After Ever After Read online

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: [email protected]

  Hi Steven —

  I hope you’re staying warm over there. Or cool, if it’s hot in the Africa hemisphere. Whatever. I just mean it’s weird to celebrate Christmas without you. Tonight Uncle Neil did all his famous impressions, but they didn’t feel as funny without you doing the little ba-dump-bump drum thing on the table after the punch lines.

  I scored big with the presents, but you know I’ve never really been into presents. Remember that first Christmas after my diagnosis, when everybody gave me mounds of toys and video games for the hospital? But my favorite part was playing snowball fights with our cousins and then you carrying me to bed.

  No snow this year.

  I have a ton to tell you again, if you ever stop banging on hollow logs long enough to read your mail — not that I’ll ever send this anyway. Things are crazy here. I have a girlfriend. A girlfriend! Remember that girl Lindsey that Mom was teasing me about during that one phone call, but then you had to go because of the monsoon or whatever you call it? Well, she likes me. And I like her. Can you believe we gave each other presents today? Mom and Dad made her come here because of the whole grounding issue (long story), but at least they let us take a walk to the park so we could get a break from Mom chasing us around with hot cocoa and a video camera. Speaking of cameras, Lindsey had been taking pictures of me all week at school, but wouldn’t tell me why.

  So we exchanged gifts. I got her a box of oranges in a cool crate that says IMPORTED FROM CALIFORNIA on the side. Long story, but she made me share one with her right there in the empty gazebo. It’s pretty messy eating an orange with ski gloves on, but we had fun. I had given her my usual speech about how presents don’t mean much, and she shouldn’t go to any trouble, blah, blah, blah. She didn’t listen. First, she whipped out a rectangular gift about the size of a lunch box. There were little reindeer riding bikes on the wrapping paper, which I thought was cool.

  I felt like Lindsey really understood me, you know?

  But then I opened the box, and there it was: a Hello Kitty bicycle horn, bright pink. It was ghastly. Lindsey said, “Do you like it? I saw it and thought of you because of the whole bike … you know … uh, Jeff? Say something?”

  So she gave me these puppy-dog eyes, and I forced myself to smile and say, “Uh, it’s perfect! Thanks, Linds. I’ll get this onto my bike, um, right away!”

  Then she busted out laughing. “I’m kidding, silly! It’s just a joke. I would never make you put that on your bike. But here’s for being a good sport!” And she fed me a chunk of orange. Juice got all over my face, but then Lindsey wiped it off with her mitten. I know it sounds strange, but it was definitely — I don’t know — a moment.

  She had a real present for me: a whole album of photos of me and her, somehow digitally edited together with funny things. One had her face on Cinderella, and mine on Donald Duck. Another had her as the Little Mermaid, and me as Goofy. She really went with the whole Disney theme (another long story).

  But the last photo was just me with a heart around it. I was kind of mortified. I mean, if Tad ever sees this thing, I’ll be hearing about it until forever. Still, the whole thing is strangely cool: Lindsey sees me as a guy in a heart.

  We finally had to go back to the house before A. Mom sent out a search-and-rescue team, or B. The orange juice all over our faces and gloves froze us to death. Then something happened that made everything else seem even better. You know how I don’t like walking in front of someone because of the whole limp problem? So I kind of waited around for Lindsey to walk first. She was waiting for me, though. Then she asked if anything was wrong, and I actually TOLD her why I get embarrassed about walking. My heart was pounding. I mean, like, going-up-a-mile-long-hill pounding. I didn’t know what she would do or say. Tad told me a story a few weeks ago about how a girl he liked called him out about his limp in sixth grade, and then he stopped even trying to get out of his wheelchair at school.

  You know what Lindsey did? She asked me a million questions about my leg: how it feels, when it started, whether it will ever get better, why it doesn’t bother me when I’m on my bike. Then she said, “Thanks for talking with me about it. I was afraid to ask. I didn’t want you to think I was shallow, but I wanted to know. I want to know everything about you.”

