By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead (15 page)

“Wow. This thing’s heavy,” he says, sounding shocked. “How long have you had to wear this?”

Too long.

“Wait.” He gets up, goes to a can of paintbrushes in the corner, and fishes out a flat pencil. He gives it to me. “You can write on this.” He hands me a Dino’s napkin, blank side up.

I write, “Play the video.”

“Fine. Be that way. I assume you’ll tell me when you want me to know.”

Which will be never.

Santana grabs the remote and moves the brace to the other side of him. If I need it, I’ll have to reach across his lap.

“I wish you could talk, because I’d like to get your thoughts on pantheism. A basic moral belief that doing harm to oneself harms us all. That we’re all interconnected.”

I shoot a glare at him and hold up the napkin.

“Got it. The stuff at the beginning is boring shit. It’s really just for Ariel. We can fast-forward through a lot of it.” He hands me the remote.

I flip it back at him.

“God.” He snatches it up. “You are so—” His jaw clenches.

Insufferable? I finish for him. Impenetrable?

He thumbs the
play
button.

Snow. Then static. On the screen and in my head.

He’s sitting so close our knees accidentally knock. I don’t believe in accidents. I cram myself as close to the couch arm as I can. He smells like lime and pepperoni.

I don’t smell. I hunch into a rock.

“Hi.” A hand with stiff fingers shoots on to the screen. “How are you? This is me, Santana Lloyd Girard the Second.” The hand folds into a fist. “And this,” one finger points, “is the story,” two fingers, “of my life,” three fingers, “so far.” Four, five, six fingers. The sixth one is rubber. The hand withdraws slowly.

“Lame, I know,” Santana says beside me. “I was fourteen when I started this.”

That’s why I don’t recognize the voice. The narrator sounds like a little kid.

“I was born on April twenty-fourth, nineteen ninety-two. A day that will live in infancy.” The picture of a scrawny baby is shot from overhead. “Hiya, Ma.” The big hand appears with fingers wiggling in a wave. Each finger has a smiley drawn on it.

He’s right. This isn’t headed for Sundance.

“My father, Santana Lloyd Girard the First, could not be present at the birth of his only child, since he bit the big one in a rock slide prior to the momentous occasion. The whole mind-freak element of an accident like that should’ve been a warning to my mother. My mother, Ariel Celestine Beatty Girard. Hi, Mom.” The hand waves. Beside me, Santana groans. “It gets worse.”

“Said mother testifies that the boy Santana came into this world screaming bloody murder.” A blurry face fills the screen. “And I’ll leave the same way.” A loud screech makes my ears squinch.

Santana lowers the volume. “This sucks big-time.”

The camera pans over a naked baby in a birdbath. He has flowers in his wild, curly hair. Do I grin?

“Okay, wow,” Santana mutters. He aims the remote at the TV, and a jumbled mass of photos and hands and blurry lips zoom by. A boy on a bike, then a skateboard. Is that Santana? A Hacky Sack. A dog.

“Hold it,” Santana says and the film freezes. “You have to see Stripe.” He rewinds a bit.

This ugly dog, like a mix between a bulldog and a Dalmatian—jowls and big brown patches—sits there with its tongue lolling out the side of its mouth. Drooling and panting.

“Stripe,” the narrator goes. “Sit.”

The dog stands up.

“Stay.”

It leaps at the camera. The picture jumps around to the sky, the bench out front, blurry grass.

Dog again.

“Speak.”

The dog lifts its paw.

I glance over at Santana. He’s got a dopey smile on his face.

“Roll over. Play dead.”

The dog barks its head off.

Santana chuckles beside me. “I taught him that.”

“Shake.”

The dog rolls over, then back again. It stands up and shakes off.

I reach for my cup of float and Santana beats me to it. He hands it to me. “That was my neighbor’s dog. They got him as a pup, then left him alone all day while they went to work. Ariel won’t let me have a dog because they shed. That’s her rationale, anyway. God, I want a dog so bad—”

The camera zooms in on a bunch of papers that are spread across the carpet.

“Here it comes.” Santana leans forward. “This is my lymphangiogram. My chest X-ray, CT scan, PET scan, and gallium scan.”

There are charts and graphs and reports on the floor.

“My first biopsy results.” The camera pans close.

I squint but can’t read the type.

“Diagnosis: Hodgkin’s disease.” Santana’s face fills the screen, teeth bared. He sings the first two bars of Beethoven’s Fifth. “Bah-bah-bah-
bum
. Bah-bah-bah-
bum
.”

The picture goes off. Then on.

The door to a room opens. Santana makes creaking sound effects on the film. A man in scrubs smiles for the camera, and the frame tilts. It does a one-eighty.

“October twenty-nine, two thousand seven. Santana begins chemotherapy.” The camera pans to a woman. Is that Ariel? She looks way younger.

Next to me, Santana breathes. His breath is warm and moist. Why does it feel like he’s breathing right on me?

Someone else is filming now because Santana is in a chair, like a dentist’s chair, getting an IV stuck in his arm. I shudder. I hate needles.

