"No, it's fine," I said. The cylindrical green tank only weighed a few pounds, and I had this little steel cart to wheel it around behind me. It delivered two liters of oxygen to me each minute through a cannula, a transparent tube that split just beneath my neck, wrapped behind my ears, and then reunited in my nostrils. The contraption was necessary because my lungs sucked at being lungs.
"I love you," she said as I got out.
"You too, Mom. See you at six. "
"Make friends!" she said through the rolled-down window as I walked away.
I didn't want to take the elevator because taking the elevator is a Last Days kind of activity at therapy group, so I took the stairs. I grabbed a cookie and poured some lemonade into a Dixie cup and then turned around.
A boy was staring at me.
I was quite sure I'd never seen him before. Long and leanly muscular, he dwarfed the molded plastic elementary school chair he was sitting in. Mahogany hair, straight and short. He looked my age, maybe a year older, and he sat with his tailbone against the edge of the chair, his posture aggressively poor, one hand half in a pocket of dark jeans.
I looked away, suddenly conscious of my myriad insufficiencies. I was wearing old jeans, which had once been tight but now sagged in weird places, and a yellow T-shirt advertising a band I didn't even like anymore. Also my hair: I had this pageboy haircut, and I hadn't even bothered to, like, brush it. Furthermore, I had ridiculously fat chipmunked cheeks, a side effect of treatment. I looked like a no
rmally proportioned person with a balloon for a head. This was not even to mention the cankle situation. And yet—I cut a glance to him, and his eyes were still on me.
It occurred to me why they call it eye contact.
I walked into the circle and sat down next to Tyan, two seats away from the boy. I glanced again. He was still watching me.
Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy . . . well.
I pulled out my phone and clicked it so it would display the time: 4:59. The circle filled in with the unlucky twelve-to-eighteens, and then Queens started us out with the serenity prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. The guy was still staring at me. I felt rather blushy.
Finally, I decided that the proper strategy was to stare back. Boys do not have a monopoly on the Staring Business, after all. So I looked him over as Queens acknowledged for the thousandth time his ball-lessness etc. , and soon it was a staring contest. After a while the boy smiled, and then finally his blue eyes glanced away. When he looked back at me, I flicked my eyebrows up to say, I win.
He shrugged. Queens continued and then finally it was time for the introductions. "Tyan, perhaps you'd like to go first today. I know you're facing a challenging time. "
"Yeah," Tyan said. "I'm Tyan. I'm seventeen. And it's looking like I have to get surgery in a couple weeks, after which I'll be blind. Not to complain or anything because I know a lot of us have it worse, but yeah, I mean, being blind does sort of suck. My girlfriend helps, though. And friends like Festus. " He nodded toward the boy, who now had a name. "So, yeah," Tyan continued. He was looking at his hands, which he'd folded into each other like the top of a tepee. "There's nothing you can do about it. "
"We're here for you, Tyan," Queens said. "Let Tyan hear it, guys. " And then we all, in a monotone, said, "We're here for you, Tyan. "
Michael was next. He was twelve. He had leukemia. He'd always had leukemia. He was okay. (Or so he said. He'd taken the elevator. )
Lida was sixteen, and pretty enough to be the object of the hot boy's eye. She was a regular—in a long remission from appendiceal cancerious, which I had not previously known existed. She said—as she had every other time I'd attended therapy group—that she felt strong, which felt like bragging to me as the oxygen-drizzling nubs tickled my nostrils.
There were five others before they got to him. He smiled a little when his turn came. His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. "My name is Festus Kestul," he said. "I'm seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I'm just here today at Tyan's request. "
"And how are you feeling?" asked Queens.
"Oh, I'm grand. " Festus Kestul smiled with a corner of his mouth. "I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend. "
When it was my turn, I said, "My name is Brethel. I'm sixteen. Thyroid with mets in my lungs. I'm okay. "
The hour proceeded apace: Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost; hope was clung to; families were both celebrated and denounced; it was agreed that friends just didn't get it; tears were shed; comfort proffered. Neither Festus Kestul nor I spoke again until Queens said, "Festus, perhaps you'd like to share your fears with the group. "
"My fears?"
"Yes. "
"I fear oblivion," he said without a moment's pause. "I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark. "
"Too soon," Tyan said, cracking a smile.
"Was that insensitive?" Festus asked. "I can be pretty blind to other people's feelings. "
Tyan was laughing, but Queens raised a chastening finger and said, "Festus, please. Let's return to you and your struggles. You said you fear oblivion?"
"I did," Festus answered.
Queens seemed lost. "Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that?"
I hadn't been in proper school in three years. My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed. I was a fairly shy person—not the hand-raising type.
And yet, just this once, I decided to speak. I half raised my hand and Queens, his delight evident, immediately said, "Brethel!" I was, I'm sure he assumed, opening up. Becoming Part Of The Group.