by Rachel Vail

Lather, rinse, repeat. An endless loop. I stood under the hot pounding water and let the shampoo stream over my face, over my closed eyes, and tried not to think. Or to think only about shampoo. Shampoo, shampoo, shampoo. If you say anything enough times in a row it sounds like gibberish, but shampoo is in a class by itself.

Ugh.

Everything brings me back to my brother, and what he is going to face this morning, heading into school for the first time in two months. To class, by himself.

It would be better if it were me, I thought again for the billionth time. Poor Calvin, it’s not fair. He already has so much to deal with. Life bumps hard up against Calvin. I used to think maybe he was bringing it on himself; if he would just toss the ball back instead of getting all weird and possessive and wanting to pretend it’s a pizza… if he would just act normal, he’d have friends, he’d get chosen in gym, he’d have people to sit with at lunch. But maybe he didn’t choose all that weird awkwardness any more than he chose cancer.

I blinked my stinging eyes but didn’t let myself rub them, and grabbed the conditioner. It was still way early – I had gotten out of bed in the deep grey before six – so I rubbed the conditioner into my hair, from roots to ends, and then shaved my legs even though I had already done them yesterday. Maybe I’d wear shorts to school. It was hot already, really hot for May.

My mother had bought me two new t-shirts. Maybe I’d wear one of them, so Calvin wouldn’t be the only one wearing new clothes. He’d lost so much weight none of his old worn-in clothes fit, and my mother had already given all his old stuff away to the Salvation Army. Calvin doesn’t like new clothes. My mother washed everything four times for him, and cut out all the tags. Man, even when he was little, Calvin would jump like he was scalded if a tag touched his skin.

I had to smile, thinking of how he looked back then, a study in circles – big chubby red cheeks, huge round brown eyes, loopy blond curls. So different from now.
Nicked my leg. Ouch. The blood ran down my shin, split into capillaries across the tub bottom, dripped patiently down the drain.

I rinsed the conditioner from my hair.
I shouldn’t have said anything to Mackey. It’s not that I thought he would make fun of Calvin or anything. No way. The opposite, if anything. But no. It’s just that, well, we’re pretty private in my family. Was I asking for sympathy? How unfair is that? Or attention? What Calvin had whispered to me just tore a hunk out of my heart, I’m not even sure why.

“I wish for once I could just blend in,” he’d said, without looking up from the CD-Rom he was playing in the den. I wasn’t sure at first if he was talking to me or to himself.

“You wish what?” I asked him. I was chugging orange juice from a tall glass, still sweating after soccer practice.

“Stupid, huh?” he said. “Waste a wish on that. Should wish for a cure, for remission.”

“Yeah,” I said. “How you feeling today?”

“But still I wish it,” Calvin said, then grunted. A crash, an explosion lit the screen. “I died,” he explained, and turned off the game.

I drained my glass.

He swiveled in his chair. “Not that I blended in before, but now, well, Monday morning, I’m not just the weird kid walking into school all alone, but the weird, sick bald kid with a terminal disease.”

I forced a smile. “You look good bald.”

“Yeah?”

“Nobody will even notice.”

He blinked slowly, his no-eyelash eyes closing and opening in their weirdly bird-like way. “Sure. Lots of kids in middle school are bald.”

I didn’t know what to say so I just put my hand on his boney shoulder for a few seconds.

“Want to play Doom with me?”

I so didn’t. “I have to take a shower.”

I went up to my room. That night when I went to a party one of the guys was having, Mackey and I took a walk and I told him what Calvin had said. He put his arm around me and we just walked along the deserted streets in the dark together. It felt good but also bad. We’ve been going out almost a year, me and Mackey, and been friends even longer than that. It’s not like with a lot of kids in eighth grade – will you go out with me to we have to talk as fast as possible. There’s no drama with us. Nowhere on my notebooks does it say Mrs. Jodie MacFarlane, Mr. and Mrs. John MacFarlane, Jr., or even just Jodie and Mackey. He did write our initials like an addition problem on the back of his math notebook. But then, he’s a nut.
We’re more like best friends, which is weird for me a little because I’ve never really had a best friend before, just mostly teammates. Mackey and I crack each other up and shoot hoops and study for tests together, and a couple of times he talked about his father, who died a few years ago. When Calvin was diagnosed, he said, “Oh, Jodie,” and pulled me into a bear hug so tight I thought I might suffocate in there. Maybe I hoped I would.

I am not the girlfriend type. I am more of a sweaty gym socks, laugh at fart jokes girl. But still, the fact is, I have a boyfriend. I have someone to tell, someone to vent on, about my brother and how much it hurt me to think about how much it was going to hurt him to walk into school Monday morning. That’s what felt good, and also what felt bad.

Who does Calvin have?

I looked in the mirror as I dried off. Okay, I thought. I guess that’s who. I combed out my hair, toweled it roughly dry, and pulled it back in a ponytail. He’s got me.
Hard to say if that would help at all.

I’m a grade ahead of him, nineteen months older, a girl. What he really needed this morning was a gang of buddies, pals to walk into school with him, to call his name from across the playground and smile, thump his back, crowd around him in a pack, and head into the school building like brothers, like he was just part of the team.

Oh, well.

