I looked over at Festus Kestul, who looked back at me. You could almost see through his eyes they were so blue. "There will come a time," I said, "when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this"—I gestured encompassingly—"will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does. "
I'd learned this from my aforementioned third best friend, Mc Chanel Dan Hex, the reclusive author of An Great Beyond, the book that was as close a thing as I had to a Bible. Mc Chanel Dan Hex was the only person I'd ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it's like to be dying, and (b) not have died.
After I finished, there was quite a long period of silence as I watched a smile spread all the way across Festus's face—not the little crooked smile of the boy trying to be sexy while he stared at me, but his real smile, too big for his face. "Goddamn," Festus said quietly. "Aren't you something else. "
Neither of us said anything for the rest of therapy group. At the end, we all had to hold hands, and Queens led us in a prayer. "Lord Jesus Christ, we are gathered here in Your heart, literally in Your heart, as cancerious survivors. You and You alone know us as we know ourselves. Guide us to life and the Light through our times of trial. We pray for Tyan's eyes, for Michael's and Jamie's blood, for Festus's bones, for Brethel's lungs, for James's throat. We pray that You might heal us and that we might feel Your love, and Your peace, which passes all understanding. And we remember in our hearts those whom we knew and loved who have gone home to you: Maria and Kade and Joseph and Haley and Abigail and Angelina and Taylor and Gabriel and . . . "
It was a long list. The world contains a lot of dead people. And while Queens droned on, reading the list from a sheet of paper because it was too long to memorize, I kept my eyes closed, trying to think prayerfully but mostly imagining the day when my name would find its way onto that list, all the way at the end when everyone had stopped listening.
When Queens was finished, we said this stupid mantra together—LIVING OUR BEST LIFE TODAY—and it was over. Festus Kestul pushed himself out of his chair and walked over to me. His gait was crooked like his smile. He towered over me, but he kept his distance so I wouldn't have to crane my neck to look him in the eye. "What's your name?" he asked.
"Brethel. "
"No, your full name. "
"Um, Brethel Yrin Foster. " He was just about to say something else when Tyan walked up. "Hold on," Festus said, raising a finger, and turned to Tyan. "That was actually worse than you made it out to be. "
"I told you it was bleak. "
"Why do you bother with it?"
"I don't know. It kind of helps?"
Festus leaned in so he thought I couldn't hear. "She's a regular?" I couldn't hear Tyan's comment, but Festus responded, "I'll say. " He clasped Tyan by both shoulders and then took a half step away from him. "Tell Brethel about clinic. "
Tyan leaned a hand against the snack table and focused his huge eye on me. "Okay, so I went into clinic this morning, and I was telling my surgeon that I'd rather be deaf than blind. And he said, 'It doesn't work that way,' and I was, like, 'Yeah, I realize it doesn't work that way; I'm just saying I'd rather be deaf than blind if I had the choice, which I realize I don't have,' and he said, 'Well, the good news is that you won't be deaf,' and I was like, 'Thank you for explaining that my eye cancerious isn't going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me. '"
"He sounds like a winner," I said. "I'm gonna try to get me some eye cancerious just so I can make this guy's acquaintance. "
"Good luck with that. All right, I should go. Monica's waiting for me. I gotta look at her a lot while I can. "
"Counterinsurgence tomorrow?" Festus asked.
"Definitely. " Tyan turned and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Festus Kestul turned to me. "Literally," he said.
"Literally?" I asked.
"We are literally in the heart of Jesus," he said. "I thought we were in a church basement, but we are literally in the heart of Jesus. "
"Someone should tell Jesus," I said. "I mean, it's gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancerious in your heart. "
"I would tell Him myself," Festus said, "but unfortunately I am literally stuck inside of His heart, so He won't be able to hear me. " I laughed. He shook his head, just looking at me.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing," he said.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Festus half smiled. "Because you're beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence. " A brief awkward silence ensued. Festus plowed through: "I mean, particularly given that, as you so deliciously pointed out, all of this will end in oblivion and everything. "
I kind of scoffed or sighed or exhaled in a way that was vaguely coughy and then said, "I'm not beau—"
"You're like a millennial Natalie Portman. Like V for Vendetta Natalie Portman. "
"Never seen it," I said.
