a competition” and “keep my eyes on the prize.” For years, he’d been a demigod in my eyes. To keep hitting the pool every morning, to sacrifice so much, we needed someone like Tommy to believe that swimming was the most important thing in the world. That it was all worth it. He made us go a little farther, push a little harder, keep fighting. We vomited during the lactate tolerance training, struggled through the exhaustion that turned our bodies into concrete, while he measured our achievements—our worth—in tenths of a second. And during those brief moments when we reached the swimmers’ nirvana, high on adrenaline and endorphins, it felt as if we had Tommy to thank as much as ourselves. It’s no wonder we wanted to please him. Swimming made us feel immortal. Or at least invincible.
But he was a different person outside the pool. At the hospital, he suddenly looked ordinary, just a middle-aged man in a tracksuit. As far as my life was concerned, he wasn’t convincing at all. He was just lost.
I stopped going out because I hated meeting other people’s eyes and hearing conversations die around me. People think they’re so good at being discreet, but they’re really not. I even stopped using social media, where all the photos I’d been tagged in were from the hospital. I couldn’t deal with all the virtual hugs, crying emojis, promises of prayers, and clichés about my “battle” against cancer. (I wasn’t battling cancer—the chemo was. I was just the battlefield, and I couldn’t do a thing.) And I couldn’t bear to see their lives, which were so easy. I didn’t want to be reminded of everything I was missing out on. I’ve only started checking in again recently, but always without leaving a trace of my presence.
Tilda was the last person to disappear from my life.
When I got sick, we’d just started high school at a school with a championship swim team. We loved it. Our schedules were built around our training. Before, no one outside the team had really cared about swimming. In fact, swimming was for nerds. But at this new school, we suddenly had higher status. For the first time, we were popular. Amanda was dating a guy named Johannes. After I was hospitalized, Tilda started going out with Johannes’s best friend. Simon. She was in love. She was happy. She was going places. Tilda had decided to become a sports medicine doctor after her swimming career, and Dad loved all her questions. When she stopped by the hospital, it was always with a wet towel and a swimsuit in her bag, and she always smelled like chlorine. I was so jealous. People talk about bitterness as an emotion, but it was a physical feeling; it poisoned me until I couldn’t distinguish it from all the other shit being pumped through my system. And the only thing worse than that was seeing how guilty Tilda felt about her life continuing according to plan, while mine had reached a dead end.
So I forced her away. I was relieved when she finally gave up. I felt awful, but I told myself I was doing her a favor.
I miss her. Maybe it would be easier seeing Tilda now that we’re all going to die. I toy with the idea of getting in touch, but I’m afraid to. I don’t know if she’ll be able to forgive me.
I’ve quit chemo. No one knows how quickly the cancer will spread. My greatest fear isn’t dying before the comet hits; it’s spending the final weeks in the hospital. But I’ve decided to risk it.
Convincing Dad wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, but I know he understands. He’s seen up close what the treatments do to me. And he knows how the health care system works nowadays, or how it doesn’t work.
So far, it’s going well. I was tired yesterday and the day before, but on the whole, I’m starting to recognize myself again.
That’s probably why I had panic attacks the other night.
I finally have something to lose again.
SIMON
At first glance, my sister looks the same, except her face is slightly rounder. She still laughs a lot. She has the same red hair, the same bright red lipstick. I try not to stare at her stomach. It’s clearly visible under her black velvet shirt. I wonder what the baby looks like. If it’s got hair and nails yet. If it ever opens its eyes in there.