  I can’t believe how this girl is always three steps more mature than me, in every single possible way. Did you ever feel like that with Annette? That somehow, while you’d been learning how to incinerate bugs with a magnifying glass and make fart noises with your armpit, she’d taken some secret girl class that made her an expert on guys? I mean, I could never think Lindsey was shallow. Seriously, if I’m a puddle, she’s the Pacific Ocean. But I didn’t say that to her. All I could get out was, “Uh, no problem.”

  She looked at me like I was a cute kitten that had somehow wound up lost in her sock drawer, got up from the bench again, and held her hand out to me. We held hands — I mean, through mittens and gloves, but still — all the way home.

  Thank God I’m not sending this, by the way. I could never actually tell you all this stuff, but I have to at least write it out. Obviously, I couldn’t tell Tad, because I’d be getting all dorky and misty-eyed about Lindsey, and he’d be all, “Get … me … a … bucket! Must … spew!”

  So who else is there? Mom? Yeah, that would be a comfortable and useful chat. Or Dad? Can you imagine? “Uh, Dad, did you ever feel like you and Mom were, like, destined to meet?” “Well, son, there are a lot of variables that determine who we meet. For example, where we were born. If there are, say, thirty thousand towns in America alone, and each has, on average, five thousand adolescents of each gender … but wait — you have to factor in that the vast majority marry partners who are within just a few years of their age. Hmm … and then some percentage of the population moves at least once every few years. Tell you what, Jeff — I can write an equation for this, if you’d like. Does that sound like fun?”

  Nah, I’d rather go flatten my tongue with a steam iron.

  Anyway, that was Christmas with Lindsey. Meanwhile, Tad has still been completely strange. Usually, he’s slightly nice to me, but horrible to everyone else. This week, after he got in trouble with Miss Palma (remember — the only freaking person you ever e-mail?), he decided that he is going to be kind to everyone.

  Except me. And I have no idea what I did wrong.

  Meanwhile, I haven’t mentioned the worst thing of all. We took a pretest for the statewide math test right before vacation, and I’m pretty sure I failed it. Tad asked me how I did, and I gave him a little thumbs-up sign. Lindsey asked, too, and I changed the subject. Mom and Dad asked, and I screamed and yelled at them to trust me, for a change. Truthfully, I felt like I was being kind of harsh, but I’d rather get in trouble for having an attitude than for having brain damage (long story).

  So over this whole break, even while I was opening presents, or all cozied up with Lindsey, the pretest has been rattling around in the pit of my stomach. If I did fail this thing, all H-E-double-hockey-sticks is going to break loose.

  Usually when I write one of these pretend letters to you, my big hope is that you’ll come home and we can be brothers again. But right now, I’d be kind of cool with just fleeing to Africa to hang out with you for a while. I’d miss Lindsey, but hey — maybe she could visit me and we could ride a llama together or something.

  Or a yak. Does either one of those live in Africa?

  All right, gotta go read for English. When you had Miss Palma, was she totally in love with a really hard play called Cyrano de Bergerac? Don’t tell anybody, but it’s kind of good.

  Your brother,

  Jeff

  So that was my holiday week. The only part I didn’t put in there was all the stuff about how stupid and helpless Mom thinks I am, or how Dad thinks I could just shrug off my math problem if I tried a little harder. Oh, I also left out all the times I begged them to let me
go to Lindsey’s house or meet her somewhere. We talked on the phone for millions of hours, but that’s not the same as being together.

  Can you believe I was psyched to get back to school?

  At least until I got there. On the first day back, Dr. Galley called me downstairs again. There was a girl walking out of her office in tears, holding a fistful of candy hearts, which didn’t seem like a good omen. When I got in there, Dr. Galley was refilling her little glass dish from a huge industrial-size bag of hearts — also not a sign of good fortune. She started me off with small talk about my Christmas, but before I could even finish pretending to be excited about my presents, she shoved the little dish my way.

