“Why go back? The vampires have rallied. You might die … again.”
“Because.”
“Because you’re more than a surfer of the stars.”
Persephone looks stunned, then accepting. “I am. But what if I get sick again?”
There is one large box where the two of them stare at each other wordlessly, a long moment of silence. The one box turns into two smaller ones, then three tiny ones. It’s an epic long staring match, almost as long as our twenty nights of silence. What neither of them expects is the magnitude of their geomagnetic disturbances whenever they’re within kissing distance of each other.
See also: chemistry.
Finally, Oskar breaks the silence and says, “Well, then you’ll need to wear more than that if you’re going to save the world.”
“Are you body shaming me?” Persephone says.
“Uniform shaming.”
Even as my heart aches a little because the banter between them (us) is so familiar, I still snort. (Then, I wonder, logically, how the heck did Oskar procure a new light-up uniform for her, a mystery that remains unexplained in the comic for now.)
Then there’s Persephone’s last line to Oskar before they fall into each other’s arms: “I’ve only felt this comfortable with one other person in the world.” The next morning, Persephone traces the tattoo of the Gemini constellation on Oskar’s back while he sleeps. She is racked with guilt for being distracted from her mission, for replacing her sister even briefly, for falling for this man, for wondering if Oskar is who he says he is.
I pause right at this point to research the Geminids. These meteors originate from the constellation Gemini, Latin for twins. Twins, like Josh and his brother, Caleb.
The comic drops from my lap to the floor.
I’ve only felt this comfortable with one other person in the world. That’s what Josh had admitted to me the night of our own meteor shower. Had he meant his twin? I flip back to the page where Persephone traces the Geminids on Oskar’s back. Did Josh feel guilty because he thought I had somehow replaced Caleb? (And was he foreshadowing that Oskar might actually be Ultraviolent Reyes?)
In the last panel, Persephone slips into the starlit darkness. Unbeknownst to her, Oskar trails closely behind. She takes to the stars; he takes to the sky, following her into the dark.
Unable to focus now with Persephone orbiting in my head (what, exactly, was Josh saying to me and the rest of the world?), yet unwilling to have my heart recrack with false hope, I decide to do what I have always done best: research. There may not be many people on the planet with solar urticaria, but 1.5 million people in the US alone have lupus. So I get online on my UPF-covered Mac care of Aminta and Caresse, and within a minute, I find what I’m looking for: a chat room for people with lupus. Even better, there’s an entire forum dedicated to managing photosensitivity.
Luluboo (new member): Can we just ask questions about how to deal with the sun and see what other ppl are going thru and see their answers so I don’t feel so alone?
That single question makes me feel less lonely, especially when at least fifteen other members immediately welcomed Luluboo and reassured her that this is a safe spot. Below that, the questions and stories begin, interspersed with introductions of new members. There’s Denali, who shares how she’s had to stay inside for three straight months when the summer never set in Alaska and is now afraid to venture outside, wondering whether it’s worth the risk. Then TheVault, who chimes in about how even sun-protective clothes aren’t completely sun-blocking, how she got badly burned, how her body flared and ached for weeks afterward.
It’s depressing, all these stories, all my whispers of “me, too.” That is, until I scroll way down and get cyber-slapped in the face by a poufy-haired, silver-haloed grandmother.
Nana1947: Yes, stay inside. Don’t dare a flare. I understand that. I locked myself inside for the first ten years after my diagnosis, so worried that I’d be in pain.
Yet there’s smelling the first bloom of jasmine. Walking around the block with your dying husband. Throwing a ball with your daughter. Watching your grandson graduate from college. The cost of going out is high, but the cost of locking out life is much, much higher.
You can guess the price I choose to pay for those precious moments when my body feels up to it. Invariably, my body shuts down afterward, recovering is taking me longer and longer. For me, living is worth it. The only answer that really matters, though, is yours: Are you staying inside because you absolutely must or are you hiding inside because you’re afraid to take a chance outside?
