Up in her glass roost, the pinks and purples of the sunset began to sink and bleed around her like watercolors into a paper sky. Cam layered every long-sleeved thing she owned on top of one another and put on two pairs of socks. She popped in
Disturbing Behavior
, a Katie Holmes classic about an impossibly perfect clique of teenagers who turned out to be zombie-alien-monster things, and waited for the familiar movie-watching calm to come over her as the opening credits began.
“Cam!”
Cam could hear Perry's big feet inadvertently stomping toward the stairs. Poor little bastard. Literally.
Cam was proud of how Perry handled her bastardy, actually. She took it in stride, never questioning her self-worth. She seemed to know it wasn't her fault that her parents were impulsive fools. Cam wondered, though, if the day would come when Perry would set off in search of her pale father in the dark hinterlands of Norwegia. (That's what Perry called it when she was three and they told her she was Norwegian). Cam pictured a determined twenty-year-old Perry trudging through the tundra in her snowshoes and rucksack, knocking on the doors of Norwegian villagers. Too bad Cam wouldn't be around to see that.
Perry's rosy cheeks popped up through the floor of the cupola where the staircase ended. The Maine cold was good for her arctic blood.
“Cam!” Perry was excited.
“What?!” Cam feigned sarcastic excitement back at her.
“There's a party!”
“So?” said Cam.
“So you have to go,” said Perry.
“Why?”
“You need to meet people. It's a summer solstice party. On the island of the lighthouse. You have to take a zip line to get to it. Everyone will be there. There will be a bonfire and everything. You like fire.”
“Who's âeveryone'?”
“Everyone. Asher will be there.”
“So what?”
“Agh. Campbell, please?” Perry came all the way upstairs and sat on Cam's bed.
“Why do you care so much that I go to this party?” Cam grabbed one of Perry's silky ponytails and looped it around her finger.
“Because I want to go and I can't, and if I can't go, you should go. I'm sick of seeing you moping around up here. It's depressing. This place is really amazing. You should start exploring. We came all this way.”
“When's the party?” Cam asked, toying with her.
“Tonight.”
“Nope, sorry. I have an appointment tonight with Katie Holmes and her Disturbing Behavior.”
“Campbell, you are so lame. Are you ever going to leave the house?
“No.”
“Pathetic.” Cam heard Perry clomp down the stairs as she whipped out her phone and complained to some Hannah Montana on the other end.
Fine, so she was pathetic. Cam had agreed to come to Maine, but she hadn't agreed to parties. She felt safe and comfortable in her aloneness. Maybe it was a stage of dying.
When the movie ended, Cam could hear the sounds of gathering voices echoing off the bay, so she knew the party was starting. Could she really sit up here listening to it all night? She wondered if she were pulling some kind of passive-aggressive moping stunt just to get people's attention. She knew she wasn't, but just to prove it to herself, she might go.
At eleven o'clock, Cam snuck down the stairs. She didn't want to give Perry the satisfaction of knowing she was going, though, so she tiptoed through the living room. As she passed Tweety's cage, he started flitting around and chirping his head off, threatening to blow her cover. He was still mad at her for not giving him credit for his miracle.
“Shh. Tweets. Tweety,” Cam whispered. “Calm down,” she said, peeking underneath the canvas cage cover. “You of all creatures should know the deal, Tweets. I'm very proud of you, okay? But I can't believe in miracles.”
“Chirp?” asked Tweety.
“Because. Just because, okay?”
Because she had to be prepared for the inevitable. The very real thing that was happening to her. It made no sense to get her hopes up.
THIRTEEN
THE WHOLE SKY TURNED TO INDIGO AND THE STARS BLINKED ON, slowly at first, and then all at once, blanketing the sky with pixie dust.
Cam walked around the
U
shape of the bay until she got to the park on the peninsula. She recognized Asher's car in the parking lot and followed the sounds of voices through the ghostly playground, stopping at the edge of a three-story cliff. Below her, a twenty-foot-wide channel of waves bounced wildly off the rocks on either shore. The current seemed angry and trapped, not knowing which way to get out. On the other side of the channel stood the lighthouse, like an enormous birthday candle shoved carelessly into the giant island cake.
