“Kind?”
“Yeah. Being kind is one of the hardest things to be in high school because you’re so terrified of being cut down yourself that you’re always on your guard. But don’t be like that. Be kind and you will be truly different. A standout. Unique and happy.”
“That’s it? Be kind. All the dangers out there lurking in the mist, and you give me ‘be kind’?”
“I think it’s good,” Cam said confidently with a final slurp of her egg cream. “It’s better to be kind than to be right.”
“All right,” said Perry. “I’ll try it.”
“Good.”
Cam looked up as, suddenly and right on time, the catalog kids ambled toward them giddily from every direction. Sunny and Autumn held bright pink mouse-shaped balloons that bobbed up and down as they skipped in from the east. Grey and Royal—in their preppy striped shirts, boat shoes, and leather choker necklaces—came at them from the west.
“Boo!” Asher startled them from behind.
Cam jumped. “I hate when you do that!” she lied.
“What? It’s the Haunted Mansion.”
Cam led them to the back of the gothic structure, where they climbed one by one up the sharp black metal vines. They found a flat part of the roof behind the main turret and hid themselves beneath the branches of a spooky weeping willow. Grey started up a game of Would You Rather while they waited for the fireworks to begin.
“Keep it PG, mister. This has to be the Disney version,” Cam pleaded, pointing at Perry not so subtly behind her back.
“Okay,” Grey said. “Would you rather make out with Jasmine or Cinderella?”
Cam shot him a look.
“What? I said ‘make out,’” he said innocently, but Cam shook her head. “Okay, fine. Would you rather ‘hold hands’”—he made air quotes—“with Jasmine or Cinderella?”
“Definitely Jasmine.” Autumn giggled. She tilted her head forward, hiding her face behind her curtain of thick auburn hair.
“Yup,” Royal agreed. “I would love to hold that woman’s hand.”
“Hey.” Sunny slapped him weakly on the thigh.
The August air sat on top of them like an ancient sea that had only somewhat evaporated. It was hot and humid and heavy, and they barely had enough energy to swat away the mosquitoes that swirled around them in the dusk.
“Here ya go,” Sunny said, spritzing Cam with her portable Mickey Mouse fan, complete with spray bottle. She put her arm around Cam and laid her head on her shoulder. Her hair smelled like vanilla. “Thanks for bringing us here,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” Cam replied.
“I have one.” Autumn was tracing the lines of Grey’s palm, pretending to read his future. “Would you rather . . . know your destiny or spend a lifetime figuring it out?”
“That’s an easy one,” Royal answered. “I feel so bored already knowing. As if my life is already over. As if I’ll never again be surprised.” Royal was enrolled in premed at UMass and had promised his mother he’d become a doctor.
“I’m full of surprises, though,” Sunny exclaimed, lifting her head from Cam’s shoulder.
“That’s true,” Royal admitted. He gave her a hug and said, “Life with you is never boring.”
“I don’t know,” Autumn said. “I wish I knew what I wanted. It would make things so much easier. Sometimes I don’t even know if I want chocolate or vanilla.”
“I like not knowing,” Perry said. “It’s exciting. Maybe I’ll be a pilot.”
With that, the first of the fireworks shot into the black night. It was a golden one. Metallic and bold as if they had just won a prize.
Asher pulled Cam closer. “You are my destiny,” he whispered. And then they kissed, oblivious to their friends on the roof.
“Hey, who’s the one who said to keep it PG?” Grey laughed.
“It’s okay, I’ve seen them kiss before,” Perry said, completely unfazed.
Cam felt like she had won a prize. Not only the person sitting next to her, but the friendship of the catalog kids. That was something she didn’t even know she’d been craving. Teenagers run in packs. And for too long she’d been trying to go it alone.
When the last pyrotechnic popped and fizzled, leaving smoke snakes hanging tangled in the air, the group climbed back down the latticework. They made their way to the park’s exit and Cinderella’s castle. Make-A-Wish had arranged for them to stay in the Royal Suite.