He winces too. Dramatically on screen, he turns his head and covers his eyes with the back of his hand. “Bloody hell.”

“We can skip a bunch of this,” Santana says. He sets down his float and fast-forwards. There are stretches of Ariel talking fast and making faces, posing for the camera like a model, cooking, painting on a canvas, putting on makeup. Santana skateboarding, doing chin-ups in a closet, his hair long and curly. Santana sprawled on the bench, reading.

The film stops. “That bench is made out of the rock that killed my father. Ariel had it brought down from the mountain and carved. Kind of morbid, but every year on my birthday we sit there and she tells me about him. I sort of feel like I know him.”

I can’t help looking at Santana. His expression is somber.

My stomach wrenches. That’s their bench. I’ve been invading his personal space.

“Hey,” Santana shifts his torso to face me, “did you realize that bench, our bench as I’ve come to think of it, sits directly underneath an anise magnolia tree? Anise smells like licorice. Magnolia—Maggie Louise?” He waggles a finger at me. “I’m telling you, Daelyn. Interconnections.”

When I make a face, he says, “You’re right. Excessive commentary.”

The film continues. Santana sleeping, his hair messy.

“Wait.” He stops the film and rewinds.

Santana sleeping. “Here he is,” a woman whispers. “My sweet, perfect, brilliant baby boy.”

In my peripheral vision, Santana’s Adam’s apple bobs. Or is that the lump?

“I forgot she took that,” he says.

The film rolls. His younger voice says, “Hair today. Gone tomorrow.”

Santana waves an electric shaver across the screen. He flicks it on and it buzzes. He aims the teeth toward his head, where his hair is already patchy in places, and when the shaver hits his head, he grimaces. He squeezes his eyes shut and clenches his teeth. The razor carves a naked swath over his scalp. “Owwww.”

I can’t watch this. My gaze drops to the cheese on the other pizza, which is congealing. Plus, Hervé’s walking on it. We demolished the everything. Hervé missed a crust, so I flip it at him with the pencil.

“Mom, don’t.”

I glance over. Santana’s eyes are glued to the screen.

He’s on the couch, this couch I guess, without the sheet. It’s blue-and-gold brocade. Santana’s sleeping, or pretending to. He lifts his arm and shields his face.

“You wanted me to record everything at the same time every day. Smile,” Ariel says.

Under his arm, on the couch, Santana forces a weak smile.

In the next shot, he’s hurling in the toilet.

My stomach churns.

“Sorry.” Before Santana can fast-forward, I see him resting his forehead on the toilet rim. I think, This is why he was homeschooled.

In fast-forward, Santana moaning.

Sleeping.

Clutching his stomach.

Lying on the couch, curled into a fetal position.

Santana sitting on the bench. Staring into the camera.

He reaches over and takes my hand. For real.

Wide eyes. Staring at the lens.

Ariel’s voice: “I can’t do this anymore.”

The film ends.

Do I squeeze his hand?

Santana’s other hand raises and brushes my chin. He moves my head around slowly to face him. Then he scoots over fast, closing in. His lips touch mine. The shock of it makes me tense, but his lips are soft. He presses a little harder, too hard, pushing me back with nowhere to go and I’m trapped and it’s . . .

Black. Blinding white light. Santana holding me down suffocating me with his mouth—

My fingers tighten around the pencil and I stab him in the arm. The lead is dull and I stab and stab until he cries out, “Ow.” He goes, “What the hell?” and rolls off me.

The doorbell rings.

Kim is here to save me at last. At
last
.

I lie in bed, the cover up to my chin, shivering. How could he? How could he betray our trust? I TRUSTED him. For the first time ever. He was my . . .

What?

Friend? I don’t even know the meaning of the word.

My eyes close and the room spins, a vortex. I’m back in the boys’ bathroom again; Toomey’s kissing me, lifting up my skirt, pulling down my underwear. I try to scream, but no sound comes out—

My eyes fly open.

Why? Why did I let him do that to me?

All of them. The teasers and bullies and perverts. Yes, perverts.

I throw back the covers and bounce out of bed, snag the laptop and return, jamming against the headboard.

I press the power button.

My brain says Through-the-Light, but my hand takes me to IM.

He’s there. He’s been on a while because he’s already written:

herveh0tsu: D, talk to me

herveh0tsu: Talk to me

herveh0tsu: Talk to me

herveh0tsu: I’m not going away

Why? If he doesn’t see how sick I am by now . . . What is he, dense?

herveh0tsu: D, you’re on. Talk to me.

I wish I was invisible to him, to everyone.

herveh0tsu: TALK TO ME DAMMIT

I key, “no. and don’t call me D. it’s daelyn.”

herveh0tsu: Got it. What happened? Why’d you freak out? I thought we were getting somewhere.

“where?”

herveh0tsu: hell, I don’t know. 1st? 2nd?

Third? Fourth grade?

“i can’t”

There’s a pause.

herveh0tsu: Ok. How was I supposed to know? You never call. You never write.

If I could laugh . . . He makes me feel fluid inside. I’m terrified of the feeling.

I key, “what do u want from me?”

herveh0tsu: Your hot bod? What else? I’m an animal.