“Campbell! Over here! So glad you could make it!” Asher called, cupping his hands around his mouth so she could hear him over the waves. He waved at her from the island down below, where he was manning the landing of the zip line.
“Yeah, thanks for inviting me,” Cam said sarcastically, but she knew he couldn't hear her.
Standing next to her at the top of the zip line was a broad-chested guy with curly brown hair. He wore a striped, preppy orange and gray sweater with holes in the cuffs and elbows. These people could have stepped right out of a Land's End catalog. She bet they had names like catalog colors too, like Logan or Sage or Persimmon or Russet.
“What's your name?” she asked the boy.
“Royal,” he said.
See
, thought Cam.
Royal handed her a set of rusty, upside-down bicycle handlebars with pink streamers coming out of the ends. The handlebars were attached to a pulley, which was threaded through with some taut nylon rope. The rope was tied at one end to a tree branch on the mainland, and on the other, to a lamppost on the island down below.
Next to the “zip line” was a little funicular cart contraption that the sensible lighthouse keeper used. It, too, hung on a pulley, but in the cart, you could pull yourself slowly, hand over hand, along a thick wire.
“Why can't I use that?” Cam screamed down to Asher.
“We're not supposed to touch it,” he replied.
“We're not supposed to be here at all, are we?”
“This is more fun. Come on. Try it,” he coaxed.
“You just sort of lean back and then lift up your feet,” Royal said helpfully.
In his right hand, Royal held on to another, thinner, slacker rope attached to the handlebars, so that he could haul them back to the launching pad for the next customer.
Cam got set up. “Wait. Safety first,” said Royal. He gave her a bright orange life vest.
“What's this for?”
“In case you fall in.”
“Won't I be dead if I fall in?”
“Not necessarily. Here.”
“Why is it wet?” Cam asked. Had someone else already fallen in?
“You'll be fine. Really,” said Royal.
Cam was beginning to sweat in spite of having to wear the freezing cold life vest. It was so strange how her body still went through the motions of being afraid, when really, why should it? If she was going to die soon anyway, it shouldn't matter if it was by jumping off a cliff or lying in some horrible hospital bed.
Here goes
, Cam thought, and she leaned back and lifted her feet.
The wind rushed and whistled by her ears so she couldn't hear anything else. It felt more like falling than flying. She felt completely out of control. Her whole body was rubbery from fear, in a good way. Asher caught her at the other end, his big hands wrapping around either side of her life vest.
Her hand slipped down to cover his. She felt his knuckles like knots in a tree branch, covered in the same soft downy hair he had on his legs. He was strong and gentle, and for just a millisecond Cam felt safe. A feeling she hadn't had in a long time.
“See what I mean about the damsel-in-distress thing?” said Cam. “I think it's a problem for you. You're like a help-a-holic,” she said, catching her breath as he hoisted her to shore and made sure she got her footing.
“You loved it, didn't you?”
“It was all right,” said Cam. She didn't want to seem overly excited.
Suddenly she asked, “Hey, how do we get back?” The zip line obviously went only one way.
“Sometimes we use the cart,” said Asher. “Or kayaks.”
Kayaks?
thought Cam. The few parties she'd been to in Florida consisted of lounging around the pool in bikinis while the boys played some stupid drinking game and prowled around hoping for a nipple slip. These Maine kids were ambitious.
“The party's over there,” said Asher. “Just follow the sounds of drumming.”
Normally walking into a party alone would have freaked Cam out, but she was riding high from her trip on the zip line. She climbed over some huge boulders and looked over to the beach where kids, mostly boys, were seated in a circle playing different percussion instruments, while others, mostly girls, danced barefoot in twirling circles in the sand. In the center was a fire. Cam wouldn't call it a bonfire exactly, but it was a fire. Above them, to the left, loomed the lighthouse painted with broad red and white stripes.
