Title Page
Dedication
Four Years Ago
The End …
Hot Legs
Lost in the Mail
The Pact
The Handsome Babe Magnet Rides Again
Payback
Partners
Night of the Living Waterfowl
The End of Thanksgiving
Grounded, Sorta
Challenges
Joy to the World
This Chapter is Private — Keep Out!
Tad and Lindsey, Part I
Tad and Lindsey, Part II
The Enemy of Math
The Real Enemy of Math
A Big Growth Year
On the Treadmill
One Small Step for Man
Wow, Who Knew They Got New Jersey News Stations in Africa?
Riding Into the Sunset
Graduation
Perpetual Care
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Jordan Sonnenblick
Copyright
I’m in fourth grade. One day, I’m sitting in my seat in class, minding my own business. I’m kind of quiet, but everyone knows exactly who I am: Jeffrey Alper, That Boy Who Had Cancer. There isn’t a kid in the grade who hasn’t eaten spaghetti at the church hall’s annual Alper Family “Fun-Raiser” Dinner, or gotten dragged to a high school jazz band concert in my honor, or — God help me — bought a Save Jeffrey T-shirt. If you were me, you’d try to keep a low profile, too.
The door opens, and the school counselor walks in, followed by a scrawny kid on crutches. As the counselor starts a whispering powwow with our teacher, the kid sidesteps around her, and I gasp. He’s bald. He’s muttering angrily to himself. And there’s a huge, curving red scar across the entire side of his head.
There follows the kind of awkward silence that, by the time we’re in eighth grade, would probably cause some wise guy to say, “Whoa, dude! Awkward silence!” But we’re still in fourth grade, so we just sit there and squirm until the teacher turns to us and says, “Boys and girls, we have a new student joining us today. His name is Thaddeus Ibsen. Do you remember when we had that talk last week about how we were going to welcome a new classmate? Well, here he is! Thaddeus is going to need our help in becoming a member of our classroom family, and I know I can count on each and every one of you. Now, Thaddeus, why don’t you come on over here and take a seat next to … let’s see … Jeffrey Alper?”
Why is she putting the new kid next to me? Suddenly, I get it. I don’t remember the special talk she supposedly had with the class last week, but then again, I’m absent a lot. Also, I don’t always catch on so fast, but this time, I put two and two together. It takes a moment for the counselor to pull out the chair next to mine, for the new kid to maneuver himself into it, and for class to start up again. As soon as the teacher begins telling us about our next social studies assignment, I lean over and whisper, “Hi, I’m Jeffrey. I had cancer, too.”
He looks at me like I’m a particularly loathsome slice of school-lunch meat loaf and says, “Wow, congratulations! What do you want, a medal?”
That’s how I meet my best friend.
Well, for what it’s worth, I’m here. I never knew it was possible to feel so numb on such a big day. I’m sitting in my hot, sticky gown, trying to keep my big, stupid-looking square hat from tilting and sliding off my head completely. It doesn’t help that the metal folding chair I’m on has been baking in the sun for hours. I stare at the sweat-drenched neck pimples of the kid in front of me, but really I’m not looking at anything.
In fact, because I’m me, I’m spacing out. My mom always says, “Give Jeffrey ten seconds, and he’ll find something to wonder about.” And today, I have more material than usual. For example, why is everybody staring so hard at me? I guess I should be used to it by now, but I’m not. People used to stare at me enough when I was just one half of the Cancer Twins, but things have hit a whole new level since the relapse. And my long ride. The whole state testing fiasco. The lawsuit threat, and the Great Eighth-Grade Walkout.
Now I am not just Jeffrey Alper, struggling eighth grader. Since all this stuff has hit the fan, for the second time in my life, I am Jeffrey Alper, Official Town Cause.
Go, me.
