Invincible (13 page)

“I'll have iced tea,” Will says. “I bet Evie wants iced tea too. Right, Evie?” He grins at me, like he expects an award for remembering that I like iced tea, and I'm pretty sure old Evie would have been touched, but I'm not.

“Yeah,” I say. “Sure.” Mom disappears into the kitchen.

“How's baseball going?” Kasey says to Will.

“It's all right. Keeping me busy, I guess. But I have to admit, I miss football season.”

“Yeah, me too,” Kasey says. “Cheering for the basketball team just isn't the same.”

They laugh. I don't. I can't even try to pretend I care about sports.

“Do you guys want to sit down or something?” I say. “We're just sort of standing around. I mean, you. You're standing. I'm already sitting. You know what I mean.”

“Oh, Evie,” Kasey says, flicking my hat. “You're so cute.”

The front door swings open and dad yells, “Dinner's here!” He's carrying bags full of takeout boxes, and the sweet, spicy smell of my favorite restaurant, Burma Superstar, fills the house. I'm so excited that I forget to be annoyed with Kasey for being so patronizing.

“Awesome,” Will says.

“Have a seat, everyone,” Dad says. “Plates are already on the table. I'll grab some serving spoons.” Mom emerges from the kitchen with our drinks just as he's going in, and she giggles her surprise at their perfect timing, and he kisses her.

“I hope I have a relationship like your parents when I grow up,” Kasey says to me. “They're, like, perfect.”

“Yeah,” Will says. “They're pretty perfect.” He looks at me in a way that says he thinks we could be that perfect too. And now, for the first time in forever, we can actually allow ourselves to think in those terms, to think about us having a future.

Jenica skulks out of her room and joins us. We all sit down as Dad unpacks the bags of deliciousness. The smell of coconut and curry waft around the dining room, and my mouth actually waters. This is definitely not hospital food. I am hungrier than I can remember being all year.

“Did you get the walnut shrimp?” Jenica says, systematically inspecting each of the takeout boxes.

“Oh, oops, sweetie,” Dad says. “I forgot.”

“But that's my favorite,” she whines. “You know that.”

“There are a lot of other great dishes. What about the shrimp and eggplant?”

She frowns as she serves herself. I can almost hear her adding this to her long list of resentments of me, as if I am responsible for Dad's mistake. Now that I'm back, there's suddenly room for more than love and sadness, and we can fall back into our good old sibling rivalry.

Luckily, I am able to lose track of the dinner conversation as I stuff my face. “Oh my god, this is so good,” I say. “I forgot what real food tasted like.”

This seems to make Mom and Dad happy. They share one of their looks.

“Evie, how are you feeling?” Kasey says, moving the food around on her plate. She only has some greens, a couple pieces of broccoli, one shrimp, and about a tablespoon of brown rice.

“Good,” I say. “Hungry.” My parents do their look again, like they need to congratulate each other on everything I do that resembles healthy teenage behavior.

Kasey doesn't seem satisfied by that answer. She wants something bigger, deeper, more cancer-y.

“It's so great to have you back,” Will says, placing his hand on mine. He leaves it there, on my hand holding the chopsticks. He is keeping me from my food. “How does it feel?” he says.

“Good,” I say, pulling my hand away to continue eating.

Jenica and I are the only ones eating. Everyone else is just sitting around looking at me.

“So, Kasey,” Mom says, always the first to rescue us from uncomfortable silences. “How is the cheer squad this year?”

“Oh, great,” she says. “We have some really great choreography. And there's a freshman who made varsity who's been training as a gymnast for the
Olympics
.” She looks at me guiltily. “But of course, it's not the same without Evie. We all miss her so much.”

I give her a broccoli-toothed smile.

“Dr. Jacobs says that if physical therapy goes well, Evie could be down to a cane in just a few weeks!” Mom says. “She's healing so fast.”

“Wow,” says Kasey.

“She's so strong,” says Will.

