Hallie
Friday, June 4, 7:37 a.m.
My break is over. I dog-ear the page in my book and take one last sip of my coffee before heading back toward the kitchen. I’m über-self-conscious as I pass the front booth with the three teenagers seated in it. I recognize them from when I used to go to Madison High—two clean-cut guys and a girl with fiery red hair and a pinched expression, like someone who’s lactose intolerant and discovered halfway through her soy pumpkin spice latte that it was mistakenly made with whole milk. Smart kids from the right zip code with ironclad futures who will probably never have to sacrifice anything or suffer a day in their entitled lives. I wonder if they even appreciate how lucky they’ve got it.
I’m pretty sure the guy on the end was in my creative writing class, although he looks taller, less pubescent, which makes sense since it’s been a couple of years. What was his name? Jack? Jake? Definitely a monosyllabic name with a J. He seemed sort of interesting. Quiet. Cute. Nerdy in a cool way. His stories were funny. We weren’t friends or anything; I doubt he’d even remember me. I look different now too.
I steal a glance as I pass their table and can’t suppress a smile. Monosyllabic J is holding a condom package in his hand. He looks right at me and grins sheepishly, not so much with recognition as with embarrassment.
As soon as I set foot in the kitchen, Mom beelines toward me. She wipes whipped cream from her fingers on the front of her rust-colored apron. “Hallie, could you please prep the sandwich toppings for lunch and brew a fresh pot of decaf?”
She looks exhausted. The circles under her eyes are deep and purple. Her roots are white and in need of a touch-up, but she hasn’t had time because she’s been at the restaurant almost nonstop, especially since Dad had to take on a side job in the evenings to help keep things afloat. I’ve had to fill in more often.
In the kitchen, I dump the old coffee filter and add a new one, spooning the grounds from the industrial-size can of instant decaf into it. Through the pass window, I see Mom smiling at a guest as she takes his order, blissfully unaware of everything I’m dealing with. A wave of guilt washes over me. When she asked how things had gone at my appointment yesterday, I’d said fine. She didn’t press for details because it was a routine follow-up. I’ve never been dishonest with her. I’ve never had a reason to be, but I reason with myself that I’m gifting us both another seventy-two hours of status quo before it’s dismantled.
After the call came late yesterday afternoon, I went straight to my room, jammed my earbuds in, and cranked up my music. I logged on to the board to see if Owen was hanging out in the chat room. He always knows what to say to keep me from sinking too deep into the shadows. But then I saw his post, and it felt wrong to tell him. He has enough to think about right now without needing to hear my bullshit.
Owen Wilder has talked me off countless ledges. We’ve never met in real life, but our friendship is genuine. In some ways, it’s more genuine. Friendships in real life tend to be way more complicated. But this one’s complicated too because Owen is dying.
This weekend, specifically.
I’ve never actually known someone who died, unless you count my goldfish, Max. I won him at a carnival, and he lived for three years. He was like the Energizer Bunny of goldfish, and then one day, without warning, he leapt from his bowl and landed on the counter, where I found him the next morning—bone-dry, mouth wide open. Owen dying is way more intense, obviously, but at least he’s had time to prepare—as much as anyone can for such a thing.
I pull out a head of romaine lettuce, a half dozen tomatoes, an onion, and a jar of pickles and lay them on the counter beside the cutting board. As I rinse and pat the lettuce and tomatoes dry, I think how despite his diagnosis, deep down, I believed Owen would be okay. And as long as he was okay, I would be okay too.
He’s one of those people who are larger than life—so positive, able to find the good in anything and anyone to the point of being annoying. He likes to make people laugh, always trying to boost morale. He knows how his story ends, and yet he still talks about wanting to become a Broadway star and live in a brownstone adjacent to Central Park with his future husband and half a dozen French bulldog rescues.
Owen never stopped allowing himself to dream and make long-range plans, and that’s something I still can’t bring myself to do. And with good reason.