If you want to know how this thing started, I’ll tell you. It was right at the beginning of the year, in Miss Palma’s English class. She gave each kid (except me and Tad) a marble notebook, and told us that she would assign journal topics several days each week as class warm-up exercises. Then she told us our first topic: The Most Annoying Thing in the World. I opened my laptop and got right to work:
When I was four years old, I was diagnosed with cancer. The treatment lasted almost three years, and it was rough. I lost all my hair, which used to be blond and curly and really cool. When it grew back in, it was brown and straight and really dorky. I remember being tired all the time, and having bruises all over my body. Oh, and I used to throw up pretty often. I still have the scar on one side of my chest from where the doctors implanted my chemotherapy port, too.
I don’t remember most of the details, but I know that being treated for leukemia was torture. The funny thing is, the treatment is nothing compared to what happens after you’re “cured.” And that’s the most annoying thing in the world: They tell you how lucky you are to be cured, like you’ve escaped a death sentence. But being a cancer survivor can be a life sentence all its own.
On the last day of my cancer treatment, the hospital people threw a little party with cake and ice cream. Everybody was hugging and laughing, but my mom looked sad the whole time. On the whole two-hour ride home from Philadelphia, I tried to sleep. It was hard because my brother, Steven, wouldn’t stop blabbing on and on about his girlfriend, Annette, but finally, Steven and I must both have dozed off. When we were maybe half an hour from home, I woke up. My parents were talking in the front seat, and it sounded like my mother might have been crying. Dad was being his usual impatient self.
“What do we do now?” Mom asked.
“What do you mean, ‘what do we do now?’ We get off the turnpike and make a left.”
“Ha-ha. I mean … what do we do now?”
“I don’t know, honey. Maybe we go home and live happily ever after.”
“But we don’t know if Jeffrey will stay healthy. You know he won’t even officially be out of the woods for two more years. But there we were, eating cake and pretending everything’s perfect. It just seems … wrong.”
“So what are you saying? Should we sit around wearing black until Jeffrey’s almost ten? Look, I don’t mean to snap at you. Really, I don’t. It’s just … we have to put this behind us. The way I see it, we don’t have a whole lot of other choices.”
Looking back, it seems pretty weird that Dad was the one saying we should all live happily ever after. I guess saying it and doing it are two different things, or he wouldn’t hate me so much now.
“Time!” Miss Palma called. “Jeffrey Alper, did you hear me? It’s time to stop writing now.”
Apparently, she had been talking to me for a while before I noticed. Tad elbowed me in the ribs, and muttered, “Attention, Captain Spedling! All hands on deck!”
See, I have this problem. I get kind of spacey sometimes, and I miss some of the things my teachers say. That happens to a lot of kids who have had leukemia, because the chemotherapy drugs and radiation can mess up your brain permanently. Some kids come through it totally fine, but I’m not one of those kids. I never even had radiation, but I did have “high-dose and intrathecal methotrexate,” which is the fancy way of saying that the doctors used to shoot poison into my spinal cord and bathe my brain in it. And it left me a little scrambled up. By the way,
Tad used to make fun of other kids’ disabilities all the time. I didn’t really like it, but trying to make Tad politically correct was just a recipe for disaster.
“Uh, sorry, Miss Palma,” I said. “I was just really concentrating on my writing.”
She smiled sweetly. “That’s funny, Jeffrey. You know, I taught your older brother, Steven. He was exactly the same way.”
“Spastic?” Tad whispered, not very quietly.
She gave him a look. “Thoughtful,” she said.
Wow, this was new. Teachers never had any patience for my learning problems. And they definitely never told me I was anything like my perfect older brother. The bell rang then, and Miss Palma smiled again. “Well, class,” she said over the sound of twenty-seven kids unzipping their backpacks, “I can’t wait to see how we learn and grow together this year.” It was the kind of dorky thing that teachers say all the time, but I had the feeling Miss Palma really meant what she said. That’s when I started to think that maybe eighth grade could be different from all of the other horrible school years I’d had.
