I don’t remember too much because the rum went straight to my brain. But Yowell wasn’t nice to the girls. He made their drinks stronger and tried to get them to dance on the bed in their underwear. Mack passed out and I ended up being the one to walk them back to the dorm. They had a friend inside who let them in the side door that opens out to the river. A little dicey because you can’t be but so quiet when you’ve been drinking rum and Cokes for two hours. Brewer must have been napping that night.
Here’s the thing about Holden and the bars he hangs out in. When Holden finally hangs up on Sally, he knows he’s been a jerk. Which makes him feel even lousier than when he started. Not a good feeling, but it’s how I learned I didn’t really like to drink. I don’t think I’ll tell my dad. No point in spoiling what’s left of my crazy life or making him think he failed as a father because I drank when he’d worked so hard to convince us not to.
The whole point of this story, though, is Bethany coming to my room. I’m not sure who lets her in, unless it’s Mr. Hovenfelt who’s been teasing me all week about how cute she is. Yeah, cute like a lapdog. He’s a man who likes happy endings, definitely an optimist.
Anyway she knocks and whispers, “It’s Bethany McIntyre.” Like there were so many Bethanys in the Mexican desert.
“What’s up?” I open the door and she slinks in.
“I wanted to talk.”
“About?”
“Just talk. You know, with someone my own age. Kids’ stuff, music, school, not business or my mother.”
“Yeah, okay, have a seat.” I pull out the desk chair. But she ignores me and flops herself down on the second cot, the one that isn’t all messed up from my lying on it. She’s in her bathrobe. Pj’s underneath, I hope. My stupid body is going crazy and I’m mad at myself for being so disloyal to Meredith over just the closeness of a girl in pajamas.
For a couple of minutes we lie there on the cots, on either side of this crumby little bathmat they put in there for a rug. It’s bright yellow, but all mashed down like people have been walking on it for years and it’s never been washed. I try not to think about those other people.
“My mom doesn’t know I’m here. She thinks Dad took me for a vacation to the islands.”
Apart from “the islands” being an insider’s code for a social group I’ll never be part of, I feel like we’re soul mates in this whole experimental thing. There’s a reason we’re here at the same time.
“Are you a virgin, Daniel?”
If I’d been drinking, I would have sprayed soda all over the room. I hardly know this girl. The whole thing is too weird, sharing this kind of out-of-body experience in a foreign country where no one outside the clinic knows your whole name and you’re hiding from the authorities. I’m still stuttering when she goes on without my answer.
“I am. And it’s a drag. No one will go to bed with me now that I’m sick, and if I die, I’ll never know what it’s like.”
The echoes in my head are pounding through my skull. This girl who just met me knows my innermost thoughts. And if she knows this, maybe Meredith knows too and was just being nice to me.
“You’re shocked,” she says in the same singsong voice like an actress in a television ad, the emphasis on the wrong words. “Don’t you think girls ever think about sex?”
“Well, yeah, but not like guys. We’re obsessed.”
“Everyone under twenty-one is obsessed with sex. It’s the one thing you aren’t supposed to do until you’re an adult or married. It’s that verboten thing.”
“Verboten?”
“It’s German for ‘forbidden.’”
“No one speaks German where I’m from.” I’m getting a very different view of Bethany here in the dark.
“Whatever. I want to have sex before I die.”
“Is the treatment not working for you?”
“What do you think?”
“You seem better tonight.”
“It’s the fourth treatment my dad’s tried. When money is no object, the truth can be obscured for a long time.”
“Why don’t you tell him you don’t want any more treatments?”
“Why should he be miserable too? He’ll be miserable enough once I’m gone.” She’s doing these leg swings and her bare legs pump up and down in the air, so I have to look away.
“Stop doing that with your legs. You’ll make yourself sick. We’re supposed to rest at night.”
“What’s a matter, Danny, making you perspire a little? Making your heart race?”
I wish I hadn’t let her in. I turn over on my stomach to hide the evidence. “They say attitude can make all the difference. If you want to live, you can beat it.”
“Do you believe that? Truly? In your heart of hearts? Because if you do, I have a bridge I’ll sell you in New York.”
It’s my dad’s line and it reminds me of home and the houseboat and Meredith. I have to figure out a way to get this girl out of my room before something bad happens.
“I’m really tired, Bethany. Aren’t you?”
“No. I have to ask you something, a favor.”
I groan. This is going nowhere fast. I can hear Mack cheering and my heart knocking in my chest. This is ridiculous. I love Meredith. Sleeping with someone else will ruin that.
She comes over from the cot, straddles my back and massages my shoulder blades. Her fingertips are like razor blades. “Will you sleep with me, Danny? So I don’t die not knowing what it feels like.”
Yowell and Mack would do it. Hell, Yowell would have invited her over the first night and suggested it himself. Holden, what would Holden do? He’d let her down gently. Make up something about himself so she wouldn’t feel rejected.
“Listen, I’m not worth it. I’m too young for you, too scrawny, too inexperienced. You deserve better, someone who loves you.”
“I knew you’d done it. You sound like you know what you’re talking about.” Her fingers are pushing on my shoulder blades with little digs of pressure. “Who is she? You still love her?”
“Meredith Rilke, a girl at home.”
“Does she know you’re a dead man?”
That’s not an easy one to answer. Spoken out loud like that, it’s a little too much truth even for me.
“You do have cancer, don’t you?”
“Leukemia, same difference.”
“This Meredith, she knows and she loves you anyway.”
“She says she does. Yeah, she does.”
“Then she’ll understand. She would want you to help me out. Before I die.”
“You don’t mean that. Maybe you won’t die. Plus it’s not Meredith that’s stopping me. You’re pretty and…I’m interested. But making love is not the same if it’s someone you hardly know. I know, I know I sound like one of those women on Oprah, but it’s true. Sex is easy to do. Animals do it. Male and female, we fit together. Any two of us, but it’s not supposed to be that way with humans. It’s much more. Don’t ruin it for yourself, Bethany. Don’t settle for me like your mom settled for your dad.
“Everything you want will come to you once you get better, stronger. You’ll fall in love and someone will love you back. You have to believe that.”