A/N- Holy cow. I'm sure you expected this earlier, as I'm also sure you didn't expect it to be as long as it is. I'm sorry. But I guess it makes up for how long I made you wait. :)
I'm also sorry if Ross sounds too girlish, it is based on TFIOS, after all.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize.
Ellington Ratliff drives horrendously. Whether he's stopping or starting, everything just has a JOLT. Every time he brakes I fly forward, and my head snaps back whenever he slams on the gas. I may be nervous—sitting in the car of a strange boy on the way to his house, aware that my crap lungs complicate things—but his driving is so poor that I can't think of anything else.
We've gone nearly a mile in silence when Ellington says, "I failed the driving test three times."
"You don't say," I say, sarcastic tone resonating.
He laughs. "Well, I can't feel pressure in this here 'leg', if you'd call it that, and I can't get the hang of driving left-footed. My doctors say most amputees can drive with absolutely no problem, but not me, I guess. Anyway, I go in for my fourth, and it goes about like this is going." Half a mile in front of us, a light turns red. He slams on the brakes, tossing me into the seat belt. "Sorry. I swear to God that I'm trying to be gentle. Right, anyway, so at the end of the test, I totally thought I'd failed yet again, but the instructor was like, 'Your driving is unpleasant, but it isn't technically unsafe.'"
"I don't think I agree," I laugh. "I smell Cancer Perk." Cancer Perks are those little things cancer kids get that other kids don't: basketballs signed by sports heroes, free passes on late homework, unearned driver's licenses, etc.
"Total Cancer Perk," he says. The light turns green. I brace myself as he hits the gas.
"You know they have hand controls for people who can't use their legs," I point out.
"Yeah," he says. "Maybe someday." He sighs in a sort of way that makes me wonder whether he was confident about the existence of someday. I know osteosarcoma is highly curable, but still.
There are a number of ways to establish someone's survival expectations without actually asking. I use the classic "So, are you in school?" Usually your parents pull you out of school at some point if they're expecting you to bite it.
"Yeah," he says. "I'm at North Central. A year behind though, I'm sophomore. You?"
I consider lying. No one likes a corpse, after all. But after struggling with my thoughts for awhile, I tell the truth. "No, my parents withdrew me three years ago."
"Three years?" he repeats, surprised.
I tell Ellington the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was 13. It was, we were told, incurable.
I had a surgery they called radical neck dissection, which is just about as fun as it sounds. And then radiation. Then, they tried a bit of chemo for my lung tumours. The tumours shrank, but then grew. By then I was 14. My lungs started to fill up with water. I was looking pretty much dead— my hands and feet ballooned, my skin cracked, my lips were perpetually blue. They've got a drug that makes you feel not so terrified of the fact that you can't breathe, and I had loads of it flowing to me through a PICC line, and more than a dozen other drugs as well.
Even with all of this, there's a certain unpleasant feeling to drowning, particularly when it all happens over the course of a few months. I finally ended up in ICU with pneumonia, and my mom had knelt beside my bed and said, "Are you ready?", and I told her that I was, and my dad kept saying he loved me in a voice that was not breaking so much as already broken, and I kept saying I loved him and mom too, and everyone was holding hands, and I just couldn't seem to catch my breath, and my lungs were desperate, gasping, pulling me out of the bed trying to find a position that could get them air, and I was embarrassed by this desperation, disgusted that they wouldn't let go. I remember my mom telling me it was okay, that I'd be okay, and my dad was trying so hard not to sob that when he did, which was often, it was an earthquake of jurassic proportions. And I remember just wanting to be asleep.
Everyone thought I was done, but my Cancer Doctor Maria managed to get some fluid out of my lungs, and shortly after the antibiotics they'd given me for the pneumonia kicked in.
I woke, and soon got into one of those experimental trials that are famous in Cancerville for Not Working. The drug they used was Phalanxifor, this molecule designed to attach itself to cancer cells and slow their growth. It didn't work in 70 percent of people, but it worked in me. The tumours finally shrank, and stayed shrunk. Yay, Phalanxifor! In the past eighteen months, my mets have hardly grown, leaving me with lungs that truly suck at their job but could conceivably, struggle along indefinitely with the help of drizzled oxygen and daily doses of Phalaxifor.