Last night Owen posted in the Updates thread that his health has taken a downturn, and he’s decided it is time. He wants a celebration of his life that he can be part of, so he’s throwing a party tomorrow and invited anyone who can make it.
I want to be there, of course, but there are some hiccups: (a) He lives in Oregon, and I’m in Los Angeles, and (b) the odds of my parents being down with me traveling by myself to another state to meet a dying boy I’ve befriended on the internet before he ends his life is less than zero. That blows way past their collective comfort zones.
And they don’t even know about the call I received yesterday. Now that I’m eighteen, the doctors talk directly to me. That call has only pushed me to want to go. I’m tired of feeling like I have to ask permission from my parents or my doctors or the freaking universe to live my life. If my doctor can treat me like an adult, it seems like my parents should too. I don’t have the luxury of time to make them comfortable with the idea of my going to Oregon.
By the time I’m done prepping and get everything into chilled metal bins for the lunch crowd, the three teenagers in the front booth are gone. Most likely on their way to graduation practice. I passed the digital signboard at the high school on my way in, and it said that was today. I already got my GED a few months ago, so I won’t be there.
I also won’t be spending my summer taking selfies at the beach with half a dozen of my closest friends or loading up a cart with cute dorm essentials; I won’t be heading off to college in the fall. My parents long since burned through those savings.
I can accept it for myself, but it’s the worst thing in the world knowing I robbed my little brother, Dylan, of that. He’s such a smart kid. He doesn’t deserve any of this.
Another server arrives, so Mom tells me I can leave. I take the bus home because I still don’t have my license. Unheard of for most eighteen-year-olds, but I don’t actually mind. I like the bus. I can be anybody on my way to anywhere, the same as everyone else. We’re all background extras in each other’s stories as we move collectively from one space to the next. It’s a different experience every time.
At home, I anxiously check the message board for an update on Owen. I was nervous to look again while I was out in the world in case something had happened and I needed to fall apart. As I scan the recent posts, I realize I’m holding my breath.
Nothing.
Okay, that’s actually a good sign. No news is good news.
My phone chirps with a text, and I nearly jump out of my seat. It’s Lainie, this girl I know from a jewelry-making class and hang out with sometimes. She’s going to her dad’s beach house this weekend and wants to know if I’d like to come.
Lainie’s cool. She doesn’t ask a lot of questions. We mostly make jewelry, talk about movies we’ve seen lately—surface stuff like that. Before I got sick, I used to dream of becoming a professional jewelry designer, a true artisan who travels the world collecting precious stones that I handcraft into beautiful pieces to sell. After my diagnosis, I lost my passion for it. It seemed pointless to think about the future when I didn’t even know if I’d have a place in it. Lainie’s been trying to encourage me to get back into it. I’ve only recently made my first piece of jewelry—a bracelet—in nearly six months.
My parents would absolutely encourage me to go. It could be the perfect cover story. If they think I’m spending the weekend at Lainie’s, I could go to Oregon and be back without them ever knowing I’d been gone.
I break it down in the most general terms to Lainie. I tell her I’m going to visit a friend but that my parents might not be cool with it because they can be overprotective. As usual, she doesn’t ask for details, which I appreciate, and she agrees to cover for me on the off chance my parents call. We spend the next few minutes working out a plan, and then I’m online checking bus times because this is actually happening.
I’m really doing this.
There’s a bus leaving at ten thirty this evening with open seats. If I travel overnight, I don’t need a hotel. But I do need a credit card to buy a ticket. Fortunately, there are ways to navigate around that.
I tear around at the back of my closet until I unearth the Hello Kitty suitcase from Target that my grandmother sent me for Christmas three years ago. It still has the clearance tags on it. She’s always sending me fun cat things because she knows I love them even though I can’t have one because Dylan is allergic. I never imagined I’d actually have a use for it.
I don’t need much, really. I’ll only be gone for two days. I pull together an extra T-shirt, a hairbrush, clean socks, and underwear.
