Hummingbird Heart (11 page)

On his left bicep was a freshly inked skeleton drummer, the skin around it reddened and shiny with oil.

“I drew it. What do you think? Nice, huh?”

So that tattoo hadn't been for her at all. I really didn't care anymore. “Are you stoned?”

She giggled again. “Just a bit tipsy. It's Scott's birthday. We were celebrating.”

“Whatever.” I turned to leave, but Scott beckoned to me.

“Hang on a sec. I brought something for you.” He pulled his T-shirt over his head, sat back down on the couch and rummaged in a canvas bag by his feet. “Here. Karma told me you were a committed environmentalist, so I thought, maybe…”

He held out a
DVD
and I glanced at it. A two-year-old documentary on global warming. “I've already seen it,” I told him. Behind him, I could see my mother's face. She knows about Casey, I thought. She knows and she's just partying like always, and she hasn't even bothered to tell me.

“And? What'd you think?” Scott prompted.

“It was okay.”

“I just showed it to one of my teen groups.” He looked at the cover picture for a moment before dropping it back in his bag. “Good movie, but it'd be more powerful if it went beyond the problem and actually explored solutions.”

“Maybe there aren't any,” I said. “Maybe we've screwed up the planet so badly that it's too late. Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels completely, right now, the temperature would go on rising for another fifty to a hundred years.”

“But isn't that kind of attitude part of the problem?” Scott said.

I rolled my eyes. I wasn't going to listen to this crap. “Oh, please,” I said. “Multinational corporations are the problem. Our meat-based North American diet is the problem. Our whole consumption-based disposable society is the problem.”

“I'm serious,” he said.

“Uh, yeah. So am I.”

Mom glared at me and I scowled back. Why should I let her pothead boyfriend give me a lecture?

Scott grinned at me. “Come on. You know how it is. Everyone's like, ‘Well what can I do? Look at all the factories and planes belching out carbon gases. I might as well just keep driving my
SUV
and crank up the air con.' So nothing changes.”

“This isn't an individual problem,” I said. “So individual solutions won't fix it. Anyway, I'm trying to be realistic. Maybe it really is too late.”

“So what if it is? We should all just give up? Screw it, everyone just do what you want, too bad about the planet?”

I blinked. “No. Of course not. I just think that maybe even if we do everything we can do, it might not be enough.” I thought of Casey. If we couldn't even figure out how to stop one little kid from dying, how the hell could we hope to save a planet?

“I guess that's possible,” Scott said.

I shrugged. “Probable.” And the other thing that was
probable
was Scott thinking I was a real downer. It was
probable
that he was wondering how someone like Mom ended up with a kid as negative as me.

“Still, even if you are right, we still have to make choices, right? And hope is important.”

I wondered if this was how he talked to the kids he worked with, and whether he thought he was being inspiring. I didn't feel inspired, but I had to give him points for effort. “Whatever,” I said. “Anyway, I've got homework, so…I'll just…” I gestured down the hall.

“Should be working on a paper for school myself.” Scott put his hand on my mother's wrist and rubbed his thumb across the hummingbird tattoo. “Catch you later, Dylan.”

Not if I can help it.
I dragged my eyes away from the hummingbird and as quickly as I could without actually running, I scooted away and shut myself in my room
.
God.
Spare me the bonding session with my mother's half-naked boyfriend.

TW
e
LV
e

Mom's hummingbird tattoo was green with a flash of red at its throat, wings spread mid-beat as it hovered forever at her wrist. Because of the sound of my heartbeat
in utero
, she'd said. I'd looked it up once and found out that a hummingbird heart actually beats at about ten times the rate of a fetal heart. But the idea had been nice anyway.

Until I found out that the whole story was just one more lie.

I wondered if she was planning to tell me about Casey or if she was just going to let her die without even giving me a chance to try to help. She was pretty irresponsible sometimes, but I wouldn't have thought she could be that selfish.

I switched on my laptop. Acute something leukemia, he'd said
.
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. My fingers flew over the keys and within a few seconds, I had a definition:
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a form of leukemia,
characterized by the overproduction and continuous multiplication
of malignant and immature white blood cells (also
known as lymphoblasts) in the bone marrow. It could be
fatal if left untreated as ALL spreads into the bloodstream
and other vital organs quickly. ALL is most common in
childhood with a peak incidence at four to five years of age.

Casey wasn't quite four yet.

Mark's daughter. His real daughter.

My half sister.

I wanted to call Toni and talk to her about it—but there was no way that I could tell anyone. Not unless I knew for sure that I was going to do it. Not unless I was actually going to be a bone marrow donor.

Anyway, I'd told Toni to fuck off. I felt panicky at the memory—what if she hated me?—and pushed the thought away.