  The pretest scores were back. I had failed, big-time. Now I would have to attend a special extra math class on Tuesdays and Wednesdays after school. I asked her whether the school was really allowed to do this. I mean, I was passing all of my classes, and the length of the school day was supposed to be the same for everyone, right? She took off her bifocals and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Then she told me I had a point, but that it wasn’t up to her to decide what the district could or couldn’t do. “If I were a student, and I had a legitimate problem with a district policy,” she said, “I would tell my parents all about the situation and let them fight it out with the superintendent’s office.”

  “So you think I have a legitimate complaint?”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  “And do you think my parents have a shot at getting me out of this class?”

  “Would you like another candy heart, Jeff?”

  I was totally bummed about this. Wouldn’t you be? I couldn’t believe I was busting my butt, and getting better grades than ever before, but I was in danger of getting held back in eighth grade AND now I had to go to these stupid remedial math classes. What were they going to teach us after school that we couldn’t learn during the day? I figured all I was going to get out of this course was some extra reasons to hate math — not that I needed any.

  To top it all off, Tad was absent. In fact, he was out all week, and he wasn’t answering IMs or e-mail. His cell phone wasn’t even turned on. The message said he was out of town, and when I finally broke down and called his home number, his dad told me he was down in Philadelphia for tests. My heart skipped for a minute, but then Tad’s father went on to say that everything was fine, they were just monitoring Tad’s med dosages, checking his bone density, blah, blah, blah. This had happened a bunch of times before, so that seemed pretty normal.

  Tad usually told me before these little trips, though.

  At lunch on Wednesday that week, Lindsey asked me if I wanted to come to her house and hang out after dinner. I said I couldn’t, because I was still grounded. If anything, I was even more grounded now that my parents knew about the pretest. The school had mailed a letter home, and called, AND given every student who’d failed a sign-up form that the parents had to fill out by the end of the week. It was amazing: I was almost surprised they hadn’t sent singing telegrams or smoke signals.

  I had never seen the school having such a major cow about anything before.

  Anyway, Lindsey said, “So you still aren’t allowed to go anywhere, huh? That’s too bad, because my mom and my big brother are going to be out shopping for hours, and my dad’s editing a film on deadline, so he won’t be leaving his office in the basement all night. I’m going to be so lonely! Can’t you ask?”

  “There’s just no way. I’m only allowed to go to Tad’s.” Wait a minute, I thought. I’m only allowed to go to Tad’s. But Mom doesn’t know Tad’s in Philadelphia.

  “Pretty please?” Lindsey asked. “For me?”

  I remember once, when I was in my last year of treatment, I saw a poster in the bookstore that said, LIVE EVERY DAY AS THOUGH IT WERE YOUR LAST. That became sort of my unofficial motto. I mean, there was a pretty good chance I was going to die at that point, so why not live it up a little? The problem was, there isn’t that much a seven-year-old can do to live it up. Fortunately, as an eighth grader with a girlfriend, my situation was a little different.

  Plus, my parents were expecting me to go out to Tad’s that night anyway. I wouldn’t even have to lie, exactly — just take my bike and go. In the words of Miss Palma, carpe diem. Or, hakuna matata. I always get those two confused.

  I smiled at Lindsey. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

  What I did was flee my house after dinner like it was on fire and I was wearing a backpack full of propane. My mom asked me if I was going to Tad’s, and I nodded a little. She smiled and said, “Learn a lot, OK?”

  I smiled back, even though my lips suddenly felt like they were made of rubber, and I was on my bike before she could make me lie even more. I told myself it wasn’t totally lying, but that was a lie, too.

  It was enough to make my head hurt, but by the time I got to Lindsey’s, I felt fine. Almost.

  Guess what? Lindsey has a sprig of mistletoe over her bedroom door.

  Just sayin’.

  Tad was back in school the second week after Christmas. I asked about his trip to Philly, but he didn’t want to talk about it. I understood that. If I never saw the inside of Children’s Hospital again, I would still be seeing it in my nightmares forever. I could only imagine what Tad went through every time he had to go there and get poked, prodded, and stabbed.

  So I said, “All your parts working OK?”

  He said, “Absolutely, D.A. Just ask your mom.”

  And we moved on to other subjects.