My eyes snag on the bottle of pills sitting on my desk. I hate the way the drug makes me feel, but I’m supposed to keep taking it every day. I pop open the cap, empty one into my hand and am about to swallow it down when I hear a noise in the other room.
Dylan’s home. He calls out, “Hello?”
“Yeah—I’m here!” I yell. I quickly shove my half-packed suitcase in the closet and shut the door.
I find him in the kitchen pouring a glass of milk to go with a large stack of Chips Ahoy! cookies. He’s at that totally awkward stage of being a thirteen-year-old boy where his voice cracks and his feet, arms, legs, and hands seem to be growing faster than the rest of his body. His sandy-colored hair hasn’t seen a comb in a while, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.
“Hey! How come you’re home? No end-of-school pool party blowout bash where everyone gets hammered on Capri-Sun?” I kid.
He dunks a wedge of cookie in the milk. “Nope. They were going to Raging Waters.”
I can hear the downward lilt in his tone that lets me know he’s disappointed but isn’t dwelling on it, because what’s the point? He doesn’t get to do a lot of the expensive stuff his friends do. He had to give up extracurriculars like karate and piano lessons, but he takes it all in stride and doesn’t complain. I wish I could be more like him.
The thing is: he deserves to be celebrating with his friends at Raging Waters, getting sunburned and eating overpriced food that gives them stomachaches, enjoying being a kid.
“You wanna play some Super Smash Bros.?” I offer. He’ll totally kick my ass, and we both know it.
He bounds across the room to turn on the console and grabs the remotes.
“Challenge accepted. I’m Ike. And you’re not playing as Kirby again.”
“No fair. Kirby’s my jam,” I tell him as a grin spreads across his face. Kirby’s defense mechanism is jumping high in the air, which allows him to avoid all conflict. He’s like a metaphor for my life.
We spend the next hour playing and laughing, and it actually helps me forget about everything for a while. Then Mason, one of Dylan’s friends from up the street, calls and asks him if he wants to come over and try some new game he just got for his Xbox, and Dylan’s off.
I return to my closet and open the doors, half expecting to find that the suitcase is no longer there and is buried back in its original spot. But there it is, with its hot-pink wheels and handle and Hello Kitty’s giant face on the side in a sea of glittery, hot-pink polka dots begging to hit the open road.
Gingerly, I put the suitcase back on my bed, slightly scared of it and all it represents. I pull out the envelope I keep buried at the bottom of my sock drawer where I’ve been saving up money from work. My intention was to use it for a trip someday, but someday isn’t guaranteed, so I’m thinking that time is now. There’s enough to cover the last-minute bus fare and a ride to the station but not much else. I tear through the house, digging through drawers and bottoms of purses for spare change, piling the contents on my bed to assess how much cash I have on hand. I’m definitely short of where I need to be. Where else can I find money fast?
That’s when I remember the tin in my mom’s closet. A few months ago, I went looking in there for a sweater I wanted to borrow, and I discovered a small cookie tin tucked away on the top shelf behind a shoebox. The light layer of dust on the lid indicated it hadn’t been opened in some time, so I was curious. There was a wad of cash inside, at least five hundred dollars.
I reason it wouldn’t be stealing exactly—more like borrowing it for a spell. And I’d give it all back.
I carefully wrangle the tin out of the closet and pop open the lid. The cash is still curled inside. I should leave some there so it’s less noticeable that some of it is missing. I count off a hundred dollars, put the rest back in the tin, and restore it to its hiding place.
I immediately feel horrible for taking it, but I push the guilt aside as I add the money to the stash on my bed. I can’t exactly pay for a bus ticket online in rolled nickels, and I’ll only call attention to myself walking around with a giant pile of cash, so I opt to transform most of it into a Visa gift card at the 7-Eleven down the street.
There and back home in a flash, I log back on to the computer and buy the ticket.
In only a few hours, I’m leaving for Oregon to meet Owen and say goodbye.
Holy shiitake, I’m really doing this.