As Tad would say, “Hoping is your first mistake.”
That first week of school had at least one other huge highlight: I met the girl of my dreams. I mean, it’s not like we had some exclusive relationship or anything. She was probably the girl of just about everyone’s dreams. But I’m the guy who made friends with her first.
Kind of.
It happened just before science class, first thing in the morning on the first day of school. I was trying to hustle through the crowded chaos of the hallway, which is hard to do with a limp. As I came around a corner, I saw a girl crouched down on the floor, attempting to gather up a million papers, along with the contents of her entire backpack. People were stepping around her, and even right over her stuff, but nobody was stopping to help. I figured I’d be late to class if I stopped, but I also figured this girl was going to get stampeded if someone didn’t help her to pick up her stuff before the warning bell rang.
I knelt next to her and started grabbing lipsticks, packs of gum, and — uh — feminine items. Her dark hair totally covered her face, so I didn’t get a look at her until we had gotten everything back together and stood up. When she looked sideways at me to say thank you, I felt my entire world shift violently on its axis. I’d heard people say that beauty can hit you suddenly, but I had thought it was a figure of speech. Uh-uh. This was like, Ka-POW!
Miss Ka-POW! spoke, and the torrent of words was as overwhelming as her looks. “Hey, thanks! Wow, people around here are really serious about getting to class on time. Back in California, nobody would have helped a new kid, either, but that’s because they’d be worried about not looking cool. But here — geez! I felt like I was, like, in the middle of a riot. Hi, I’m Lindsey. Lindsey Abraham. We just moved here from L.A. Well, not really L.A. The O.C., technically. But close enough, right? And you’re…?”
I was speechless. The neurologist would tell you I have “slow processing as a late effect,” which is another way of saying that people can really make me look dumb if they’re quick talkers. And apparently Lindsey Abraham was, like, an intercontinental talking missile. By the time my brain worked its way through her whole train of thought, I must have looked like a total goon. “Uh, it’s Jeffrey. Jeffrey Alper. From New Jersey.” Oh, good God, I thought. Did I really just say that?
She giggled. “Well, hello, Jeffrey Alper from New Jersey. And thanks again for being the one person who stopped to help.” The bell rang. “Ooh, now I’ve made you late to class.”
“It’s OK, my class is right here. I hope you don’t think our whole school is rude. Someone would have stopped to help, but, you know, first day and all….”
Lindsey Abraham smiled at me. Wow, do people have white teeth in California, or what? “It’s all right. Someone did stop to help. By the way, are you one of those people who always see the good in everybody?”
“I try.”
We looked at each other, and for that instant, we were equal — I don’t think she knew what to say, either. Of course, she recovered first. “You said your class is this one, right?” She squinted at her schedule, which was partly crumpled in her hand and had a big sneaker footprint across it. “Science with, uh, Laurenzano?”
“Yeah, but watch out going in. He’s famous for getting mad when people come in late.”
Lindsey smiled again. I could get used to that smile, I thought. On second thought, no, I’d probably never get used to it. I liked it, though. A lot. “Come with me,” she said. “I owe you one. Is that the back door of this room? OK, you hit that one, and I’ll go in the front.” Then she turned on her heel and barged into the room like it was a Hollywood party and she was on the red carpet. I headed for the back door. What else was I going to do?
Miraculously, Mr. Laurenzano was nowhere in sight. Kids were grabbing seats for their friends, but there was still a totally empty table for four at the back of the room, so I kind of eased my way over there, hoping nobody would notice I was late. I sat in one chair, and pulled the chair next to mine away to save a space for Tad.