I have gotten so used to people talking about me in the third person.

“Our little survivor,” Dad says.

“Our miracle,” Mom says, her voice cracking at the end as her eyes well up with tears.

It goes on like that for another hour. I focus on my food and try not to feel guilty for not feeling the gratitude I know I should. A week ago, I thought I wouldn't live more than a month, yet now I find myself annoyed that I'm going to be limping around with a cane like an old lady. As we sit around the table sampling the ice cream flavors Dad picked up from Tara's—avocado, lavender, white pepper chocolate chip, and Mexican chocolate—my leg starts hurting. It's probably nothing a couple of Advil can't fix, but I'm grateful for the Norco prescription they gave Mom when I left the hospital. It's up to me when I need it. All I have to do is ask.

I want to hug Mom when she shoos Will and Kasey away after dinner. “I know you two want to stay and hang out with Evie, but she needs to rest.” They take turns hugging me and telling me how great it is to have me back. I want to agree with them, but something inside me says not so fast. I'm not the girl they remember. I'm not anyone they know.

After they leave, the house is quiet. Mom helps me with the humiliating task of going to the bathroom. “Just a few more days and you'll be on crutches and you can do this on your own,” she reminds me from outside the door after she gets me situated. Even with the door closed, I am never alone.

I wish Dr. Jacobs hadn't told her to hold my prescription. I wish I could be in control of how much and when I take it. If it were up to me, I'd take three pills right now, but that is not an option. I'm only allowed a maximum of two every four hours. So I ask Mom for two. I don't tell her I already took a few Advil. I don't tell her about the theory I'm testing: maybe the Advil will take care of the dull ache in my leg; maybe the Norco will then be free to work its other magic and make the rest of my life a little softer.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I MISS YOU
, SAYS CALEB'S TEXT. I START TO WRITE
I miss you too
, but then I delete it and change the channel on the TV.

I just got home from getting my cast off and now we're waiting for the physical therapist to show up. Luckily, Orthopedics is on the first floor right by the entrance to the outpatient hospital, so I didn't have to go up to the second floor; I didn't have to go near Oncology or the injection clinic where Stella and I spent so much time together. It was weird to be across the street from the inpatient hospital where I spent the past few weeks, the place where Stella died, where Caleb still is, where Dan, Nurse Moskowitz, Dr. Jacobs, and everyone else are still showing up every day to hang out with sick kids. I used to be one of those kids, one of the sickest, but today I was just someone getting a cast taken off. In and out in less than an hour when only a few days ago I was dying.

Two days into life outside the hospital and, so far, I'm not impressed. I watch the same mind-numbing daytime TV I watched in the hospital. I take naps. Mom asks me five million times per hour, “How are you feeling?” and five million times I answer, “Fine.” I answer, “No, thank you,” to her “Do you need anything?” Helicopters could take lessons from her in hovering.

I'm avoiding texts. All those
I love you, babe
s from Will. All those
So happy you're back!
s and
Can't wait to see you!
s and
When are you coming to school?
s from everyone else. All those exclamation points.

This is really exciting stuff. This is what it feels like to be a miracle.

I change the channel on the TV again. I look for something new. Something louder.

After a few episodes of yet another reality show about rednecks, the physical therapist—a large, butch woman named Sandy—arrives with pages and pages of physical therapy instructions. Mom's beside herself, offering the poor woman beverages, snacks, my unborn child, anything, like Sandy is doing us a huge favor by coming over, like she's the most generous person in the world, like it means something more than just her doing her job.

She and Mom help me upright so I can practice using the crutches. It's weird being suddenly vertical after a month of sitting and lying down. The muscles in my legs wake up from their deep sleep. They are groggy. They want to go back to bed. My leg doesn't feel like it's mine. It's someone else's, someone weaker, someone who stole my strong leg and replaced it with this pathetic, shriveled, unused thing.