The faux opulence was spectacular. Marble columns, vaulted ceilings, canopy beds draped in thick velvets and brocades, a parlor room, a magic fireplace with fiber-optic fireworks display, a sunken Jacuzzi tub with a waterfall faucet surrounded by stained glass windows.
As they approached the castle now, Autumn, Grey, Royal, and Sunny kidnapped Perry. They grabbed her and pulled her toward the monorail to sweep her off to her first under-twenty-one dance club in Downtown Disney.
“Wait,” Cam tried to protest, reaching for Perry’s hand. “You don’t need to take her.”
“We’ve got this,” Sunny insisted as she shoved Cam through the heavy door of the private elevator that led to the Royal Suite.
At the top, a carpet of red rose petals covered the floor and formed a candlelit path to the bedroom. Asher waited in his new Mickey Mouse boxer shorts, holding two glasses of sparkling apple cider. Asher, the perfect, did not drink alcohol.
Cam laughed. It was so unbelievably corny. “This isn’t really my thing, you know.”
“I know, but I figured, when in Rome.”
“Are we in Rome?”
“No, I think we’re in medieval France.”
“Cinderella was French?”
“Oui,” he said, and he clinked glasses with her, downed his cider, and then threw her, full glass and all, onto the impossibly large bed covered in slippery golden silk sheets.
“I’m a little intimidated,” she said as he kissed her ear, her neck, her chest. He lifted her shirt and ran his tongue in soft loops down the center of her stomach.
“Just go with it. You are a princess.”
“What does that mean, though?” Cam asked. “How—”
“Oh, my God, Campbell. Be quiet!” He laughed.
Later she realized she could be a princess. Not really a princess, but something other than a cancer patient. She could choose the cancer and the misery or the other, more wonderful parts of her personality. She was a dancer, a scholar, a sister, a veterinary assistant, a girlfriend. She could make the cancer into a much smaller part of her being. For the first time in a long, long time, the cancer was not everything.
THIRTY-ONE
“DO WE HAVE TIME TO SEE THE WORLD TODAY?” ASHER ASKED AS HE stretched and yawned when they finally got up around noon. The girls had already left for their royal spa treatments, and the guys were on the golf course. They were all going to meet up at five for the “Spirit of Aloha” show at the Polynesian.
“The Small World, maybe,” Cam answered, running her fingers down his fabulous front. After the show, they’d get on the next plane to Portland. Alicia had texted Cam about seventy-five times, begging her to come back, and Cam promised her they’d leave tonight. But they couldn’t go without seeing the world first.
The wait time at It’s a Small World was twenty-five minutes, which actually wasn’t bad. As they wound through the snake of a queue, fanning themselves with their maps of the park, Asher peppered her with questions about “Spirit of Aloha,” the bizarre subculture of a subculture in which she was raised.
“It’s so weird to me that instead of living your culture, you perform it,” he said.
“Well, it’s like Sly Stallone described preparing for Rocky,” Cam explained. “Some people work from the outside in, and others work from the inside out. He had to get Rocky’s body and dress like Rocky and talk like Rocky before he could feel who Rocky was. Another actor would feel who Rocky was and then start dressing like him. So some people feel Polynesian, and it moves them to dance. And others, like me, dan
ce to feel more Polynesian. It doesn’t matter how you do it—the end result is the same.”
“Now I need to see Rocky again,” Asher said.
“I know. Me too. You didn’t hear anything I said, did you?”
“No. I was just thinking about Rocky.”
They made the queue’s last turn. Cam winked at a little boy in front of them who kept swinging on the railings in spite of repeated warnings against it. Finally it was time for them to board the boat. They pushed through the turnstile, stepped onto the moving dock, and slid into an open bench. They were off to travel the world. The sickeningly sweet world. It was as if the whole thing were made of candy. As soon as they entered the tunnel, they were assaulted by bright pink, orange, glistening gold, and drizzling glitter. It was a wonderland of papier-mâché. An über-diorama with life-size moving parts.
