Just Breathe Read online

  In my family, we’re good at not talking about our problems. We soldier on and work hard and think about other things. We rise above like a phoenix, never once mentioning the pile of ashes we live in. We talk about talking, but we never actually do.

  Eventually, they have to leave—my younger sister, Eileen, is home alone, and she’s got her own problems we’re not talking about, either.

  After they go, I text Sharon. Earlier, I asked her to come by alone today, without Hannah and Ashwin.

  Okay. Why? she had texted.

  Just not up for crowds, I wrote back.

  Hannah and Ashwin aren’t a crowd, David. They love you.

  Now I write her again. Just got some bad news. I’ll wait till you get here.

  I’m so sorry! I’m in an emergency meeting for homecoming. I’ll call you once it’s over.

  Okay, I write back, but I know if she’s in the meeting, she might not be here for an hour, if she comes at all. Homecoming is a week and a half away. They’re probably freaking out.

  I don’t know what to do.

  Sharon and I had a hard summer. We met in sixth grade taking ballroom dance lessons, which might sound absurd, but in our area, where lots of kids have Russian grandparents, it isn’t so crazy. In Russia, ballroom dance is considered an art form that every child should learn the basics of.

  I used it as my alternative PE credit to escape the embarrassment of having coughing fits in front of my friends while we ran around the gym. For years, I pretended that was the only reason I kept taking classes, but the real reason was, I liked it.

  I liked the formality of bowing to a girl when you asked her to dance. I liked escorting her onto the floor with her hand tucked inside my elbow. Most of all, I liked the breath-catching novelty of having a girl in my arms and being told what to do with her.

  Sharon was one of the best dancers in our group. She’d moved here from Texas, where she’d already been taking lessons. It took me a few years to catch up with her, but when I finally did at the start of ninth grade and we’d danced enough waltzes without any gaffes on my part for her to ask me to enter a competition with her, I fell in love. With dancing. With Sharon’s ambition and her sparkly dresses. With doing anything she asked me to do.

  She got me to join student council at school.

  She talked me into running for president.

  She believes we can do anything we set our minds to.

  This year, she wants to raise enough money to bring prom prices down so all seniors can attend. The first week of school she launched her campaign with a T-shirt and bake sale that got her an article in our local paper with the quote: “I know every senior class says they’re the best, but I believe we really are.”

  She does, too.

  Sharon is like my mom this way: She believes staying positive will make good things happen.

  It’s after seven when she finally calls back, too late to stop by. She has to get home and babysit her younger brothers while her mom does a house showing.

  “What was your news?”

  “Never mind. We can talk about it tomorrow.”

  “It’s okay. Tell me.”

  I don’t want to now. She sounds tired. She’s worried about the things anyone our age should be worried about. Homecoming decorations. A test in calculus tomorrow. How can I tell her the scary-depressing thoughts that have filled my mind this whole afternoon? If this collapsed lung doesn’t heal, I might not be back to school for a very long time. It might get so bad, I can’t come back at all.

  For now, I can’t. It’s not in our vocabulary. I was a different person before I met Sharon: anxious and shy and scared of anyone finding out why my cough never went away. Sharon changed all that. I told her the truth one night at Starlight, and she helped me tell others in a way that made it seem like nothing. She was the first one to tell other kids it was like asthma, only rarer. She made it sound mysterious yet strangely appealing.

  “He goes into the hospital occasionally, but mostly so the doctors can study his lungs.”

  I don’t know where she got that idea, but I never contradicted her.

  Now I’m not sure how to tell her the truth. Needing new lungs is the scariest news, but all of it is bad. If the tube draining yellow bile from my chest is hard for her to look at, it’s pretty hard to imagine what she’d say about a permanent hole in my stomach with a plastic screw-on cap. In the CF world, they’re pretty common. In the real world, they’re hard for anyone to hear about and not want to vomit.

  I don’t want to drive her away, so I don’t say anything. I tell Jamie instead.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Question for you

  What do you think when you see kids with G-tubes? Be honest: they’re pretty disgusting, right?