She looked around for the keg, but there didn't seem to be one. Everyone must have reached an altered state from the drumming and dancing, because she didn't see any drinking. It reminded Cam of the time her mom found some absurd post on a parenting blog that warned of girls getting secretly drunk by soaking their tampons in vodka.
“Campbell, do you do this?” she'd asked.
“Yes, Mom, I am constantly
tamped
with vodka,” Cam had said, proud of herself for suddenly discovering the etymology of
tampon
.
She hadn't had the energy to tell her mom that parents' imaginations were so much worse than anything teenagers could dream up by themselves. No one she knew was weird enough to soak her tampon in vodka. Unless that was how these twirling girls were rolling.
Cam found a through-line around the boulders and hopped down to the beach. It was warmer near the fire. She sat on a rock and watched for a while. She let herself drift into the rhythms of the drums, closed her eyes, and rocked back and forth.
After a minute, she was startled by someone's rough, spindly fingers slipping into her hand and yanking her off the rock.
“You can dance,” said a girl with long blonde hair that hung in dirty, wavy strands to her waist. She wore a cream-colored maxidress that was embedded with dirt at the hem and soaked with seawater to her knees. Around one ankle she wore a macramé anklet, something Cam would normally not tolerate. This girl, though, seemed to embody “flower child” from the inside out, willowy and graceful, as if her parents were actually flowers.
Cam said nothing but joined the girl dancing near the fire.
“What's your name?” Cam asked.
“What?”
“
Como se llamas?
”
“Oh. Sunny!” she said, and she smiled dreamily, as if the sound of her own name filled her with bliss. She went back to dancing with her eyes closed.
Cam should have guessed from the little sun tattoo on her other, un-macraméd ankle. “Sunny” was perfect. And could also be a Land's End color.
Cam stepped inside the music and let it close around her like a bubble. Inside the music there was no cancer. No awkwardness. No pain. No abandonment. No Flamingo List. Inside the music, even inside these primitive rhythms, Cam felt free.
Sunny seemed to approve of Cam's dancing, every once in a while opening her eyes to check Cam out and then nodding her a little “Right on.”
After a short while, she was surprised to feel the familiar burning sensation of her disease. She hadn't felt it since they'd arrived in Maine. It was hard to describe, but it was as if each of her cells began to individually smolder with sickness. She didn't know if the toxicity she felt was from the cancer or from the chemicals and radiation used to treat it, but there were times when she just felt poisoned, green, acidic. So different from this pure, organic girl spinning beside her.
She tapped Sunny on the shoulder and asked, “Is there any water?” Then she tilted an imaginary cup to her mouth in case Sunny couldn't hear her.
“Over here,” said Sunny, and she led Cam to a cooler on the other side of the fire. The water cooler, a big orange jug, like the one athletes used to dump Gatorade onto their coaches, sat behind a wall of rocks. Cam looked around the cooler for cups, but she didn't see any.
“Oh. Like this,” said Sunny, and she squatted down and opened her mouth beneath the spigot like a baby bird. “Reduce, reuse, recycle,” she said. “No use wasting cups.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist.
Cam filled her mouth as well and swallowed what tasted like water from a mountain stream tinged with a little bit of sugar. In one gulp she began to feel purified, that burning, toxic feeling slowly washing away.
“Good, isn't it?” Sunny asked. “It's holy water. We steal it from the baptismal font at the Catholic church. It just tastes better.”
“Won't God be upset that you stole his water?” asked Cam.
“I don't presume to know what God thinks,” said Sunny. “I like to think she'd want us to have it.”
The holy water reminded Cam of the makeshift christening Lily had performed for her on the dock that night. She wished she wasn't reminded of how she threw away her only remaining friendship because she had to be
right
about Ryan. If Cam finally learned one lesson before she died, it would be that being
kind
was sometimes more important than being
right
. All Cam had had to say that night was “I'm happy for you.” Four simple words.