As a kid, Cam was enchanted by the idea of children in different countries wearing different clothes and eating different foods and speaking different languages. It really was magical to her. The ride’s strange stereotypes of the shirtless African kids playing drums on the back of a giraffe, or the South American women carrying baskets of fruit on their heads, or the French women lifting their skirts to cancan, seemed like a celebration of the world’s fabulous colors.
Stereotypes work for kids, Cam realized, because they still have intact that basic understanding that no one could possibly be less human than anyone else. And this ride brought you back to that notion.
They were in India, and a row of saried women tiptoed their way home from the glowing, white, bulbous Taj Mahal made of sheets. Asher was grinning, completely one with the spectacle. He didn’t notice the exit signs above the hidden back doors of the warehouse or the repairman in the corner changing a lightbulb.
“Awakening your wanderlust, Batman?” Cam asked him, sliding her palm into his.
“A bit,” he answered. And then, “I did get a scholarship, you know.”
“I knew it,” Cam said as they moved from the enormous shadow puppets of Indonesia to the geishas of Japan.
“Ayuh. BC.”
“Are you going to take it?
“It feels like a life-or-death decision for me.”
“It’s not. You can always go home again. You should try it.”
“It is a small world,” Asher said.
“After all,” Cam answered.
But as she said it, she had a vision of Asher’s life at college. Watching his teammates open their care packages sent from their mamas and how that would reinforce his own loneliness. It was sad. “Elaine will send you care packages,” she mumbled.
Then she envisioned the alternative. Asher staying forever in Promise, coaching the high school football team, flirting with the cheerleaders, letting himself drink beer. Just a little at first, and then a six-pack each night as he sat in a recliner, wondering what his life would have been. “You have to leave,” she whispered to him. But her voice was drowned out by another rousing chorus of children’s voices.
The pace of the drumming was picking up as the guests gathered on the gray faux volcanic stone lanai outside the amphitheater. The tiki torches were lit even though the sun had yet to go down, and little girls in sundresses and white pants were climbing on the fake big-headed Polynesian sculptures. The guests ducked their heads so the performers could drape leis around their necks, and the show had reserved the bright purple ones made of real flowers for Cam and her party. She was grateful that none of the catalog kids blurted out any getting lei’d jokes. It was a serious pet peeve of Cam’s. Not because it was disrespectful. Just because it was way too easy.
Izanagi had met them at the hotel. He had his arm around Perry’s shoulder as he escorted her from the hotel lobby. He smiled and twirled her around, presenting to everyone the new pink flowered dress he’d bought for her in the gift shop.
“Cam, how could you bring her here with no clothes?” Izanagi asked.
“It was an accident,” Cam said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” he said, kissing her on both cheeks. Then he held his head down as if remembering again his disappointment that Alicia hadn’t come with them. He had forgotten to shave or to iron his usually crisply laundered slacks.
They all sat at the center table in the front row. The plaintive and lonely Izanagi perked up a tiny bit once the food came and he was able to fling pieces of pineapple into people’s mouths with his knife.
After the first number—a Hawaiian dance in honor of the sun—the MC, Momma Suzi, announced that an old friend had come to visit the show. She asked Cam to come onstage and juggle her fire knife.
“I think we still have it, Campbell. Ah, here it is,” she said as John, one of Cam’s dad’s old friends, carried the knife out to center stage. It was about the size and shape of a rifle.
Fire juggling was one of Cam’s more tomboyish pursuits. There were not many girls who really wanted to do it, and she had mostly learned so she could spend time with her father. She wasn’t sure what Asher would think. The crowd applauded, and they played her favorite song.
Finally she got up and lit each end of the knife. She began spinning it, vertically at first, with two hands. She threw the knife high into the air, spun around, and caught it behind her back. She swept the fire underneath her legs. She twirled the knife with one hand and then the other. She was in a trance, fully in the moment, when she heard the crowd start laughing, and she saw something big and orange in her peripheral vision.
Tigger was juggling a fire knife.
“Jackson,” she yelled. “Isn’t that suit flammable?”
Tigger nodded his big chin up and down.
“Then get out of here!”
Tigger nodded again and tossed his fire knife to John, who caught it and doused the flames. Tigger waved to the audience and stepped down off the stage.
