That afternoon, Mom took Charlie to the doctor, so I stayed at school with Ms. Murray until Dad could pick me up. She asked me to feed our class guinea pig and to help put star stickers on the tests she graded. She even let me get M&M’s from the vending machine in the teachers’ lounge.
I remember sitting on the comfy couch there, legs propped up on the coffee table.
It was pretty much the best day of my nine years to date.
When Dad and I got home that afternoon, Charlie looked pale and worn-out. He didn’t react when I whispered to him about calling Caroline that word, didn’t laugh when I told him my new favorite knock-knock joke, didn’t want our cat, Mustard, to sit with him.
He only wanted to curl up on the couch, his head in Mom’s lap while she stroked his forehead.
Mom said the doctor thought it was probably sinus issues or allergies, but that they should keep an eye on Charlie just in case.
I didn’t know what that “just in case” meant, but over the next few weeks, as I watched my brother, my heart started to worry, flitting nervously in my chest.
Charlie was constantly tired. He didn’t want to play catch with Matty, said his hands hurt.
He turned down dessert, went to bed early.
He got another bloody nose, this time in the middle of Sunday breakfast, when Dad was making pancakes. Mom put both her hands on his neck under his ears, felt the space there tenderly, frowned, and made an appointment to take him to the doctor the next morning.
That night, when I made our secret knock on the wall, the one we gave each other every night before we fell asleep, Charlie didn’t respond.
I got up, creeping carefully to his room. When I opened the door, he was sitting up in bed, the moonlight coming in from the window, sheets tangled around him. He was staring at his bare stomach, his Iron Man T-shirt wrinkled up in his grip, his hair pressed down on his forehead in sweaty curls.
“Charlie?” I whispered, my heart in my throat.
When he looked up, his eyes were wide and animal, and I could see the tracks of tears down his cheeks. I got closer and saw red mottled spots all over his chest and called out, my voice breaking with fear, “MOM!”
A week later, Charlie was diagnosed with cancer, specifically high-risk acute lymphocytic leukemia.
The doctors at Children’s Hospital said it probably had been in Charlie for a while, but the bloody nose was the first visible symptom. They also said Charlie had an 85 percent survival rate, and Mom told me that was good.
But everything I saw wasn’t good.
Charlie cried on a regular basis: when he had to go to the doctor, when Mom and Dad made the decision to take him out of school, when he had to get what I later learned was his first spinal tap.
Our cat, Mustard, began pooping in the middle of the dining room floor.
I started dreaming about helium people, variations of the same dream over and over: shadowy winged creatures with their hearts throbbing on the outside, trying to pull Charlie away from me, my bare feet curled against the dirt with the effort of trying to hold on. I couldn’t tell if I wanted them to go away, or if I wanted to join them. But regardless of what I wanted, every time, the helium people won, Charlie’s hand snapping out of mine, my eyes shooting open.
My parents tried to explain what was happening, that some of Charlie’s cells were growing too fast, like the dandelions in the backyard, that Charlie was going to go to the hospital to get medicine to stop the weeds so they didn’t take over all of him.
I pulled dandelions from the grass when no one was looking—from our backyard, on the edges of the playground, along the sidewalks in our neighborhood. I smashed them in my pockets, letting the yellow pulp stain my palms.
Mustard kept pooping on the floor.
A few weeks after Charlie’s bloody nose, Grandma and Grandpa Rose picked me up from school.
“Your mom had to stay later with Charlie today and your dad’s at work,” Grandpa Rose explained. “But we thought we could get some ice cream.”
That afternoon, we played Uno and I won, and then we watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, my favorite movie. For dinner we went to Frisch’s, and Grandma Rose let me bring home a slice of pumpkin pie in a plastic to-go container for Charlie, since it was his favorite.
But right before I went to bed, the phone rang. Grandpa’s voice got quiet in the kitchen, and then Grandma Rose sat down and told me Charlie was going to stay in the hospital, that my parents were going to sleep over with him.
“Will they be home tomorrow?” I asked.
Grandma Rose shook her head. “Your parents will be, but Charlie’s going to stay there for a while so he can get better. There are no germs there, and the doctors can take very good care of him.”
I bit my lip. If Charlie wasn’t in the bedroom next to mine, I couldn’t give him our secret knock. He wouldn’t know I was right there on the other side.
“But we get to stay here with you! And on weekends, your mom arranged for you to stay with Em. Matty might sleep over too. Won’t that be fun? It’s going to be fine,” Grandma Rose continued, her voice bright, but it was too bright, like she was trying to pretend it was sunny outside when it was really raining, and I knew it wasn’t going to be fine.
“Not without Charlie,” I said, and I started crying a little, and then more and more, until I was crying so hard, my breath flew away from me. It was terrifying, how I could feel my mouth gulping hard to find air, how my heart was on the outside, like the helium people.
Grandma Rose reached over and pulled me into her arms, holding me hard, shushing in my ear, rubbing my back steadily, until eventually my sobs slowed.
“It’s okay to be sad with me and your grandpa,” she whispered. “But right now your parents have a lot on their plate. I need you to be really brave for them, to be as good as you can. Can you do that for me? Can you be brave, Parker?”
I sniffed, nodding hard, my limbs suddenly heavy and tired.
“That’s my girl,” she said.
The next night, when Mom came home for dinner and asked me how my day was, I didn’t tell her that I cried at lunch when Caroline Bates asked me if Charlie was going to die. Instead, I said that Caroline was praying for Charlie to get better. I watched Mom’s smile come back from the faraway-Charlie-place, how when it rested on me, her shoulders relaxed just a little bit.
And later that week, when Dad gave Mustard a chin rub, telling me he was happy our cat had finally started using the litter box again, I didn’t tell him about the messes I’d been cleaning up every day, the way I’d use a plastic bag to pick them up, hiding them in the bottom of the garbage can in the garage. Instead, I came over to pet Mustard too, letting his throaty purrs vibrate through my hand, calling him a good boy.
I worked hard on making the sadness small, making the fear invisible.
And it wasn’t just with my parents. I made sure to thank Em’s mom for having me spend the night. I did Charlie’s chores without being asked. I gave Em all my winning Skee-Ball tickets when we went to Chuck E. Cheese’s. After I saw Grandma Rose secretly crying in the kitchen one day when I told her I wished I could share my dessert with Charlie, I started lying to her and Grandpa, too, pretending to be the bravest girl in the world, making sure to hide under my covers when I cried at night.
And then, five months after Charlie’s bloody nose, Dad came home from the hospital and taught me the word “remission.” I was scared when his eyes got watery, but he told me it was because he was so happy. Charlie still had to get some more medicine to make sure the dandelions didn’t grow back, but he was going to be okay.
I look over at Charlie now, nine years later—still skinny but much taller—and he’s staring at the hospital entrance too.
I want to ask him what he’s thinking.
I want to tell him looking at the hospital now makes my heart hurt.
But Charlie and I haven’t talked like that for years, maybe not ever.
I fiddle with the door handle instead. “Well, have fun at the comic book thing.”
“Yeah, good luck at orientation.”