I typed in
bone marrow donation
, clicked onto a Canadian Blood Services site and started reading.
The donor
is usually admitted to the hospital early on the morning of
the harvest date…general anesthetic…marrow is withdrawn
from the donor's hip bones using a special syringe and needle
in the operating room…
I pressed my hands against my hip bones and tried to imagine a doctor sticking needles into their sharp ridges. My mouth was desert-dry and I felt sick. It was all just so…humiliating. I'd been so quick to assume Mark wanted to get to know me. But he didn't care about me at all. He just wanted my bone marrow.

The donor can generally go home the same day but may
experience some temporary soreness in the area…
I pushed my chair back from the computer, heart pounding, and sat staring out the window. The sun was low in the late afternoon sky, shining weakly through a crack in the clouds. There was a weird greenish glow in the east. I wondered if it was because of all the pollution.

When we were kids, Toni and I used to design cities that people could live in after the air got too polluted to breathe—whole communities inside great glass domes, or under the sea, crowded together like a colony of ants. Back then, I'd had a lot of faith in people's ability to pull together to cope with change. I hadn't realized that people were basically selfish. Me. Mom. Mark.

Everyone was just looking out for themselves.

I managed to avoid Mom until dinnertime, when I had to go and sit at the table with her. The knots in my stomach twisted a little tighter every time I thought about all the lies and secrets. Mom had actually cooked dinner for once, but it was hard to eat.

I chewed a mouthful of rice and listened to the sound of Vital Shrines, Scott's former band. The singer was screaming out some song about everything being broken, which pretty much summed up my life right now. Mom stared at her wineglass and ran one fingertip around and around the rim. Karma just ate, slow and methodical. No one said anything.

The food was as dry and tasteless as paper. I couldn't swallow, couldn't choke anything past the big lump sitting in my throat. Eventually, I spat the rice into a paper napkin when no one was looking. I watched my mother's face and hoped she wouldn't ever tell me about what Mark had said. As long as Mom said nothing, I could pretend I didn't know. And as long as I didn't know, I wouldn't have to make any decisions. “Someone called for you, Dylan,” Karma said suddenly.

“When? I've been home all evening.”

Karma shrugged. “I was in the den and I didn't feel like coming upstairs to get you.”

I glared at her. “I can't believe you sometimes. Did you at least take a message?” Toni, I thought hopefully. Maybe it was Toni.

“Um, a guy.” Karma screwed up her face like I was demanding some huge feat of memory. “Maybe Jack?”

“Jax.”

“Yeah. Jax.” Karma looked sideways at me. “Is he your boyfriend? I bet he is.”

“God, Karma. What is it with you? You're obsessed with boyfriends. You're as bad as Toni.” Though to be fair, Toni wasn't obsessed with having a boyfriend. She just always had one.

Mom frowned. “Dylan. Be nice.”

I pushed my chair away from the table. “I'm not hungry. Can I be excused?”

“You haven't eaten anything.”

“I said I'm not hungry.” I gritted my teeth together, fighting back tears.

“Is this about me and Scott? Because I'm sorry if you were embarrassed, but I do live here too.”

Karma looked interested. “Embarrassed about what? What happened?”

Mom tossed her long hair back over her shoulders. The green lizard peeked out from under her T-shirt, its tail curling across her collarbone. “Dylan came home when Scott and I were having a little cuddle on the couch.”

“Ewwww…gross.”

I shook my head. “Whatever. I don't care.” I stared at my plate of rice. Little white grains, piled up like a heap of maggots. I imagined them all moving and crawling around. Someday, that'd be all that was left on the planet. Rats and maggots, death and decay. The stench would be unbearable. I took a shallow breath and clenched my fists under the table.

Had I always been this selfish? What was wrong with me? Any decent person—any normal person—would have just said yes. No hesitation.
Yes, of course I'll help your
kid. Of course I'll help Casey.
For a moment, I pictured the big-eyed kid in the photograph and life itself seemed as fragile as an eggshell and as precarious as Humpty Dumpty wobbling on his wall.

I shook my head, trying to dislodge the image. “I have to go make a phone call,” I said. Without waiting for a response, I stood up, walked as fast as I could up to my room, and dialed Jax's number.

He answered right away. “Yeah?”

“It's Dylan. Did you call?”

“Yeah. Where were you?”

“Nowhere.” I lay down on my bed and stuck my feet up on the wall. I could see the dirty heel-smudges I'd left behind from doing this a thousand times before. “I was home, but my sister was too lazy to come upstairs to find me.”

“Yeah? Well, listen, I was wondering what you were doing later.”

“Tonight?”

“No, next Wednesday.” He laughed. “Duh. Yeah, tonight.”

He probably thought I was an idiot. “Sorry. Um. I don't know. I mean, nothing. I'm not doing anything.”

“Want to hang out? I can come by and pick you up.”

I hesitated. It was Monday evening, and Mom wasn't wild about me being out late on school nights. On the other hand, if she was going to spend the afternoons smoking weed and making out with her boyfriend, she could hardly object. “Sure,” I said. “I'll see you soon.”