Cam twirled one more time and then realized that what she was doing was very similar to Sunny’s twirling gig. She looked over at Sunny, who was beaming attentively at the whole production, and got an idea. She doused her flame, breathing in the familiar fumes of the lighter fluid, and gestured offstage for them to throw her another knife. Then she invited Sunny to come up to the stage.
The Florida sun had freckled Sunny’s face, and she couldn’t hide her big-toothed grin as she climbed onto the stage in her maxidress. Cam gave her one of the knives and then said, “Just do what I do.”
She shifted her weight back and forth from one foot to the other and then began tossing the knife between her hands. Sunny followed suit with her own knife, and then Cam began throwing hers higher into the air. Sunny did the same until they were both twirling madly. They ended with a big simultaneous toss-and-catch behind their backs.
The crowd went wild, shocked that a white girl could get all native like that without any preparation. We are more alike than we are unalike, Cam quoted to herself from Maya Angelou, as much as Disney would try to have you believe otherwise.
Cam and Sunny took a bow, to the standing ovation of Mainers in front of them. Asher beamed at them, and Royal let out a piercing whistle. “Encore, encore!” they cried, but Cam and Sunny were done. They sat back down to enjoy the stomping and slapping dance of the Samoan men and the Hawaiian volcano goddess hula that closed the show.
Jackson left his Tigger costume in the kitchen and joined them with his new girlfriend, a cute little blonde girl named Peg.
“See what I mean?” Cam nudged Jackson and gestured with her chin toward Peg. “It would have been a mistake to try and date me. You look really happy.”
“I am,” he said. “Asher looks nice, too.”
“Ayuh,” Cam said, and she laughed because she had said it completely without irony.
After their steaming chocolate lava desserts, the show was over, and Cam said her good-byes to the cast of “Aloha,” Jackson, Joe the cook, and Momma Suzi the MC. Izanagi had been lurking around, waiting for his turn. He finally approached her with his head down, fiddling with the jade rin
g their mother had given him before she left. He didn’t yet speak. It was as if he needed to concentrate to keep his composure.
“Bye, Iz, it was so nice to see you,” said Cam.
“Yeah, um, yes,” he stammered. When he finally looked up, his eyes were droopy and red rimmed as if he hadn’t slept since they had left. Wow, thought Cam, my mom really is a wicked heartbreakah.
“Don’t be sad.” Perry wrapped her skinny arms around him and said, “We’ll go to a Devil Rays game when we get back.”
“Okay,” Izanagi squealed, and then he let out an audible sob. He continued to sob on Perry’s shoulder. Perry, still locked in this embrace, looked up at her sister, incredulous and slightly amused. She mouthed, “What do we do?”
We can’t leave him like this, thought Cam. There was nothing sadder than a man left alone and adrift.
“Come with us, Iz.”
“Really?” He looked up, blew his nose in his handkerchief, and smiled.
“Yeah.” Cam smiled. “We have a magic ticket.”
THIRTY-TWO
CAM ASKED THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT FOR SOME WATER AND SOME herbal tea and an aspirin.
“You okay?” Asher asked.
It was nice of him to notice. They were still parked at the gate, and he was already sitting straight-backed and stiff, white-knuckling the armrests, beads of sweat dripping down the side of his face.
“I’m okay. You just take care of yourself.” She had a little headache and a sore throat, but she was probably just dehydrated. “Close your eyes,” she said to Asher, “and imagine yourself on the ground in Promise.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yeah. Just fast-forward through this whole flight thing and imagine what you’ll be doing when it’s over.”
She talked Asher through an entire summer day in Promise, from his western omelet breakfast at Dad’s, his favorite home-style diner, to hauling traps on the Stevie, to his workout, to dinner on the bay at sunset and then sitting down to watch Rocky in the living room of the carriage house. At one point, he fell asleep, but when he awoke, she kept telling the story, picking up where she’d left off. She was halfway through the plot of the movie, to the place where Rocky was breaking the ribs of the beef carcasses at the meat packers, when the pilot came on and told the flight attendants to prepare for landing.