"I can’t," I said.
"You can’t?" Jared said. "You can’t support your sick boyfriend. I thought you were a better person than that."
"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU KNOW ABOUT IT?" I burst out-then ran out of the cafeteria in tears.
I sat in the stall in the bathroom crying for five minutes. I hadn’t cried since I found out. I felt better. I also realized that Jared was right. I at least had to talk to Eric.
I went back into the lunchroom and found Jared and Amanda.
"Mish, I hope you don’t mind," Amanda said, "but I told Jared."
"No, that’s fine," I said.
"Mish, I’m sorry." Poor Jared looked miserable. "If I had known, I wouldn’t have said all those things."
"It’s OK Jared," I said with a watery smile. "Because you were right. Maybe I needed someone who doesn’t know to kick me in the ass."
When Eric and I met at the entrance, I asked him to meet me after cheerleading practice. He came towards the end, was warmly greeted by his football buddies, who asked about him, showed concern, tried to keep his spirits up. All the things I wasn’t doing. Some girlfriend. But this was so hard. At least, after today, he’d know why.
After everyone had gone, we sat down in the middle of the football field.
"You’ve been avoiding me," he said simply.
"Yes."
"I thought we had something," he said. "I thought I could count on you."
"You should be able to," I told him. "This isn’t about you." Then I said it. "This is about my little brother, Danny."
"I didn’t know you had a little brother," he said.
"I don’t anymore."
He looked at me, his eyes wide with shock. "Oh, God, Mish, no."
"He was three years younger than me," I went on. "He was six when he was diagnosed. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and the worst kind of it there is. At least you got a better prognosis. His was, basically, plan the funeral. He beat the odds by lasting two years. He was eight when he died. I was eleven." I took a breath. "You know I live alone with my father?" He nodded. "That’s why. When he was diagnosed, my mother left. Couldn’t deal with it. Just took off. I haven’t seen her since I was 9." I needed to take another breath. "So, when I was between the ages of 9 and 11, I had to deal with a dying-and then dead-little brother, and a completely devastated father. With no help. When my own heart was in tiny, shattered pieces all over the floor."
"Oh, Jesus, Mish, I’m so sorry."
"That’s why, when I saw you yesterday, I just couldn’t deal. It all came back to me. I know you have a better prognosis, but it all came back to me. Plus, you seemed like you were handling it so well, and it made me such a basket case, I was afraid I’d bring you down."
"Handling it well?" he snorted. "Not hardly. Mish, I’m terrified. Absolutely scared shitless. Look at me. I’m seventeen years old. What’s ‘better than fifty percent’? Is it seventy? Eighty? Even at that, I’m seventeen years old and I’ve just been told I have a twenty or thirty percent chance of not seeing eighteen. I’m scared out of my mind. I have my whole life ahead of me. College football. Med school. And, I was kind of thinking, you. And the dream just got very cloudy." He took a deep breath. "My parents are frantic. My younger brother and sister are worried sick. Somebody has to keep a stiff upper lip. So I do it-and cry alone in my bed at night."
"That’s why I’m here," I managed. "Jared yelled at me at lunch today," I smiled. "He didn’t know about Danny, so thought I was just a callous bitch. Said it wasn’t like me. He knows now-Amanda told him, so he wouldn’t keep thinking I was just a callous bitch-but it really didn’t matter. I needed the kick in the ass, because he was right." I took a deep breath. "Eric, do you know how much I resent my mother? You could probably even say I hate her. She ran out when we needed her. And left a nine-year-old to pick up the pieces. And, here I’ve been, the past two days, doing the same damn thing."
"No, not even close. I’m not your son, or your husband."
"Close enough for me," I maintained. "Close enough to make me examine just what in the hell I was doing. Eric, when you left-well, I knew what was in my heart. I just hadn’t worked myself up to saying it yet. I was waiting for the right time. Eric Andrews, I love you. And I can’t turn away from that."
"I love you, too," he said. He chuckled. "I was waiting for the right time, too."
"I can’t promise you that it’ll be easy. I can’t promise you I’ll be able to keep a stiff upper lip. The only think I can promise you that I’ll try. And that I’ll be here."
"That’s good enough for me."
We had been sitting side-by-side on the field up until then. We hadn’t touched. Then we found ourselves in each other’s arms. He hugged me so hard I thought he’d break my ribs. That was fine with me.
"Do me a favor," I whispered. "Don’t cry alone in your room anymore."
He didn’t. He cried right there in my arms. I did, too.
After we parted, and I was headed home, I felt strangely better. Look, worry and guilt are a particularly unhealthy combination. I still had the worry, but the guilt was gone.
When I got home, I told Daddy. He took me in his arms on his lap like he did when I was a little girl and let me cry it out some more. I think his eyes were wet, too. Then he looked into my eyes and said, "I’m your father. You’re my little girl. I’m supposed to protect you. And you have been through more shit in seventeen years than most people go through in fifty-and I haven’t been able to protect you."
"You’re right, this is something you can’t protect me from," I told him. "What I realized today was that I can’t protect myself, either. I can distance myself from him, back out of his life, leave him to face this alone. And what if the worst happens? I’d still be devastated."
"Yes, you would. Look, he’s not Danny. We all knew that Danny wasn’t going to make it. Eric has a better than average chance of making it. But, honey, you know-and I’m sure he does, too-that he has to fight." He looked at me. "He loves you." It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. Then he smiled at me. "You know, one more reason to live never hurt anybody."
Daddy’s been through a boatload of shit himself. Somehow he still always finds the right thing to say to his little girl.
After that, I went to my room, halfheartedly did some homework, and lay in my bed to think.
This is where I’m supposed to tell you that I prayed to God with all my might to save Eric. I didn’t. I don’t pray. I tried that with Danny. Look where it got me.
When Danny died, what killed me was the platitudes. "God called him home" and "He’s in a better place" and all that. It made me furious. He was eight years old! He never hit a baseball, never fell in love, never drove a car, never kissed a girl, never graduated from high school. He never got in a fight. Never tagged around with his big sister and her friends bothering them. Never did a multitude of things. "God called him home"??? What was the fucking point of sending him here in the first place, then? For eight lousy years, a quarter of which he was sick? You watch an eight year old boy waste away to nothing and the whole ‘just and merciful God’ stuff looks like a joke-a big fat joke. I haven’t been in a church since the day they put Danny in the ground. I don’t ever plan on going again. If God exists-which I highly doubt-he’s a sadistic asshole. If he wants to prove he does exist and he’s not a sadistic asshole, he knows where to find me. He can give me a sign. My boyfriend getting leukemia, by the way, was not it.
And I may be many things, but a hypocrite is not one of them. So I didn’t, and won’t, pray. Wish and hope? Those things I can do. I fell asleep listening to some of my favorite music, wishing and hoping.