…
I rear away from the screen, as scalded with the truth as most of the responders. I haven’t been running scared; I have encased myself in fear, the same as Josh. A few haters talk about how their condition was so much worse than Nana1947 and how dare she assume that everyone is staying inside because they’re afraid. To which my new nana-hero responded with one line: There is still starlight.
I still don’t have the heart to make soup.
…
Or do my calculus homework. Or reread Persephone for the thirteenth time. It’s exposing, really, how Josh saw straight through to my fear that I refused to admit to myself—that I really am the Sick Girl. But if I felt vulnerable, what about him? He revealed himself to me through our conversations, too.
And now through this comic.
…
So I listen to a podcast and have a “no way” moment. The first thing I play happens to be the very episode on NPR that Auntie Ruth cited: Gastrodiplomacy: Cooking Up a Tasty Lesson on War and Peace.
Enemy, frenemy, friend, who knew that the way to people’s hearts and minds—really and truly—is through their stomachs, just as I thought? Peace and progress can be served on a silver platter.
…
For a change of scenery, literally, I flip through the guidebook to Iceland, then look up the gastrodiplomacy class at American University, which leads me to one even closer to home at the University of Oregon. There are no fully dedicated gastrodiplomacy programs.
Yet.
…
There is still starlight.
SEVEN TYPES OF TENT-DWELLERS YOU KNOW AND LOVE
(A PERSON WHO LACKS THE COURAGE TO GO OUT AND EXPERIENCE THE WORLD.)
The Bunker Occupant. Keeps themselves cloistered inside safe from the sun, even though there is starlight.
The No-Thank-You Nondater. Keeps themselves single because they’re afraid to break their hearts a second time.
The Crisis Planner(s). Keeps themselves from disaster with long, detailed contingency plans that obliterate crisis, but also any sense of adventure or fun.
The Princess. Keeps themselves in entitlement mode so other people will take care of them.
The Pity Partier. Keeps themselves locked in their problem, where every possibility is an automatic knee-jerk no.
The Player. Keeps themselves from true emotional connection with an endless number of romantic possibilities always on simmer. (See also: The Ghoster.)
The Ghoster. A kissing cousin to The Player except that their modus operandi is to keep themselves from any emotional entanglement with The Drastic Pullback, cutting off all contact with a preemptive good-bye.
I stare at this list in my day planner. Maybe we’re all scared of something and just doing our best to live in what feels like a hard, unpredictable, and scary world.
And maybe, just maybe, when I stop placing myself in the middle of The Story of Us, I have to acknowledge that Josh isn’t a classic Ghoster: Even after big, revelatory talks that lasted hours and hours, he kept returning to me. He met my parents. He hung out at Souper Bowl Sundays. He wanted to know me, and he wanted me to know him.
Perhaps his continued silence isn’t because he’s not interested in me. Maybe it’s the exact opposite: that he’s too interested in me, and like The No-Thank-You Nondater, he can’t stand having another person be a casualty of his care. And maybe, just maybe, no matter what I said or
didn’t say, what I did or didn’t do, no matter if I had solar urticaria or not, he would have eventually bolted. It is what tent-dwellers do, after all.
I should know.
Fairy tales are no innocent, sunny things. So I know better when I hear a tentative knock on my basement door in the afternoon and find Red Riding Hood in a maroon hoody, holding a brown paper bag. Just looking at the Molly Moon’s ice cream logo on the bag gives me secondhand sugar high. My appetite stirs for the first time in days.
Roz says uncertainly, “I’m sorry! I got you some ice cream, but it’s kind of melty! The bus stops, like, a billion times! I didn’t know.”
Of course she didn’t know because she has never needed to take the bus. Maybe that’s all I wanted from Roz though: a little effort on my behalf. She’s hand delivered ice cream to me.
So I tell my sister the truth. “This is so awesome!”
“They didn’t have Earl Grey anymore,” apologizes Roz, “but they had salted caramel and pumpkin, but pumpkin sounded disgusting, even though it’s Halloween. So I bought salted caramel.”
