After radiation, I get to go home. Radiation was easy, compared to chemo. I just lay there, very still. There was a humming sound, but it felt like nothing. I felt like nothing. I think I fell asleep. It hurt when they tattooed the targets onto my head, though, shaving tiny little spots on my scalp. I looked at my long red hair falling to the ground and I felt panicky, like I wanted to grab it and glue it back on. But once they were done, you couldn’t even see the places unless you looked for them. They were hidden by all my other hair. I guess it’s a good thing I have so much of it, after all.
“Are you sure?” I keep asking Mom. “Are you sure I can go home?” I feel like my Mars birthday wish came true! But it also feels wrong to leave the hospital with a Brussels sprout still in my brain. Shouldn’t I stay until it’s gone? I thought you got sent home from hospitals when you were better, not when you were really still the same, but itchier and queasier.
“I’m sure,” she says. “You’ll be fine at home. We come back for long chemo treatments once a week, and after school every day for radiation. If you want to go back to school, that is. Either way, radiation is every day.”
“I don’t want to go to school!” I say, quickly. “I can’t.”
“We can talk about it at home,” she says, but I know she means I don’t have to go. She’d probably let me do anything I want right now. I could say, “I want to go to Hawaii!” and she’d take me. But I don’t want to go to Hawaii. I feel too much like throwing up.
I roll up the big purple card and put my laptop into my backpack. I stuff the Ebola into the front pocket and the new copy of The Martian in with my computer. Mom already packed up my clothes and she’s brought me clean jeans and a white T-shirt and my orange coat. I wait for her to pull the curtain, and then I quickly change out of the gown. There’s a bandage on the back of my hand where they pulled the IV out. I can’t explain why, but it feels safer to stay in this ugly, smelly room.
I never used to be scared of stuff. I wasn’t even scared to go to Mars! But my hands are shaking now. I stuff them into my jeans pockets to hold them still. I’m brave! I’m the bravest! This is silly. I hold my head very still, trying to not roll the Brussels sprout around too much, like maybe all this movement is making the sprout nudge the “scared” center of my brain. Maybe it’s woken up all my fear at once. “I can’t be scared,” I say out loud. “I’m going to Mars.”
Mom takes my backpack and holds the door open for me. The corridor is empty and quiet, for a change. I stop at the nurses’ desk. “Good-bye,” I tell them. “Thank you.” I don’t actually recognize any of them. Maybe these are the wrong nurses. Maybe my nurses are all on their days off, at home, watching the rain fall on their dead grass.
They are nurses, though, so they are very kind even if they have no idea who I am. “Bye, sweetheart,” they say. Maybe if I don’t get to go to Mars, I’ll be a nurse instead. I’ll “sweetheart” everyone and “honey” them until they forget that they’re sick. My words will hold them up like a hug from someone who loves you.
I guess I love you, I want to say to them, but I don’t.
We’re just getting into the elevator when a woman comes rushing up, red hair flying, a stethoscope around her neck. “Hang on!” she says. “Are you Mischa?”
“Yes,” I say. For one fleeting second, I feel like she’s going to say, “I’m your real mother!” I guess because she has red hair. Not very many people around here do, except for me. Instead, she goes, “I’m Gav’s mother! We met, but you were asleep, I think.”
I nod because I’m not sure what to say.
“He was going to come and see you again tomorrow,” she says. “But you’re leaving.”
I nod again.
Mom must sense the awkwardness, because she jumps in. “He can come by the house!” she trills, like naturally I must be thrilled to my spine about the idea of Fish-boy coming to my house.
I try very hard to signal her with my eyes. Two blinks means no, obviously, right? Tick, tick. But she doesn’t seem to get it.
“We’d love to see him! You moved into the Munros’ old place, right? By Haven Lane?”
“Yes!” the woman says. “Oh, how rude, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Anastasia Klein.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Klein,” Mom says, forgetting to introduce herself back. “But we’ve got to get this one home to rest! Tell Gavriel we’ll see him tomorrow.”
I open my mouth to protest, but nothing comes out. It just opens and closes, like the goldfish that I am. “Glub, glub,” I say, but no one is listening.
In the car, I try to explain. “Mom, I hate Gavriel.”
“You do?” She turns the radio off. “Why?”
“Mom, you don’t understand anything.” I don’t want to tell her about the way he said, “Fish.” I don’t want to tell her how he said, “She’s wet her pants!” I can’t. It’s too humiliating. I reach over and turn the radio back on and then turn it up, loud. It hurts my head, but not as much as thinking about Gavriel coming to my house. Even if he’s a bit funny, I can’t forgive him for “Fish.” I can’t forgive him for “She’s wet her pants!” It’s unforgiveable. It’s two unforgiveable things that, together, equal “unforgiveable forever.”
“I just thought”—she turns the radio off again—“that it would be good for you to have another friend now that Tig is—”
I gasp, outraged. “You thought that because he’s a boy, he can just be Tig 2.0? You’re gross, Mom. I wasn’t friends with Tig BECAUSE he was a boy, I was just friends with him because we were friends! That’s all! Besides, we’re friends again now. He wrote to me. So there. So I don’t need a new friend. I don’t need some weird, mean boy coming over to stare at me while I’m throwing up into a bag.”
“But you don’t have any friends who are girls,” she forges on, grimly. “A new friend right now would probably be a good thing! I’m glad to hear that Tig wrote to you! What did he say? But still, more friends is never a bad thing. You and Gavriel can be friends as well as your being friends with Tig.”
“WE ARE NOT FRIENDS, PERIOD. And it’s none of your business what Tig said. It’s between me and Tig. So stop.” I turn the radio back on, but this time I keep my hand over the knob so she can’t turn it off again. The sun is blindingly bright and the sky is endless blue and the music gets into my headache and wraps around it like vines and squeezes. The one rain shower we had didn’t do any good at all. Everything out there is just as dry as before, nothing has changed. Except me.
I close my eyes. My stomach is churning, bubbling, rising.
“Mom,” I go. “Mom!” But I guess she doesn’t hear me over the sound of the loud music. I throw up all over my jeans and my white T-shirt, but luckily not on my NASA jacket. It’s way too hot for that here on Earth. It’s way too hot for everything.
Mom pulls over, fast, cutting someone off. There’s a squeal of brakes and honking. I open the door and practically fall out, throwing up and throwing up and throwing up and throwing up. My barf runs into the dry, cracked earth like it’s the only thing that can save it, filling up all the crevices with everything that was ever inside me. Maybe I imagined the rain. Maybe it didn’t even happen.
“You’re welcome,” I tell the ground, when I’m done. Mom is rubbing my back. “Don’t touch me,” I say. “Please don’t.”
So she stops. Which makes me feel mad. Don’t stop when I say stop! I want to tell her, but how can I make that make sense?
We get into the car. We drive the rest of the way home with all the windows open, the smell of puke and death everywhere, and my mouth bitter with the taste of everything I’ve lost. Mom doesn’t turn the radio back on. She doesn’t sing. We just stare straight ahead. We both probably want to say all the right things, but we don’t know how, or what the right thing even is.