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  Not at all. You can’t see them under a shirt. And if you’re wearing a bathing suit, well—some people look at it as a novelty piece of body jewelry.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  If you’re in a coma.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  Definitely if you’re in a coma, but even if you’re not. You can think of it as an atypical piercing. It’s not your earlobe, it’s your stomach, and the hole’s a little bigger, but still. You’d have to pick the right color, though. I wonder about the ones that are bright pink but are called “flesh-toned.” Like they’d be “flesh-toned” for a salmon but not really for a person.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  Does that mean you’re recommending sky blue?

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  It’s your call. You’d have to look at your wardrobe, see what you’ve got that matches.

  It’s amazing how good Jamie is at her job. I didn’t tell her I needed one, but she figured it out and doesn’t seem particularly thrown off by the prospect.

  For a while, neither one of us types anything. Then I refresh and see this:

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  Seriously, though, the important thing is they work. I’ve seen kids come into the hospital looking like skeletons. They get a G-tube put in, and a few weeks later they look like regular kids again.

  I don’t want to ask her if I look like a skeleton. I don’t want her to think I’m stupid and vain, which I obviously am.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  It’s nice you’re saying this, because the doctor thinks I need one.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  Great! Take a before and after picture with a week in between. You’ll see what I mean. You’ll be transformed.

  It’s strange. Now that she’s said this, I want to do it. I want to take a picture and see if I look different a week from now.

  JAMIE

  Is this flirting?

  I assume it isn’t, but I have zero experience so I’ve got no idea. I don’t think it’s possible for someone who has a girlfriend and is semifamous in a school-wide context to flirt with someone who is mostly invisible like me.

  As strange as it might sound
, I think it’s the social-status imbalance between us that makes me surprisingly not nervous talking to him. I’m not fantasizing about impossible things happening, like him breaking up with Sharon. I’m not even fantasizing about being friends when he comes back to school. I know that won’t happen. I’ve looked through old yearbooks in my library study hall, and I’ve learned more about him.

  As class president, he runs student council, which includes every popular person who doesn’t play football or isn’t a cheerleader. He’s also president of Leaders for Tomorrow, a club where everyone wears business suits for the yearbook photo, including the girls, who look especially uncomfortable in tight skirts and jackets. I’ve found him in two other club photos and in a bunch of candids. He’s a pillar of this school in a way that I never will be, which means in any other setting, we wouldn’t have much in common. Or anything, really. But in this one, we do.

  Once, I almost stopped by his room. I was at the hospital anyway, waiting to have dinner with my mom, and I walked up to the floor, just as I saw his girlfriend, Sharon, go inside. I couldn’t see David, but I heard his voice.

  “There you are!” He sounded happy and relieved.

  I know he’s been dating Sharon for a long time because there’s a picture of them holding hands in a yearbook from their sophomore year. Sharon is pretty in a way that’s hard for me to even wrap my mind around. She wears makeup so well that I can’t even imagine her leaning into mirrors and putting it on. It’s like her pretty blue eyes have eyeliner and shadow tattooed on, so it never smudges the way it does for me after ten minutes.

  So, no, I don’t imagine taking Sharon’s place. Which means we’re not flirting. We’re situational friends. Like bunkmates at a camp where the activities are bad and the food is even worse. I know (sort of) what he’s going through. I know what it’s like to be in the hospital and feel alone.

  Of course I’m not going to tell him that, though, because we’re not that good of friends.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  When are they putting it in?

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  If I say yes, they’ll do it tomorrow.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  You should definitely say yes. Seriously. I could stop by tomorrow afternoon and take your picture. You’ll see what I mean. You’ll start gaining weight pretty quickly afterward.

  I shouldn’t be saying any of this. We’re never supposed to talk with patients about anything medical. We’re not even supposed to ask how they’re feeling in case they tell us something important—a new symptom maybe—and we don’t realize what it is. I’m definitely not meant to say a G-tube sounds great. But I’ve been thinking about his weight and reading all the reasons CF patients have trouble absorbing food. Their mucus gets too thick for their pancreas to work. They need enzymes with every meal, and even then, they only absorb about half the calories they eat.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  Are you working tomorrow?

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  No, but I live nearby, and I usually come over to eat dinner with my mom.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  Where do you live?