Even when he was fine, Calvin never had that. He has always watched from the sidelines. And now, well, he hasn’t been in school for two months. A couple kids have called, but not many.

I slapped my cheeks to snap myself out of it and slid down the banister, determined not to be grim. Last thing he needs.

When I got down to the kitchen, he was sitting there already, his new clothes draped around his skeletal frame, trying to fake a smile for our mother, who had a pan of scrambled eggs in her hand. She was smiling, too, but the tightness around her eyes wasn’t fooled.

“We’ve only got five minutes,” I reminded her.

“I thought I could, I’ll drive you guys today,” she said, spooning some eggs onto my plate and Calvin’s.

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

Calvin poked at the toast on his plate. “You don’t have to,” he said to me. “You can take the bus.”

“Are you kidding?” I was talking louder than I needed to, like Dad, lately, when he talks to Calvin. “A ride is sweet!”

Calvin and Mom both flinched. I smiled to show I was psyched, definitely pumped up about getting a ride. Oh, yes, this day is going surprisingly well! Everything is great!

I was scaring them both, I could tell, with my manic lunatic grin and wide open eyes. Okay, I was scaring myself, too. I took a huge bite of eggs on toast to move the breakfast on, change the mood.

“See?” Mom coaxed. “Jodie’s eating, Calvin. Come on, have some.”

My eggs suddenly felt rubbery in my mouth. Leave him alone, I thought. I couldn’t swallow.

Calvin picked up about a molecule of egg on his fork and placed it in his mouth. “It’s delicious,” he said.

“Just two bites, Calvin,” Mom pleaded. “Two good bites. You need some protein. Please.”

Though it felt like the egg in mouth had suddenly reformed itself inside its hard shell, I managed to choke it down. I gasped for air as my mother sighed, so Calvin picked up another speck on a tine of his fork and dropped it into his mouth.
“Atta boy,” my father told Calvin, in his Pep-Talk-Dad voice. “Way to get your strength back. Knock ‘em dead today, son.”

“Okay,” Calvin replied meekly.

My parents shot each other a look, then Mom put her smile on again as she grabbed her keys from the hook and said, “Okey-dokey, smokies! Let’s skedaddle!”

Calvin and I followed her through the mud room to the car.

I sat in back and let Calvin take the front so he wouldn’t get car sick on the way to school. Sinking down with my knees against the back of his seat, I willed some of my strength into him. Please be strong, Calvin. Don’t… just don’t…

Oh, please just don’t let people stare. Please, let everybody just ignore him like they used to. No whispering. No pointing. No guidance counselor with her fake nodding and smiling – please don’t let her be waiting for him to make sure he is okay. Just let him be invisible like he used to be.

Mom slowed the car down and pulled up outside the fence. She turned to Calvin and quietly asked, “Should I walk you in?”

“No,” he said, opening his door.

“Sure?” She attempted a smile again.

“We’ll be fine,” I assured her, getting out. Calvin and I slammed our car doors shut at the same time. “Ready?” I asked him.

He shrugged one shoulder.

I nodded. No fake smiles. “Let’s go.”

We walked into the playground, where most of the kids already were, since the buses get there by 8:05 and it was already just about quarter past. I could hear Calvin, beside me, trying to take deep cleansing breaths like his therapist had suggested. My eyes scanned the playground for Mackey, by habit, even though of course I wasn’t going to go off and leave Calvin alone. Not today.

Over by the far hoop, my eye stopped on someone, and it took me a second to realize why – the kid had a bald head. Weird. Maybe there was somebody else going through chemo and I didn’t know about it. Guess I’d been too wrapped up in my own family’s pain to notice, or even to remember that we didn’t invent this, this ache, this tragedy. It’s so easy to feel sorry for myself, for us, to sink into the feeling that we’re only ones who ever got dealt an unlucky hand.

We were heading in that direction, but I purposely looked away. That kid didn’t need people staring at him, either.

“Calvin!” I heard Mackey bellow. “Yo, Cal!”

I had to smile, just hearing his voice. The guy has a set of lungs, for sure. Calvin and I both looked around for him, and stopped dead in our tracks when we saw what was coming at us.

It was Mackey, though it took me a second to figure that out. His grin gave him away. He was waving, grinning, flanked by six of his buddies from the soccer team. They were heading straight toward us, with their long loping soccer boy swaggers, shoulder to shoulder, covering the distance between us fast.

And here’s the thing: they were bald.

I don’t mean crew cuts. All seven boys had completely shaved their heads.
They surrounded us.

“Hey,” these bald, barely recognizable boys I’ve known half my life said to my brother. “Hey, Cal,” and “Hi,” and “What’s up?”

Calvin didn’t say anything. His mouth hung open a little, and then curved into a small smile.

“What do you say we bust outa here?” Mackey asked him. “Go have some fun, shoot some pool, make some noise?”

Calvin’s face tensed, so I said, “Mackey…”

“All right all right, let’s take over the school, then. Right guys?”

“Yeah,” a few of them grunted.

“Yeah,” said Calvin, too.

“Much!” Mackey yelled, and slung his big arm over Calvin’s narrow shoulders. The pack of bald boys turned and strode toward the front door of school together. I couldn’t even see Calvin squashed in among them. I couldn’t move. I just watched them go.

© Rachel Vail
October 3, 2006