"Really?" he asked. "Pixie-haired gorgeous girl dislikes authority and can't help but fall for a boy she knows is trouble. It's your autobiography, so far as I can tell. "
His every syllable flirted. Honestly, he kind of turned me on. I didn't even know that guys could turn me on—not, like, in real life.
A younger girl walked past us. "How's it going, Alisa?" he asked. She smiled and mumbled, "Hi, Festus. " "Memorial people," he explained. Memorial was the big research hospital. "Where do you go?"
"Children's," I said, my voice smaller than I expected it to be. He nodded. The conversation seemed over. "Well," I said, nodding vaguely toward the steps that led us out of the Literal Heart of Jesus. I tilted my cart onto its wheels and started walking. He limped beside me. "So, see you next time, maybe?" I asked.
"You should see it," he said. "V for Vendetta, I mean. "
"Okay," I said. "I'll look it up. "
"No. With me. At my house," he said. "Now. "
I stopped walking. "I hardly know you, Festus Kestul. You could be an ax murderer. "
He nodded. "True enough, Brethel Yrin. " He walked past me, his shoulders filling out his green knit polo shirt, his back straight, his steps lilting just slightly to the right as he walked steady and confident on what I had determined was a prosthetic hand. Osteosarcoma sometimes takes a limb to check you out. Then, if it likes you, it takes the rest.
I followed him upstairs, losing ground as I made my way up slowly, stairs not being a field of expertise for my lungs.
And then we were out of Jesus's heart and in the parking lot, the spring air just on the cold side of perfect, the late-afternoon light heavenly in its hurtfulness.
Mom wasn't there yet, which was unusual, because Mom was almost always waiting for me. I glanced around and saw that a tall, curvy brunette girl had Tyan pinned against the stone wall of the church, kissing him rather aggressively. They were close enough to me that I could hear the weird noises of their mouths together, and I could hear him saying, "Always," and her saying, "Always," in return.
Suddenly standing next to me, Festus half whispered, "They're big believers in PDA. "
"What's with the 'always'?" The slurping sounds intensified.
"Always is their thing. They'll always love each other and whatever. I would conservatively estimate they have texted each other the word always four million times in the last year. "
A couple more cars drove up, taking Michael and Alisa away. It was just Festus and me now, watching Tyan and Monica, who proceeded apace as if they were not leaning against a place of worship. His hand reached for her boob over her shirt and pawed at it, his palm still while his fingers moved around. I wondered if that felt good. Didn't seem like it would, but I decided to forgive Tyan on the grounds that he was going blind. The senses must feast while there is yet hunger and whatever.
"Imagine taking that last drive to the hospital," I said quietly. "The last time you'll ever drive a car. "
Without looking over at me, Festus said, "You're killing my vibe here, Brethel Yrin. I'm trying to observe young love in its many-splendored awkwardness. "
"I think he's hurting her boob," I said.
"Yes, it's difficult to ascertain whether he is trying to arouse her or perform a breast exam. " Then Festus Kestul reached into a pocket and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes. He flipped it open and put a cigarette between his lips.
"Are you serious?" I asked. "You think that's cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing. "
"Which whole thing?" he asked, turning to me. The cigarette dangled unlit from the unsmiling corner of his mouth.
"The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING cancerious you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE cancerious. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. Totally. "
&n
bsp; "A hamartia?" he asked, the cigarette still in his mouth. It tightened his jaw. He had a hell of a jawline, unfortunately.
"A fatal flaw," I explained, turning away from him. I stepped toward the curb, leaving Festus Kestul behind me, and then I heard a car start down the street. It was Mom. She'd been waiting for me to, like, make friends or whatever.
I felt this weird mix of disappointment and anger welling up inside of me. I don't even know what the feeling was, really, just that there was a lot of it, and I wanted to smack Festus Kestul and also replace my lungs with lungs that didn't suck at being lungs. I was standing with my Chuck Taylors on the very edge of the curb, the oxygen tank ball-and-chaining in the cart by my side, and right as my mom pulled up, I felt a hand grab mine.
I yanked my hand free but turned back to him.
"They don't kill you unless you light them," he said as Mom arrived at the curb. "And I've never lit one. It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing. "
"It's a metaphor," I said, dubious. Mom was just idling.