Chapter 27
"IT'S TEMPORARY, RIGHT?"
The rest of the team have shuffled out after several minutes of lingering behind to speak with me. Their most asked questions were:
Why did you suddenly quit?
Are you coming back?
Ashton shares the same sentiment. Now that it's the two of us, he's jumping at the opportunity to get the truth out of me that isn't hidden behind vague, carefully worded responses.
"Don't you want to be captain?"
Ashton shrugs. "Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the opportunity. It's going to look great on my college applications. There's also the perks of being one of the most popular guys in school. The parties. The girls."
"I thought you don't do relationships."
"Who said anything about relationships?" he replies with a wink making me laugh.
"Five minutes as captain and it's already gone to your head." I shake my head, feigning disappointment. "Shame. I had such high hopes for you."
He responds with a laugh and a playful slap to my shoulder. "But seriously, it's only temporary, right? There's no denying that the team enjoys having you as captain."
It's quiet outside the gymnasium. Inside, with the two of us alone, Ashton looking on and waiting patiently for my next word, everything comes rushing back. Not only the events of the last few days – as surreal as they have been – but also the last couple of years.
The hours after school in practice in this same gymnasium.
The matches that our school hosted – tournament and charity games.
Bleachers packed out with our families and peers screaming and cheering their support, the lively chants of the cheerleaders from the sidelines spurring us on through the game.
March of this year marks the last time I served as captain of the basketball team. With the new season starting in a few months, they'll have a new captain. Maybe new teammates.
I remember all of it like was yesterday.
Of course, we made it to the finals – there had been no doubt.
Our opponent had been an underdog team for the last number of years so when they showed up and played their first game, practically annihilating their opponent, the entire tournament roster had been in for a shock.
They continued to prove their worth, confirming the whispers we'd been hearing months before the start of the season.
They got a new coach. He revamped the entire team. Put them through drill after drill until the team itself was unrecognizable.
They were tough to beat. At certain moments in the final match, I felt the pressure of my team, their worry that we could lose. But we won.
When that final buzzer went off, I remember crying.
It wasn't that we'd won. It's because for months, I'd been keeping the secret of my illness from my teammates. Between treatments and doing my best to keep up with them, we managed to secure another victory.
I remember it so vividly because I remember standing in the middle of the court – amongst the cheering crowd, the cheerleaders doing their congratulatory chants, and the team celebrating, high-fiving and hugging each other – staring into blank space, my vision bleary, a single thought ringing through my mind.
Months before I got the final diagnosis, somewhere deep down inside, past the marrow of my bones, inside the deepest corner of my mind, I knew.
I knew that would be my last game.
I knew – maybe before my parents thought to entertain the possibility – I wasn't going to last for much longer.
"Jace?"
Ashton's face comes back into focus. His eyebrows are furrowed in concern. He tilts his head, adjusting his grip on the strap of his gym bag.
"What were you saying?"
His frown deepens. "You were about to tell me if you leaving the team is temporary." I flicks his gaze away. "I hope."
I don't say anything to that. I can hear the underlying concern that this isn't only about my departure from the team.
Spinning the basketball on the tip of my finger, I watch it rotate round and round.
Ashton's quiet voice breaks the silence, heavy with realization. "You're not coming back, are you?"
I stop spinning the ball, clutching it between my hands. "I'm not."
"What's really going on?"
"Maybe I don't want to be on the team anymore," I offer, but by the blank stare he returns, Ashton doesn't believe a single word of that blatant lie.
He crosses his arms over his chest, looking closer at me.
His eyes squint. "No, I don't believe that.
It's something else. And I know it's got nothing to do with those dickheads or their plan to retaliate against you.
" He shakes his head. "You've been...different, lately.
I can't explain it, but you've been distant.
Not exactly yourself. Even when we hang out, sometimes you space out for minutes and you try to play it off like nothing's wrong. "
"You think I've been distant?"
Sasha said those same words to me this morning. I can't deny that I haven't been, between treatments and trying to keep up the fa?ade that everything's fine, I guess somewhere along the way, I slipped up.
Somewhere along the way trying not to think or talk about it, it stole minutes of my time even in the company of others.
I also can't deny that for my own selfish reasons, I've been emotionally distancing myself from them. Because in my mind, the less people who know, the less reminders I have when I look at someone.
"I'm not the only one who thinks that. Besides, I'd like to believe I know you well enough to tell when something's bothering you. Whatever it is, it's serious."
"It's my burden to bear, Ashton."
"So, you won't tell me?"
"What good will that do? It's not like you can help me," I fire, more edge to my tone that expected and more than Ashton deserves.
My features even out, regret instantly hitting me when I catch the flicker of shock run across Ashton's face – like he's confused and can't figure out what he did to be spoken to like that.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to come out like that. "
In the quiet of the gymnasium, Ashton's swallow is almost audible. He suddenly looks unsure, his eyes downcast, hands strangling the strap of his gym bag.
It comes out as softly as a whisper – the kind one might use when they don't want to risk being heard.
"Are you sick?"
We freeze. Ashton looks guilty, his face flushing, the nervous tick of his fingers gripping his bag a little too tightly. He avoids eye contact, licking his lips and struggling to find words.
"Why would you..." My words fall away. If he knows, if he suspects, what's the point of keeping it a secret? "What do you know?"
"I don't, not for certain. That's why I'm asking."
I don't believe him. Out of all the conclusions he could have arrived at, why that one? He seems to catch on, expelling a deep breath.
"I saw you," he admits, flicking his gaze from me and back to the floor.
"During last season, after practice. I forgot my phone and came back to get it.