  This is the sort of question I lied about last year until I learned that lying only compounds whatever problems you’re hiding in the first place and eventually becomes your biggest problem, until you’re so stressed out from lying, you explode one night at a sleepover like a volcano vomiting truth all over a bunch of girls in sleeping bags.

  This year, I’ve vowed not to do it again.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  The Desert Paradise apartments.

  He doesn’t answer for a while. Maybe he’s trying to think of a response that doesn’t mention the moldy broken sofa that’s been sitting in our parking lot all summer. Maybe he’s so shocked, he doesn’t know what to say.

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  How’s that?

  * * *

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: RE: Question for you

  Not as bad as you might think from the outside. You don’t need a hazmat suit or anything. We were a little worried before we moved in, but it turns out it’s okay. It’s what we can afford, and it’s close to the hospital.

  I feel proud of myself typing all this. Everything I’m saying is true, and he’s not signing off or making excuses to end this chat. Of course, I also remind myself: he’s trapped in a hospital room, and I’m not telling him the whole story, which I never will, because no pledge to be honest would get all that out of me.

  When I was in the hospital, no one was allowed internet access. No social media. No email. Those things weren’t helping us, the counselors said. We had to learn who we were, apart from social media, before we could start building healthy relationships with it. Apparently social media is a big reason why a lot of teenagers end up in psychiatric hospitals. The way Rita explained it, we Snapchat and Instagram so much of our lives that we can’t identify the difference between a post and a fact. For me, this wasn’t the problem, but it was interesting to hear other people talk about their internet addictions. I was surprised by how many kids raised their hands to the question “Have you ever trolled chat rooms posing as someone other than yourself?”

  Out of twelve, four kids had.

  Three kept their hands up when asked the question “Have you perpetuated the charade longer than you were comfortable with?”

  “Have you put yourself in a dangerous situation because of your internet habits?”

  Two hands for that one.

  I wonder if what I’m doing now with David would qualify as a dangerous situation. I may not be using a fake name, but the person I am with him is different from any version I’ve ever known of myself in real life. I’m pretending to be things I can tell he likes—upbeat, down-to-earth, easygoing. Even if I like the person I’m pretending to be, it still feels dangerous. I’m not sure why exactly, but it does.

  Chapter Three

  DAVID

  THIS MORNING, DR. C is going over everything I’ll need to do to get on the transplant list: Gain weight. Get my blood sugar under control. Have no sign of infection.

  My mother interrupts him. “I should probably tell you we’ve been talking to other doctors. We want to get a second opinion before we rush into anything.”

  Dr. C is the leading CF specialist in a two-hundred-mile radius. We all know this. Still, he nods. “That’s fine, Linda, but I’ve consulted with some others myself. I’m afraid they’ve all said the same thing. Without a transplant, David will probably have two years at best.”

  We all look away. He’s never been this precise before. Never put a timeline on my life. Two years means I won’t make it to twenty. Two years means I’ll never drink legally. Two years means I won’t finish college even if I go.

  No one says anything.

  We stare at our hands or out the window. My dad picks up a Kleenex box and studies it. We wait for Dr. C to leave, and when he finally does, we keep saying nothing all over again.

  In
the bathroom, I study myself in the mirror and decide it’s official: I’ve never looked worse. Whatever new medications I’m on have hollowed out my eye sockets and bloated the rest of my face. I look like a skull with three chins. Beyond the horror of my misshapen face is the color of my skin—simultaneously yellow and gray, like a thin covering of moss is growing over the doughy plain where my cheeks used to be.

  I can’t stop staring. I think: If I’m going to look like this, maybe dying is okay.

  I have no idea how long I stand there, but when I come out, my parents are gone and my sister, Eileen, is there instead, flipping through a magazine.

  “You don’t have to say it. I know I look shitty.”

  Eileen narrows her eyes and shrugs. “You want some blush?” She digs through her purse. “Never mind, I don’t have any. How about some lipstick instead?”

  She pulls it out and uncaps it. I’m scared she’s serious. “I’m not putting on lipstick. Sharon might stop by later.”

  Waiting for Sharon is a force of habit. All summer, I lay around in bed at home, waiting for her to text about when she’d stop by. Readying myself, then pretending to be casual. But after everything we’ve learned today and seeing how I look, I’m not even sure I want to see her.