From Ant to Eagle(31)

So Sammy and I were left in the room alone together and I suggested Crazy Eights to pass the time. I needed something to do so I could avoid the questioning look he kept giving me. I knew he was waiting for me to explain everything. He expected me to just drop my cards and say: “Look, Sammy, here’s what’s wrong and here’s what’s going to happen and here’s what we’re going to do.” But I couldn’t. This wasn’t a question about a word in a book or how to make a fishing rod from sticks and string. It was over my head. And maybe I should have just told him that but I didn’t. I’d spent my whole life being Sammy’s know-it-all brother. Heck, I’d climbed the ranks to Eagle Level before he was even born. How could I just throw that all away? Instead, I just kept my head down and avoided Sammy’s eyes, while a hole opened up inside me and a hollow feeling filled me up as if a shadow had crawled through my belly button and eaten my insides.

DAD AND I drove home later that night as the sky grew dark. The country had never felt so lonely.

“Dad, do you think Sammy will be okay?” I asked at one point.

There was a long void that followed where only the tiny hissing noise of the wind outside the car window could be heard, and in that void I knew that Dad didn’t think everything would be okay.

“I think so,” he said, but his voice sounded funny, like he were talking through a fan.

“If Sammy dies, will he go to the same place as Grandpa? Or is there a separate heaven for kids?”

“He’d be with grandpa,” Dad said, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

“Will Sammy be able to…”

Dad cut me off with a hand on my knee. “Try not to worry, Cal. Just try not to worry, okay?”

He was really telling me to stop talking, so I sat the rest of the way home quietly watching the dark, empty fields passing by and the occasional dark, empty farmhouse scattered between.

That night when I crawled into my bunk bed alone I couldn’t fall asleep. I just lay with my eyes open watching the moonlight through the window cast wavy shadows like spiderwebs on the ceiling as it passed through Sakura and Big Tree outside. I had taken the quilt off the window; I wanted to be awake early. I closed my eyes to fall asleep but every time I did a new image formed behind my eyelids, forcing me to open them again. Sometimes it was Sammy playing basketball alone in the driveway, other times it was Sammy kneeling in the driveway with a jar in his hands, and other times it was Mom and Dad, their chastising glares, their sad head shakes, and worst of all, their paper faces fighting to hide their tears in the hospital.





CHAPTER 19

THE NEXT DAY MOM CALLED TO SAY SAMMY’S BONE NEEDLE wouldn’t be happening until the afternoon, so I should go to school for the morning but Dad would pick me up after lunch.

Tom wasn’t in class, I figured he’d been suspended or something. At least I didn’t have to deal with him, but the other kids at recess continued to stare so Aleta and I found a quiet corner behind the grade four portable and sat down. It was nice—no one but us. No looks, no questions, which I suppose was fine with Aleta since she had been avoiding all the girls that kept asking her to join them and all the boys that had been ogling her from afar.

“So what did the doctors say?” Aleta asked when we sat down.

I debated how to answer. Should I tell her about Dr. Parker? Should I tell her what he’d said about Sammy maybe having cancer? It wasn’t official until after the bone needle but it was still eating me up inside. Aleta was the only person I felt comfortable talking to, so I figured I might as well see what she thought.

“They think Sammy might have cancer,” I said, choking a bit on the last word.

I didn’t look to see Aleta’s expression but I felt her back stiffen against the portable. “What?” she whispered. “Cancer? They think Sammy has cancer?”

I nodded. “That’s what they said.” I felt strangely distant from what I was saying. “We find out today when Sammy gets a needle into his bone to see if there’s any cancer there.”

Aleta didn’t say anything for a really, really long time and we went back to the familiar silence we’d spent so many hours in over the summer.

“Well, maybe they’re wrong?” she finally said. “If they’re doing another test then they obviously don’t have an answer. So maybe they’re wrong about the cancer.”

“Dr. Parker said he was pretty sure it was cancer.”

“Pretty sure doesn’t mean for sure,” she said, “and besides they’re always such downers there. They’re all miserable and eager to give bad news. I’m sure they try to err on the side of caution just in case it is cancer.”

“Huh?” I said, turning to Aleta. “What do you know about the hospital and what they’re like?”

Aleta suddenly recoiled as if I’d caught her stealing one of Sammy’s cookies off the cookie sheet. She looked away quickly. “Nothing,” she said, but her hand instinctively went to her arm the way it often did when she was thinking about what made her sad. I could see the faint lines as she rubbed them.

“You were in the hospital, weren’t you?”

She didn’t say anything. I thought about pressing but I didn’t. It was instinctive now. As soon as Aleta started rubbing her arm or she got the look on her face that told me I was treading close to the subject she didn’t want to talk about, I backed off.