Mom watches as I take a couple practice laps around the living room. I don't think her butt is even touching the chair, she's so tense and springy. Her hands are in front of her mouth, palms together like she's praying. I don't think she's breathing. As if holding her breath could keep me upright. As if exhaling could blow me over.

My leg cramps. I lose my balance and Sandy catches me under my armpits. Mom springs up and hovers closer. I can feel her propellers buzzing.

“Honey, are you okay?”

“I'm fine.” Sandy helps me to the couch. Why am I out of breath? I hobbled maybe twenty feet total.

“You have to take it easy,” Sandy says. “Start out small and gradually work up to longer distances. It's all in the instructions here.” She taps the pile of print-outs. “Now why don't we try out some of these exercises?”

She shows me how to point my toes and flex my feet. She shows me how to stretch my quads and hamstrings. This is remedial stuff. This is stuff for old people. The infirm.

I can't even touch my toes. A year ago, I could do splits. On both sides and the middle. In the air.

“Good job!” Mom cheers at nothing.

Sandy leaves us with my rehab instructions and my therapy schedule. Mom's eyes glisten with possibility while mine cloud over with exhaustion. My phone dings with another text, but I ignore it. Time for another nap.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Dear Stella,

I have to go into the hospital in a few days to see Dr. Jacobs. I'm only getting blood tests, but for some reason he feels it necessary to talk to me. If he wants to see me so bad, I
don't understand why he can't just take the elevator down a few floors and walk across the street to the outpatient building where they do blood tests just fine. It's like he wants to torture me, making me go back to the inpatient building, back to the cancer floor, back to that place with all the memories. It's just a thirty-minute appointment, but still. I'm trying not to think about it.

I'm doing laps around the house like a caged beast. I hobble in circles until I'm so exhausted I can barely make it back to the couch. Sandy said to take it easy, and I'm sure she means well, but she doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. I doubt she's ever been trapped in her house like a prisoner. She certainly hasn't ever had my mother as a prison guard, constantly offering beverages.

My armpits are chafed and red from the crutches. Physical therapy and all my circles around the house have made me sweaty. Even with the removable soft brace that replaced my cast, I still haven't managed to take a proper shower in weeks. I'm sure you'd have something crude to say about the way I smell. I know I'm disgusting, and I know I should do something about it, but somehow it seems easier to stay in pajamas all day since all I do is sleep and watch TV anyway.

Sometimes I want to shake everyone until the smiles fall off their faces, those smiles that try to say everything's okay now, the hard part's over, Evie's alive and everything is back to normal. No one wants to talk about how incredibly un-normal it actually is, how no one knows how to talk to me now that I'm home, now that I'm not Cancel Girl anymore.

If I'm not Cancer Girl, who am I exactly? Crutches Girl? Gimpy-Leg Girl? Should-Have-Died-but-For-Some-Reason-Didn't Girl? Going-to-Get-Better-Soon-but-Right-Now-Is-Still-Pretty-Useless Girl? Caged-Lion-in-a-Too-Small-Cage-at-a-Second-Rate-Zoo Girl? Everyone is so damn polite all the time. My family, my best friend, my boyfriend, these people who are supposed to know me better than everyone—they can't do much better than small talk and pats on the back. They stare at me with their weepy eyes and sigh. Even Will seems scared to touch me; the only affection I get is quick, dry pecks on the cheek. It's like he's afraid of breaking me. I miss the way he used to touch me. I miss feeling wanted, really wanted, not just cared for, not just doted on. Everyone thinks I'm still so fragile. Don't they realize I survived? Don't they realize how tough that makes me?

No one knows what to do with me now that I'm alive. There's no protocol for how to treat someone who comes back from the dead. There are so many books about grief and loss, about saying good-bye to the people you love. But there is no book about taking back that good-bye.

Maybe things will get better when I go back to school in few days. Maybe something will happen besides this monotony of waiting. Maybe people will remember who I really am. Maybe I will too.

Love,
                  

Evie
                    

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE