“You can try to find things to distract yourself from the hallucinations when they come,” Dr. Yalestrom said. “You can try reminding yourself that it isn’t real. If you’re in doubt, find ways to check. Maybe ask someone else if they’re seeing the same thing. Remember, it’s okay to see whatever you see, but how you react to it is up to you.”
Kevin guessed he could remember all that. Even so, it did nothing to quiet the faint pulse of the countdown, thrumming in the background, getting faster a little at a time.
“And I think you need to tell the people who don’t know,” Dr. Yalestrom said. “It isn’t fair to them to keep them in the dark about this.”
She was right.
And there was one person he needed to let know more than anyone else.
Luna.
CHAPTER FOUR
“So,” Luna said, as she and Kevin made their way along one of the paths of the Lafayette Reservoir Recreation Area, dodging around the tourists and the families enjoying their day out, “why have you been avoiding me?”
Trust Luna to get straight to the point. It was one of the things Kevin liked about her. Not that he liked her liked her. People always seemed to assume that. They thought because she was pretty, and blonde, and probably cheerleader material if she didn’t think all that was stupid, that of course they would be boyfriend and girlfriend. They just assumed that it was how the world worked.
They weren’t together. Luna was his best friend. The person he spent the most time with, outside of school. Probably the one person in the world he could talk to about absolutely anything.
Except, it turned out, this.
“I haven’t been…” Kevin trailed off in the face of Luna’s stare. She was good at stares. Kevin suspected that she probably practiced. He’d seen everyone from bullies to rude store owners back down rather than have her stare at them any longer. Faced with that stare, it was impossible to lie to her. “All right, I have, but it’s hard, Luna. I have something… well, something I don’t know how to tell you.”
“Oh, don’t be stupid,” Luna said. She found an abandoned soda can and kicked it down the path, flicking it from foot to foot with the kind of skill that came from doing it far too often. “I mean, how bad can it be? Are you moving away? Are you changing schools again?”
Maybe she caught something in his expression, because she fell silent for a few seconds. There was something fragile about that silence, as if both of them were tiptoeing to avoid breaking it. Even so, they had to. They couldn’t just walk like this forever.
“Something bad then?” she said, sending the can into a trash container with a final flick of her foot.
Kevin nodded. Bad was one word for it.
“How bad?”
“Bad,” he said. “The reservoir?”
The reservoir was the place they both went when they wanted to sit down and talk about things. They’d talked about Billy Hames liking Luna when they were nine, and about Kevin’s cat, Tiger, dying when they were ten. None of it seemed like a good preparation for this. He wasn’t a cat.
They made their way down to the edge of the water, looking out at the trees on the far side, the people with their canoes and their paddle boats on the reservoir. Compared to some of the places they went, this was nice. People assumed Kevin was the kid from the wrong side of town leading Luna astray, but she was the one with the knack for squeezing past fences and clambering up derelict buildings, leaving Kevin to follow if he could. Here, there was none of that, just the water and the trees.
“What is it?” Luna asked. She kicked off her shoes and dangled her feet in the water. Kevin didn’t feel like doing the same. Right then, he wanted to run, to hide. Anything to keep from telling her the truth. It felt as though, the longer he could keep from telling Luna, the longer it wasn’t really real.
“Kevin?” Luna said. “You’re worrying me now. Look, if you don’t tell me what it is, then I’m going to call your mom and find out that way.”
“No, don’t do that,” Kevin said quickly. “I’m not sure… Mom isn’t handling this well.”
Luna was looking more worried by the moment. “What’s wrong? Is she sick? Are you sick?”
Kevin nodded at the last one. “I’m sick,” he said. He put his hand on Luna’s shoulder. “I have something called leukodystrophy. I’m dying, Luna.”
He knew he’d said it too quickly. Something like that, there should be a whole big explanation, a proper build-up, but honestly, that was the part of it that mattered.
She stared at him, shaking her head in obvious disbelief. “No, you can’t be, that’s…”
She hugged him then, tight enough that Kevin could barely breathe.
“Tell me it’s a joke. Tell me it’s not real.”
“I wish it weren’t,” Kevin said. He wished that more than anything right then.
Luna pulled back, and Kevin could see her screwing her features tight with the effort of not crying. Normally, Luna was good at not crying about things. Now, though, he could see it taking everything she had.
“This… how long?” she asked.
“They said maybe six months,” Kevin said.
“And that was days ago, so it’s less now,” Luna shot back. “And you’ve been having to cope with it on your own, and…” She faded into silence as the sheer enormity of it obviously hit her.
Kevin could see her looking out at the people on the reservoir, watching them with their small boats and their quick forays into the water. They seemed so happy there. She stared at them as if they were the part she couldn’t believe, not the illness.
“It doesn’t seem fair,” she said. “All these people, just going on as if the world is the same, going about having fun when you’re dying.”
Kevin smiled sadly. “What are we supposed to do? Tell them all to stop having fun?”
He realized the danger in saying that slightly too late as Luna leapt to her feet, cupped her hands to her mouth, and yelled at the top of her voice.
“Hey, all of you, you have to stop! My friend is dying, and I demand that you stop having fun at once!”
A couple of people looked around, but no one stopped. Kevin suspected that hadn’t been the point. Luna stood there for several seconds, and this time, he was the one to hug her, holding her while she cried. That was enough of a rarity that the sheer shock value of it held Kevin there. Luna shouting at people, behaving in ways that they would never expect from someone like her, was normal. Luna breaking down wasn’t.
“Feel better?” he asked after a while.
She shook her head. “Not really. What about you?”
“Well, it’s nice to know that there’s someone who would try to stop the world for me,” he said. “You know the worst part?”
Luna managed another smile. “Not being able to spell what’s killing you?”
Kevin could only return that smile. Trust Luna to know that he needed her to be her usual self, making fun of him.
“I can, I practiced. The worst part is that all this means no one believes me when I tell them that I’ve been seeing things. They think it’s all just the illness.”
Luna cocked her head to one side. “What kind of things?”
Kevin explained to her about the strange landscapes he’d been seeing, the fire wiping it clean, the sensation of a countdown.
“That…” Luna began when he was finished. She didn’t seem to know how to end though.
“I know, it’s crazy, I’m crazy,” Kevin said. Even Luna didn’t believe him.
“You didn’t let me finish,” Luna said, drawing in a breath. “That… is so cool.”
“Cool?” Kevin repeated. It hadn’t been the response he expected, even from her. “Everyone else thinks I’m going crazy, or my brain is melting, or something.”