“It’s Halloween?” I’ve lost track of my days.
“Tomorrow.”
“Wow.”
“Is this okay?”
“This is great,” I assure her. I take a step, then two, out of my basement and into the kitchen. “That is awesome that you got there and back by yourself.”
“I know.” Roz sounds proud of herself. “You want to have it up here? I’ll get you a spoon.”
I shake my head and turn around, but when I look over my shoulder, my little sister, the gastrodiplomat, is gazing at me wistfully. I widen the basement door because I believe in this peace process. “Get two.”
Roz beams like that’s all she has ever wanted: to be invited inside. I hear the clattering of cutlery behind me even as I stand at the door. There’s no “wait for me!” She knows I will.
“She’s cooking!” Mom not-so-surreptitiously whispers from the hall on Sunday morning.
“Finally.” Dad’s relief, I bet, has more to do with his appetite than my return to the land of the living, not that I blame him. I’ve tasted what they’ve been “cooking” during my hiatus from the kitchen, and binge eating does not come to mind.
Their giddy delight surrounds me, but I’m too much in my zen spot to be distracted, especially now that I’m back where I belong. I slice into the tallest Rice Krispie Treats I’ve ever fixed, three types, including one drizzled with chocolate caramel sauce. I’m one hundred percent certain that Geeks for Good will sell out of these faster than at any other bake sale. They are so huge, the little kids who find their surprise treat in their backpacks aren’t going to be able to hold them in their small hands. Perhaps I can’t feed the world, but if I can feed fifty little kids for even a weekend, that is still good. Just like four hours of sunlight.
I’ve never been meant for broadcast stardom in front of a camera, and I’ve never aspired to be a celebrity chef. Behind-the-scenes baking to create understanding, crafting meals to communicate so much more than mere nutrition, highlighting issues with my writing, building goodwill in every meaningful bite and word?
That’s a Plan B that I can get behind. So hand me a spatula. Stat.
“Real lives are at stake,” I hear Mom saying as I now package the final Rice Krispie Treats, s’mores edition. “So we should wait to make the announcement, if we want to play it safe.”
“Safe,” agrees Dad. He opens the back door for my mom. The path lights up as they walk toward the Shed.
There are times when one single word triggers you, propels you into action, demands that you say something after weeks or years of silence. The one word that makes you say to yourself: no more. For Auntie Ruth, it was the word: alone. For me, it is: safe.
Instead of staying sheltered in the kitchen, I move the Souper Bowl Sunday soup (clam chowder, Seahawks vs. Patriots) to the back burner, then grab the document I printed after Roz left for crew practice. I am done with our nonslip, baby-proofed, outlet-covered lives. I head to my parents’ sanctuary, their home office, the Shed.
Even as I give myself the Lee & Li preconfrontation pep talk, my heart is pounding. Roz may have mastered the Art of Saying Whatever to my parents, but I have not.
Out in the Shed, they are sitting at their oversize desk, facing each other. Lee & Li aren’t just left brain and right brain to form the perfect business union; my parents are a perfect heart, left and right ventricles thump-thumping in perfect rhythm. No wonder they play it safe. Who would want to risk that once-in-a-lifetime love?
But I am mummifying in their good intentions.
“Mom, Dad,” I say, standing at the door, feeling like I’m intruding as always on a special moment. “I want to talk to you.”
Instantly, Mom does her laser beam eye scan over my body and asks, “Are you feeling okay? Did you overdo it by cooking? Why don’t you sit down?”
Correction: I’m not mummifying. I have mummified.
“I’m fine.” I take a deep calming breath, then another because the protective layers of their love are many and thick. I place my document in the middle of their desk. “I’m actually feeling great, so great that I have a plan I want to discuss with you.”
“The Viola Li Best-Case Scenario Plan,” Mom reads. “What’s this?”
Dad cranes his neck to read the page upside down. “Move back to your bedroom? Oh, sweetheart, I don’t know.”
