Say the Word(43)

Within minutes we’d traveled out of the town proper and were cruising down the back roads. The unpaved, dirt paths on the outskirts of Jackson were lined with towering waxy-leafed magnolia trees that blossomed in the springtime and showered the earth in pale pink petals as the seasons waned. The winding network of densely-forested roads provided local teenagers with an arena for every pastime — from parking for some private time with your special someone to dirt-biking and drag racing.

Turning onto a straightaway, Sebastian yelled that it was time. As the cab picked up speed, I wound one hand through the straps attached to the truck bed for support, and grabbed hold of Jamie’s chair with the other. He smiled in anticipation — a look I hadn’t seen on my brother’s face in so long, it took me a minute to recognize it.

What most people don’t realize is that cancer takes more than just flesh and blood — it sucks the spontaneity out of life. Because when someone you love is sick — when their very future is uncertain — it’s hard to look forward to much of anything. Facing the world with a smile becomes the ultimate act of resilience.

It was late March now, and the early blooming trees had just begun to open their petals. They were beautiful, to be sure, but they couldn’t hold my attention. My eyes were trained on my brother’s face, which bore an expression of sheer, unadulterated joy as we barreled down the road, red dirt flying up in a cloud behind our tires, the radio cranked high to a classic Journey song, and the magnolia blossoms turning to a smeared pink tunnel as we pushed past sixty miles per hour.

Seeing that look on Jamie’s face again was worth any amount of time spent with Loretta’s twins.

“You okay?” I yelled at Jamie.

He nodded without looking at me, his grin never faltering. “Faster!” he yelled back over the strains of Don’t Stop Believin’ that were pounding from the truck’s speakers.

I passed along his orders to Bash, and watched as the speedometer needle topped seventy.

“Faster!” Jamie yelled again.

Eighty.

I heard Sebastian whoop in exhilaration as we went even faster, pushing the truck to dangerous speeds. He hadn’t been kidding — we were definitely flying, now. The wind roared in my ears and my hair streamed back in a blonde ribbon as we whipped down the roadway. I felt my stomach flip and held on tighter to the straps.

“I thought you promised me some speed!” Jamie yelled at the sky, his words immediately swallowed up by the wind as we hurled along.

“I don’t think this rust bucket will go much faster,” I screamed into the air tunnel whooshing between us. “Bash borrowed it from his gardener!” I tried to laugh, but the sound was swept away as soon as it left my mouth.

Jamie’s grin widened but he didn’t respond. His eyes drifted closed and he lifted his arms straight up above his head in a gesture I could only describe as one of pure, unabashed victory. My breath caught as I looked at him.

There, in that pink-smeared, dusty, wind-swept moment, he wasn’t a cancer patient or a sob story whispered about at the town-wide pancake breakfast on Sunday mornings. He was just seventeen again — alive and invincible, untouched by illness or worries about whether he’d live long enough to attend his prom.

There, in that perfect, solitary sliver of time, with his hands fisted in the sky in defiance at the cruel twists fate so often seemed to take, Jamie was flying. Life held a million limitless possibilities.

And he was free.

I only met my grandmother a few times as a young girl before she died. My mother’s mother was the only grandparent left by the time Jamie and I arrived in this world, and she had one foot out death’s door even as we took our first steps of childhood. My memories of her are both scarce in number and dimmed by time’s passing, but I do remember one thing she told me with intense clarity.

“There’ll be moments in life, sweet pea, that stand out in your memories like a photograph. Scenes captured perfectly in your mind, frozen in time with each detail as colorful as it was that first time you saw it. ‘Flashbulb memories,’ some people call them,” she’d told me, her eyes crinkling up and nearly disappearing in a face etched with too many laugh lines to count. “Most people don’t recognize those moments as they happen. They look back fifty years later, and realize that those were the most important parts of their entire life. But at the time, they’re so busy looking ahead to what’s coming down the line or worrying about their future, they don’t enjoy their present. Don’t be like them, sweet pea. Don’t get so caught up in chasing your dreams that you forget to live them.”

This moment with Sebastian and Jamie was one of those moments. A flashbulb memory in the making. I knew I’d remember every detail of it for the rest of my life.

I hoped they would, too.

So, with Jamie’s image burned into the backs of my eyelids, I stopped worrying about his prognosis, my family’s finances, and my unlikely college prospects. I pushed the future away and embraced this moment of jubilant recklessness. Closing my eyes, I crossed my fingers and wished with everything I had in me that thirty years from now, we’d all be sitting around laughing about what dumb kids we’d been on that bright spring day when the world was as new as our dreams for a different kind of future.

One with a happy ending.





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