Sunny(10)
He looked at Aurelia.
She looked away.
Gramps said running is moving.
I said, no, dancing is.
Gramps’s face turned into a question mark.
And mine, into a period.
Dear Diary,
Me and Aurelia don’t come to the hospital to visit Gramps. I mean, we do, but we don’t. We come to visit other people’s Grampses. And other people’s Aurelias. And sometimes, even other people’s Sunnys. We go to visit patients. Not to bring them cards or flowers or gifts. We bring them something much better. The boomity boom and the tickity tick. I’m talking the boom tick, tickboom! But first we have to walk through all the beep beep beeps it takes to get to the cancer ward. Diary, how could a word that rhymes with “dancer” be so bad? Not to mention “answer,” “prancer,” and “romancer”?
Speaking of romancers: Mr. MacAfee. He has no hair. Nowhere. He’s recovering after having another tumor cut out of him. Another night under the knife, another day on the drip. That’s what he said when Gramps asked him how he was. But he loves Aurelia. Always teases her by saying her name felt funny in his mouth. I laughed at that because that’s what I love most about it too! Ah-RAIL-yuh.
Ms. Jenkins. We never met her before. She’s new to the ward. Breast cancer. She’s young, and when we came in, she was still adjusting her wig. We told her it looked good, because it did. She didn’t believe us. She was also looking at a life insurance commercial. I told her she didn’t need that. That’s only for old people.
J.J., whose real name is Jennifer—I used to call her Mrs. Jennifer, but she doesn’t like to be called Mrs. anything, and even though she’s too old for me to call her by her first name, she used to insist I call her just Jennifer, so I used to call her Just Jennifer, which eventually became J.J.—has lung cancer. She wears the reddest lipstick I’ve ever seen.
Ian, who is my age and reads manga comics all day, has a brain tumor, Gorgeous John (his real name) has cancer in his pancreas, Ms. Felicia has stomach cancer and only watches the news, and always gets mad when we come in, and says the world’s in too much danger for dancing. But we dance anyway, and anyway, she likes it.
Me and Aurelia dance for each of them.
Five, six, seven, eight . . .
Shrug and shrug and kick and slide back, clap and dab and body roll, spin
Shrug and shrug and kick and slide back, clap and dab and body roll, spin
And they all laugh and bop and clap and smile. Today Ms. Jenkins even snatched her wig off and swung it around in the air like a hair flag.
Dear Diary,
Mr. Rufus deserves his own entry.
He’s much older than me, but cool. I don’t know what kind of cancer Mr. Rufus has, but I know he’s had it for a long time. But he’s still always fun to visit. Always so happy, even though his voice is weak. Like when someone wakes you up too early on your birthday and your voice isn’t all the way turned on yet, but you’re still excited. That’s how Mr. Rufus sounds. Whenever I see him, I do my weirdo wave, and he does a weirdo wave, which is basically just a wave, because, Diary, I don’t know if you know this or not—don’t know why you would—but waving is always weird. It always comes across as yikes.
Anyway, Mr. Rufus has bright eyes with saggy bags under them, and the brightest teeth I’ve ever seen. Like tiny TV screens lined up side by side. He always brags about how they’re all still his, but judging by the way the nurses roll their eyes every time he says it, I think he might be lying. But that’s not the reason he deserves his own page in you.
He deserves his own page because he is by far the best bed dancer I’ve ever seen. I mean, he really knows what he’s doing. He always tells me about how he used to be a dancer on a TV show back in the day called Soul Train. I believe him when he says this. You ever heard of that show, Diary? I’ve never seen it, but Mr. Rufus and Aurelia and Gramps all say it was some kind of dance show. That bands would perform and young people would be dressed up on national TV showing off their booms and ticks. I asked Mr. Rufus if Cher ever came on there to perform some of her music. He just laughed at that. Not sure why. She makes great dance music.
But what I do know is that Mr. Rufus can tick with the best of them. I’ve seen him do it. Turn his body into real life stop-motion animation. And even though he was good at ticking, he said spinning and sliding were his specialties back in the day, and that the crowd always went crazy when he did a split. Diary, I tried to do a split once. It didn’t go good. Or feel good. Anyway, when me and Aurelia and Gramps get to Mr. Rufus’s room, he always adjusts the bed just enough so that he’s not lying flat, and when the music comes on, he starts bopping around and jamming in the bed, as if he’s trying to break loose, break free. And maybe he is. It’s like he understands what dancing is for. It’s not just to watch, it’s to do, to somehow remind yourself that you’re still . . . you. That whoever the invisible you is, the you that only talks to you, it’s still alive and can add, in Mr. Rufus’s words, love, peace, and soullllllll to the world.
Dear Diary, Have you ever heard of Salisbury steak? It’s like a hamburger drenched in a special sauce, which I guess is called Salisbury sauce. They serve it in the cafeteria at the hospital. Aurelia told me a while ago that Salisbury is a place, and let me tell you, the first chance I get, I’m going there. There’s probably this sauce just raining down from the sky. Actually, that would be pretty messy. But maybe it’s like lakes full of it. That would be better. And if that’s true, I might try a new sport.