You were still here, alone, and I saw you taking something.
..pills. I didn't know what it was. I thought maybe it was steroids or some shit but after that, I started paying closer attention to you.
You weren't putting on extra muscle and there were times when you looked.
..sick. Tired. Like you don't get enough rest. And you were always getting these migraines.
Not to mention the times you'd disappear after school claiming you had appointments or prior engagements, something you had to do that you never told us about. I realized it couldn't be steroids."
I raise an eyebrow, shocked to the very core because all this proves is that either I'm shit at keeping secrets or it is true that when someone really cares, there's very little that escapes them.
"You noticed all of that and never said anything." Ashton shrugs, an awkward smile fixed into place. "Why?"
"I didn't want to overstep. Figured if you wanted to tell me, you would."
"Do you want to know?"
"Yes," he replies, gesturing with his hands at open air to emphasize his points, eyes alight with everything he's probably thinking and feeling.
"If that's why you've suddenly quit the team.
Or why you've been distant lately, here but somewhere else at the same time.
Or if that's why you sometimes space out or disappear without saying where you're going.
Especially if it has anything to do with why you disappeared on Monday evening and your parents couldn't find you, or Sasha or I couldn't get in touch with you. "
I narrow my eyes at him in quiet accusation, taking into stride that he seems to have the right amount of frustration with me. "When did you get comfortable enough to guilt-trip me?"
"Since I thought we'd become friends." He says it with his whole chest, half accusatory, half rhetorical.
"Okay, fine."
Tossing the basketball, it rolls to the other side of the court as I walk over to the bench, a twitching feeling in the muscles of my right leg.
It feels like the odds are stacked against me. As if by some chance the universe knows I might try to weasel my way out of telling Ashton and decided for me to reveal everything.
Stretching out my leg as I sit, I wriggle my foot, hoping it doesn't worsen.
Not that it will do much because the twitching continues, a stiffness on one side of my calf muscle, a contraction in the lower parts of my foot.
I quickly pull my sneaker and sock off, my toes curling from the painful spasm.
"Fuck," I whisper, gritting my teeth through the pain.
"Cramp?" Ashton slides into the spot next to me.
"I'll be fine. I just need a minute." Reaching down, I take easy breaths as I massage the calf muscle with one hand, the other gripping my toes trying to straighten them.
"That's not a normal cramp, is it?"
A tingling sets a course through my leg, my toes uncurling on their own. The stiffness in my leg eases, all of it giving way to a cool kind of numbness. It's welcomed over the cramp but now I'm going to be stuck at school for God alone knows how long.
This only reminds me that soon, I'll have to give up driving. Based on the diagnosis from Monday evening's hospital visit, these muscle spasms will grow frequent, and it won't be limited to one limb at a time. Soon, I'll face partial paralysis, sensory loss, cognitive loss, and an overall decline.
"No, it's not. It's the cancer attacking my motor functions."
"Cancer," Ashton says quietly, hardly above a disbelieving whisper. He stares straight ahead, clearly avoiding looking at me. It's as if he's afraid to do so because then he won't be able to keep it together.
"Anaplastic ependymoma. The first two times, the tumor was benign, so it was easy to treat. This time, it progressed to stage three." I glance over to find him looking at me and give him a smile I don't feel. "I couldn't beat it."
The silence that befalls us is heavy – almost alive in its own way – with the reality of my situation crashing down on us.
Ashton returns to focusing his stare at the open space of the court.
He doesn't say anything. But he's caught in the struggle of digesting what he's learned and letting it show what's going on in his mind, the fight visible on his face.
"Are you okay?" I ask when too much time passes and he still doesn't speak. He doesn't blink. He hasn't moved in the last five minutes.
"You're asking me that?"
I chuckle. "Your reaction right now is part of the reason I never wanted a bunch of people knowing. I deal with enough from my mom. Plus, this thing messes with the parts of my brain responsible for emotions. Her emotions, my dad's, plus my irregular ones – it's a perfect shitshow."
He shakes his head, pressing his forehead to his palms. "I had no idea. I need a bit to wrap my head around all of this." He looks up suddenly, peering over. "How bad is it? You said it progressed to a stage three. Does that mean...you don't have long left?"
I smile at him. "One thing at a time, Ashton."
"Is that why you broke up with Sasha?"
I raise an eyebrow. "You know about that?" How did he find out so fast?
He nods. "I caught up with her after the last bell.
You two have been off all day and she looked as if she'd been crying.
I wanted to know if she was alright and she told me you ended things with her this morning.
She didn't say why really, just that you were going through some things.
" He looks at me expectantly, an unspoken question.
"I didn't tell her."
"Will you tell her?"
"If she wants anything to do with me after today, I think he deserves the truth."
As much of it as she's willing to hear anyway, because I can't tell her about the cancer alone when it's only half the truth.
Ashton stays with me a while longer. I tell him more about the cancer, about the first two times I was diagnosed.
I remember nothing from the first time. I was a baby, so, everything I know of that time comes from my parents.
I tell him about the second time when I was five, about how my parents delayed my entry into school since they'd taken me to Murdoc Province for treatment.
It's why I'm a year older than most of the junior year. While they've turned or will be turning seventeen, I'll be turning eighteen in November.
By the time Ashton leaves, the numbness in my leg has faded. I'm putting back on my sock and sneaker when the double doors to the gymnasium suddenly burst open.
"Did you forget some –"
The words die on my tongue when I look up fully expecting to see Ashton come trotting back in. It hasn't been too long since he walked out. Except, it's Brent who comes barging in and he has Blake with him.
Shit!