Meanwhile, in front of the room, Lindsey was the star attraction. It was like a movie scene or something: Everybody’s conversations just totally stopped as she walked across the floor. Nobody was going to notice me now. She smiled at the closest guy — this chess geek named Connor — and said, “Is this Mr. Laurenzano’s room?” He just swallowed a few times, then nodded. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m new here, and this school is so confusing! At my old school in California, we didn’t have all these inside hallways. It was more like —”
Mr. Laurenzano popped out of the little back room that lab classrooms always have, and said, “Seats, everybody! We have science to do!” Lindsey looked around for an empty place, and my table was her only option. I couldn’t believe my luck. She glided over, gestured toward the chair directly across from me, and raised one eyebrow. “Be my guest,” I said.
Wow, was that a slick line, or what? “Be my guest.” So suave, so smooth. This girl’s heart would be mine by third period.
As if.
Lindsey sat down, and the smell of her perfume wafted across to me. I was hypnotized. Mr. Laurenzano started taking attendance, and when he got to her name, I repeated it in my mind: Lindsey Abraham. Such a perfect name: five syllables that rolled right across the tongue. Lindsey Abraham. I wondered how much it would hurt to get those fourteen letters tattooed on my arm.
Unfortunately, I realized, if somebody wanted to get all of that onto my bicep, they would have to write pretty small. But maybe just the initials? L.A. And she was from there, too! It was perfect.
Now if only I didn’t —
“Jeffrey Alper!” Mr. Laurenzano was calling my name, his lower lip already curling into a sneer of distaste. And everybody was staring at me, including Lindsey. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time he’d said it. But this wasn’t my usual spacing-out problem. This was, like, a hormonal emergency. Lindsey grinned.
I thought I might pass out.
“Here,” I said weakly.
“Mr. Alper, I don’t know what kind of attention your seventh-grade science teacher demanded, but in this classroom, you will be silent and attentive at all times. We will be working with dangerous, flammable —”
Lindsey was grinning at me. Her lips were lush and perfect, sparkling and glossy. I just wanted to stare at them until —
“Is that understood, Mr. Alper?”
“Uh, absolutely,” I replied automatically. I mean, I had no clue what I was supposed to have understood, but I didn’t think asking this guy to repeat himself would help. Just then, the classroom door opened, and Tad wheeled himself over to my table. He looked at me, then at Lindsey, who had stopped grinning, and was looking coolly at him. Then he looked back at me, and kind of smirked down into his book bag as he took out his laptop computer. Tad and I are allowed to type everything. A lot of cancer survivors do fine in school, but Tad and I both have tons of nerve damage,
so we get special accommodations — as Tad says, we’re kind of like honorary speds. Both of us have really horrendous handwriting because our hands aren’t very coordinated, so voilà! We get laptops.
Other kids are always jealous of our laptop privileges, and once in a while someone mutters something about it. When we were in seventh grade, this one kid named Tim said it wasn’t fair, and Tad just about lost his mind right in the middle of social studies. He was all, like, “Not fair? Oh, I’m sorry I get this lovely laptop computing device when all you get is the ability to walk, control your hands, and know you’ll probably survive until your eighteenth birthday.” Then the kid was going, “Uh, I didn’t mean …” But Tad wasn’t done yet. While the whole class watched in horror, he put his hands through the metal support braces on the arms of his wheelchair and forced himself to stand up. Then he took a shaky little step to the side, gestured toward the chair, and said, “Why don’t you take a turn with the laptop? You can even have my seat.”
The teacher was totally pale and panicked. She said, “Um, Tad, why don’t you just … I’m sure Timothy wasn’t trying to … uh …” Tim looked like he wanted to die on the spot, but Tad still wasn’t finished. He said, “What, Timmy? Don’t you want to trade places anymore? Then you could be a partial cripple instead of a …” At that point, Tad had to stop and catch his breath because it’s really hard for him to support himself. I rushed around a couple of desks to get to Tad, and tried to help him back into his seat. This brought on one of his alarming coughing fits, but as he sank back down into his chair, I’m pretty sure everyone in the room noticed that a couple of the coughs were really the end of his sentence: “… complete COUGHing COUGHhead.”