Studying my parents, I have absolutely zero doubt they would take my condition, a hundred times they would volunteer for it, a thousand times. My parents would place themselves at the center of every single crisis they’ve ever battled if it meant saving Roz and me, Auntie Ruth, and the world. No wonder reporting the truth isn’t enough for me; I want to nurture the world, too, shape a better future truth for all.
“Mom, Dad, I totally appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” I tell them. “But I have to reframe my condition. It’s not like how I was yesterday is how I’m going to be tomorrow. So it’s a lot healthier for me to think of everything as a test.”
“Testing your boundaries,” Mom says slowly.
“Testing is good,” I tell them. “After the Draconids, now I know I can’t tolerate hours of direct light, not even in the early morning. At least, for now. At some point, I should test that, right? Because what if I can go out at dawn sometime in the future? I want to know.”
“Okay,” Dad says slowly. “So you want to test yourself carefully?”
I nod and because sometimes, as Lee & Li know, you have to hear a new idea three times before you’re willing to listen, I repeat myself, “Testing is the only way I’ll know what my body is capable of tolerating. How am I going to get on a plane or go to college unless I test myself on the days I’m feeling good? Otherwise, I’ll just stay in my bunker for the rest of my life. I can’t be contained in a terrarium.”
“So what you’re saying is you want to live on your terms,” Mom interprets for me.
“I’ve got to live my life,” I correct her. “With the right tools. Like, I can’t wait to test my new Wynnter wear outside.”
“And school?” asks Dad, frowning, scanning the document. “This might be too much, too fast.”
Mom chimes in. “And what about—”
“Just read,” I tell them both, and tap the handwritten document complete with an action plan and an extremely conservative timeline. I have no desire to get sick ever again. When my parents bend over the pages, I play with the new pendant I bought myself online: a piece of Icelandic lava, black as a beautiful night. I tell them again, “Just read.”
Over the past few weeks, we have lived out the Worst-Case Scenario for my condition: me descending into a bunker, living in the dark without knowing, really, how my skin will react to light today or tomorrow or months from now. Our assumption is I will always get sick.
Instead, I would like to propose Plan B: the best case for my condition. This doesn’t mean that I don’t acknowledge the r
eal risks, but it does mean that I get to live on my own terms.
So.
First, I am instituting my Viola Li Security Advisory System, complete with five different alert levels, ranging from green (I’m good to go outside) to red (I’m bunkering inside). I’ll always check the UV Index before I leave home. Even if the UV Index is at zero, I’ll make sure to always carry an emergency kit filled with SPF 100 sunscreen, UPF-protective hat, UPF-barricading clothes, and even an umbrella. My cell phone will always be charged so we can reach each other in the event of emergency. I will always wear a necklace engraved with your numbers to call in case I’m incapacitated as well as a note that I am allergic to the sun.
Second, I am going to move back to my bedroom after I’ve earned enough money to install room blackening shades and room darkening curtains. (Plan B: If things get rough for me again, I will retreat to the bunker.)
Third, I’m going back to high school. I will work with the administration on ways where I can safely attend school without impacting the entire student body. Until I do, I will go to Auntie Ruth’s office a few days a week as originally planned. (Plan B: I will homeschool.)
Fourth, I’m going to college. I will apply to Reed College, which is three hours from home. It has no grades. That should lessen my stress when my body doesn’t cooperate and I have to miss class. I will also lobby for a single with special medical dispensation so no roommate has to suffer in the dark with me. (Plan B: If physical classes are impossible, then I will do all of my classwork online. I will move home if the dorm doesn’t work out.)
And fifth, while being a foreign correspondent may be impossible for me now, the second best thing is for me to be an advocate, which is what I’ve been doing for the last three years anyway: using my writing and culinary skills to advocate for fifty different causes. So I will propose to Reed College to create my own gastrodiplomacy major in conjunction with Le Cordon Bleu, also in Portland.