Twenty
Sarah
My head rested on Peter’s shoulder, the Rockies game playing on mute with subtitles in the background.
He’d been helping me study for an upcoming math exam, but we put the books away when he got nauseous.
Now, he seemed to be dozing. In between his final chemo treatments, Peter stayed at home, watched TV, played video games, slept, and did what he could to keep up with school remotely.
And I stayed with him. As much as possible.
Peter startled me when he suddenly spoke. “Have you noticed anything weird about my parents?”
“Not really.” I turned my face to look up at him. “Explain weird.”
He stared straight ahead, concentrating as his brow wrinkled where his eyebrows used to be before weeks of chemo ravaged his body. His already weary voice scraped with heaviness. “I think…I think they’re getting a divorce.”
I sprang up. “Your parents? No way.”
“Seriously. I heard them talking.”
I shook my head, in total denial. “You must’ve misunderstood. Your parents would never get divorced. They love each other.”
Peter shrugged. “That’s not what it sounded like.”
“When did you hear them talking?”
“The last week I was in the hospital.” He blinked as if trying to make the details more clear.
“They thought I was sleeping. Mom said something about getting a divorce. It made Dad really mad, and he started cussing, which I’ve never heard him do.
And Mom said something like, ‘couples don’t make it through stuff like this, Cal.
’ Then she said, ‘Families that stay together when this happens are a miracle.’” Peter shook his head, disturbed.
“I think they were talking about my cancer, Sarah. I knew being at the hospital so much was hard on them, but…I had no idea they were struggling that much. I feel responsible somehow.”
“Oh, Peter.” I tucked in closer to him.
“I know I’m not in control of what’s happening to me, but it made me feel really bad for wanting Mom or Dad to stay at the hospital with me. Like, maybe if they weren’t so stressed or they had more time at home together, they would—”
“No, Peter. You can’t think like that. Maybe they weren’t even talking about you.”
“It certainly sounded like it.” He took a deep breath. “And they’ve been acting weird ever since. Hardly talking to each other, super standoffish. I don’t know. I’m worried.”
“You like to worry.”
He huffed. “I can’t help it.”
“If you’re bothered, ask them about it.”
He nodded. “I want to, but I’m afraid of what they might say.”
Peter stopped his old Honda Accord by the railroad tracks, the yellow street lights barely illuminating the loose gravel and stringy weeds on the ground. Waggling his eyebrows, he popped the trunk and threw open his door. Following him around, I peered inside at the duffle bag.
One by one, he passed me things.
A flashlight
Two masks.
A can of yellow spray paint.
And that’s when I started laughing.
He sharply shushed me. “Gosh, you are so loud. Be quiet.”
“Are we going to graffiti?”
He shot me a stern glance. “If you don’t get us in trouble before we even try.”
I put a hand over my mouth, muffling my apology.
A loud clack-clack-clack filled the air as Peter shook an orange can and nodded for me to follow him toward a parked train down the tracks.
Adrenaline rushed through my body as I followed Peter to a blue train car.
The light was dim there, making it the perfect place to put our initials.
He winked at me. “Line twenty-eight. Graffiti my initials. You ready?”
I smiled. “Born ready.”
Wasting no time, I slid a mask over my face and sprayed my initials into the side of the freight car, happy to have a yellow so bright that it popped off the mural of color beneath it.
SED
Pleased with my work, I stepped back to watch Peter add his.
But he didn’t stop after PCT. He kept going, wrapping his sentence around the back of the train car.
PCT loves Sunshine Girl.
My heart flipped and dropped, my torso pooling with warmth as I watched him add the finishing touches to his declaration. Though he’d said the same words many times before, they’d never lost their ability to flood out my midsection with love so strong I thought I would drown in it.
Now eighteen, he’d changed so much. A bit of facial hair lined his cheeks, and his shoulders were thick, corded with strength. Watching him heal from the flickering wisp of life on a hospital bed to this was a miracle I relived every single day.
When he turned back to gauge my response, I beckoned him with a finger.
Dropping his can of paint on the ground, he surged forward and wrapped his arms around me.
It was the last day of our senior year. Every class was utter chaos as excitement for graduation soared.
A huge smile rested on my face as Peter’s fingers entwined with mine and tugged me down the hall.
But then I frowned in confusion as I realized we were traveling against the lunch-bound stream of students, away from the cafeteria.
I looked up to ask where we were going, but he didn’t answer.
One twitch of his eyebrow told me to wait and see.
Slowing down at a door, he glanced forward and back to make sure no one was watching. Then he opened the door and shoved me in. Giggling uncontrollably, I blushed as I noted the utility sink in the corner, the bottles of cleaner on a shelf, the mop, the buckets, and the push broom.
When I turned around, Peter braced a hand on the shelf over my head, pressing close to me.
“Line twelve. Say it.”
I spread two open hands over my face, laughing in mortification. “I can’t.”
He laughed then too, and I relished in how happy he sounded. “You aren’t getting anything unless you admit what you want.”
“Peter!” I scolded him for how suggestive that sounded.
“Time’s wasting,” he whispered. “Say it.”
Sometimes I genuinely wondered what I was thinking, writing that crazy list and then showing it to my boyfriend of twenty-four hours. I must’ve been crazy. Admitting that fifteen year-old Sarah had a janitor closet fantasy made my face roar with heat.
He leaned down, holding his mouth out of reach. “Tick tock, Sunshine Girl. The janitor needs his closet back.”
Always a beggar, my eyes dropped to his lips, forcing me to concede by spitting out the foolish hopes I had penned during literature class. “Make out in a janitor closet.”
He smiled, satisfied.
As we moved toward each other, Peter grabbed my wrists, holding them still by my side as he lowered his mouth to mine.
Practiced in our kisses, our mouths instantly opened, moving together, proving we’d done it a hundred times.
When he let go of my hands, they sprang up, knocking his hat to the floor and plowing through his hair as a strangled hum wrenched from deep in my chest. Peter pressed me into the side of a shelf, the bottles rattling with the force of our bodies colliding.
As his hands skimmed my body, I wondered what I would do if Peter ever stopped loving me.
I would die. It would be the end of Sarah. Because there wasn’t a Sarah without Peter. Somehow he’d taken all my raw edges and wild streaks and made them his. All his.
There was no me. Not anymore.
Just us.
And I wanted it that way forever.