The Beautiful Between - Alyssa B. Sheinmel [44]
“Nope. I just gave you the book because I love it.”
“Oh. Well, thank you. I really do like it.”
I smile and turn back to my homework, but then Kate says, “Can you believe they knew before I did?”
“What?” I say dumbly.
“The teachers. My parents told the school about the cancer before they told me. They just told me I was sick, that they were running tests. But they knew what it was.” She sounds angry.
“Maybe they were just—”
“Protecting me? That’s what Jeremy says, but that’s a stupid idea of what’s protection. As if it wasn’t scarier going to the hospital without knowing why. I thought I had some rare, horrible disease that the doctors had never heard of and that they wouldn’t know how to fix me.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Jeremy was the one who got them to tell me. I heard them fighting about it.”
It’s strange; I’ve never imagined Jeremy fighting with his parents. I wonder what it’s like—it must involve yelling, or something like yelling, if Kate overheard them.
“When they finally did tell me, they didn’t tell me the truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“They didn’t tell me how bad it was—they said ‘leukemia,’ but they didn’t tell me how bad it was. Like they didn’t think I could just go Google it or something.”
I don’t know what to say. She seems so calm.
“So I asked Jeremy, and he told me the rest of it. He told me what the prognosis was. He told me what the real chances were. They didn’t.”
I think about my mother, about the things she’s kept from me. But then, I’m a liar too.
I ask Kate, “Were you angry at them?”
Kate shrugs. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I think I was just—I don’t know. I know they thought they were protecting me, but didn’t they know that keeping me in the dark made it so much scarier?”
I pause, and then I say, “Maybe they weren’t trying to protect you. Maybe they were actually protecting themselves. Like they just couldn’t face having to tell you that.”
Kate thinks about this for a minute, and so do I.
Kate speaks first. “I don’t know. That’s so …” She seems to be searching for the word. “Weak,” she says finally, sounding disappointed.
“Yeah. And I wasn’t trying to defend them—I was just trying to understand.”
“I know,” Kate answers, but I can tell there’s more she wants to say.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I want to ask you something, but it’s private.”
I smile. “You can ask me anything—really, I don’t mind.” And I don’t; I don’t think there’s anything I can’t talk to Kate about.
Kate bites her lip. “Did your parents do any better—when your dad was sick?”
It takes me a minute to figure out what to say, but I smile at Kate to let her know I’m not upset that she’s asked.
“No,” I say finally. “They didn’t do any better.”
“Maybe all parents suck at telling their kids things.”
I smile. “Maybe. But I was so young; it’s different.”
“How?”
“I was two. Even if they told me, I wouldn’t have known what cancer was.”
“So what happened when your mom did tell you?”
I’m not scared to tell Kate. If anyone can understand what it’s like not to know something important, it’s her.
“She didn’t.”
“What?”
“No one ever told me how he died.”
Kate’s eyes go wide. “No one told you?”
I shake my head.
“So how did you find out?”
I blush. “Your brother. He let it slip when …”
“When he told you about me,” Kate finishes for me.
“Yeah.”
“That must have been so embarrassing.”
I look straight at Kate now. “Yes!” I say emphatically, kind of excitedly. “Yes, it really was.”
Jeremy comes in then. Kate looks at me and I know she’s not going to tell him what I’ve told her, because she doesn’t know whether I’ve told him about my dad.
“Who was on the phone, Jer?” she asks, and I’m glad she does because I never could. But as his sister, she has every right to invade his privacy.
“Mike Cohen. Spreading gossip as usual.”
“Funny,” I say. “You don’t generally think of boys as being gossips.”
“Sternin, boys are the worst gossips, believe me.”
“So what’s the gossip?” Kate