  My after-school math classes started that week. Incredibly, the instructor was Mr. McGrath. You know, because when mathematics is the game, and children’s futures are on the line, it definitely makes sense to call in … THE GYM TEACHER! When I told Tad, he said, “What — there wasn’t a lunch lady available?” But actually, it appeared that ol’ Flash knew his stuff.

  He started us off with one of his patented lame-o speeches about vic-to-ry, but once we got into crunching through problems, things went fine. Except for the fact that it was a whole extra freaking hour of math twice a week, that is.

  Oh, there was one other problem: As you might expect from a guy named Flash, Mr. McGrath was into making us do everything as fast as possible. If you took too long on a problem, he came over and started yelling in your ear, “This is a pow-er test, ladies and gents — a pow-er test. Knowing the an-swers isn’t enough — you have to grind it out as fast as you can. So we’re going to drill, and drill, and drill some more until you don’t have to think at all. Write this down: Think-ing is the enemy of math!”

  Uh, whatever you say, Flasheroo.

  After the seventeenth time he shouted at me about it, I tried to explain to him about my processing problem, my 504 plan, and how I get extra time on tests. Which was like explaining poetry to a brick wall.

  “Alper,” he barked, “I’ve been watching you all year.”

  I gulped. “Uh, you have?”

  “Abso-lute-ly. You think I don’t see you, just because you’re in that back room? Well, that’s where you’re wrong. Dead wrong. When they put you in my class, and told me that you’d be using the train-ing center, I was one hun-dred percent against it. I thought, Those ma-chines are for athletes, not for little wimps who refuse to participate in their real gym class. But I had no choice, so I just decided I’d stay away from there, and see what happened.”

  He paused and stared at me from about a foot away while I resisted the urge to wipe his spit spray off my face.

  “And do you know what I’ve seen in there this year, Alper?”

  Uh, my butt? I thought. But all I said was “No, sir.”

  “I’ve seen courage. Guts. De-ter-mination. Why, you’ve taken that Ibsen boy, and you’ve gotten him up and out of that wheelchair. I swear, if you had told me in Sep-tem-ber that Ibsen would be up on the treadmill by Christmas, I’d have laughed in your face. And I’ve seen your workouts, too. You’re sweat-ing over there. You’re getting stronger every day. I’m proud to sa
y I was wrong about you, son. Now, if you can get that flabby pos-tee-rior of yours in shape and get your stubborn friend to walk, don’t you think you can pass some namby-pamby math test?”

  “Um, maybe?”

  “Alper, listen: I was a track-and-field star back in the day, and my old coach told me something very important. He said, ‘There’s no such thing as a maybe-finish line. There’s no such thing as an almost-finish line. All there is is a finish line.’ Do you get my meee-ning?”

  “I should work hard and pass the test?”

  He grinned so big I could practically count the greasy chunks of Big Mac caught in his molars. “See, Alper? I knew you weren’t as dumb as that big ol’ five-oh-four plan said you were.”

  Charming guy, that McGrath. But by the time he sent me home with a CD of math flash card software and orders to practice the drills until I could do them in my sleep, he almost had me be-lee-ving I could pass the test.

  On the way home, since I was out and about anyway and my parents were at work, I almost rode my bike over to Lindsey’s. But then I thought maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to try the math practice program, so I went straight home. I ate some popcorn as soon as I walked in, but then I pretty much went straight to my room, fired up the computer, and worked on math speed drills until my head was spinning.

  It’s strange. My father had been bugging me about practicing with flash cards for years, but I always thought he was just being mean and bossy. Then, as soon as my gym teacher gave me a pep talk and told me to work on those same exact facts — even though he actually was kind of mean and bossy — I ran home and did it. But, you know, he wasn’t my dad.

  When my parents came home, they had a million questions about my after-school class. I told them the basics, but didn’t mention my special moment with Flash McGrath. I don’t know why. Then Mom asked if I had seen Tad around school, and how he seemed. I told her he was fine, and she exchanged some kind of mysterious look with my dad. “What?” I said. “Nothing, Jeffrey,” she replied. “Aren’t I allowed to look at my handsome husband once in a while?”