Admittedly, my miracle had only resulted in a bit of purchased time, though I did not know the size of the bit, yet. But when telling Ellington Ratliff, I paint the prettiest possible picture, embellishing the miraculousness of my miracle.
"So know you gotta go back to school," he says.
"I can't," I say, "because I already got my GED, so I'm taking classes at MCC." MCC is our community college.
"A college boy," he says, nodding. "That explains your aura of sophistication." He smirks. A punch his upper arm.
We make a wheels-screeching turn into a subdivision with eight foot high stucco walls. His house is first on the left, a two story colonial. We jerk into his driveway.
I follow him inside. A wooden plaque in the entryway is engraved with the words Home Is Where the Heart Is, and the entire house turns out to be covered in things like this. Good Friends Are Hard to Find and Impossible to Forget reads a picture above the coatrack. True Love Is Born from Hard Times says a needlepointed pillow in their antiquely furnished living room. Ellington sees me reading. "My parents call them 'Encouragements'," he explains. "They're everywhere."
...
His parents call him Ell. They're making enchiladas in the kitchen (a piece of glass above the sink read Family Is Forever). His mom is putting chicken in tortillas, which his dad then rolls up and places in a glass pan. They don't seem too surprised by my arrival, which kind of made sense: the fact that Ellington made me feel special didn't necessarily indicate that I was. Maybe he brought home a different girl or guy every night to show her movies (and maybe do other things; you never know).
"This is Ross Shor," he says as an introduction.
"Just Ross," I correct him.
"How's it going, Ross?" asks Ell's dad. He's tall—almost as tall as Ell—and skinny in a way that parents usually aren't.
"Okay," I answer.
"How was Riker's Support Group?"
"It was amazing," Ell says, sarcasm obvious.
"You're such a downer," his mom says. "Ross, do you like it?"
I pause for a second, trying to figure out if my response should please Ellington or his parents. "Most of the people are really nice." I finally say.
"That's just what we found with families at Memorial when we were in the thick of things with Ell's treatment," his dad says. "Everyone was so kind, and strong. In the darkest of days, the Lord puts the best people in your life."
"Quick, dad, get me a throw pillow and some thread because that definitely needs to be an Encouragement." Ellington says, and his dad looks annoyed, but then he says, "I'm kidding, Dad. I like the freaking Encouragements. I do. I just can't admit it because I'm a teenage boy." His dad rolls his eyes.
"You're joining us for dinner?" his mom asks me. She was small, and slightly mousy.
"I guess?" I say. "I have to be home by ten."
They talked to me a bit. About how the enchiladas were Famous Ratliff Enchiladas, and Not To Be Missed, and how Ell's curfew is also ten, and how distrustful they are about anyone who gives their kids curfews any later than ten, and was I in school—"he's a college student," Ellington interjects—and how extraordinary the weather was for March, and they don't even once ask me about my diagnosis, which was weird, but wonderful. And then Ellington says, "Ross and I are going to watch Captain America so he can see his filmic dopplegänger, 2011-2014 Chris Evans."
"The living room TV is yours for the using," his dad says.
"I actually think we're gonna watch it in the basement."
"Good try. Living room."
"But I wanna show Ross Shor the basement," Ellington says.
"Then show him the basement, and then come upstairs and watch your movie." says his dad.
"Fine," he mumbles. I follow him down hardwood stairs to a huge basement bedroom. A shelf at my shoulder level reaches all the way around the room, and it's full with basketball memorabilia: trophies full of those golden plastic men performing basketball tricks, signed balls and shoes, etc.
"I used to play basketball," he explains.
"You must've been good."
"I wasn't too bad, but the shoes and balls are Cancer Perks." He walks towards the TV, where a giant pile of DVDs and video games were arranged into a large pyramid shape. He bent over and snatched Captain America: The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier. "I was all about resurrecting the lost art of the midrange jumper, but then one day I was shooting free throws—just standing at the foul line in the North Central gym shooting from a rack of balls. All at once, I couldn't figure out why I was methodically tossing a spherical object through a toroidal object. It seemed like the stupidest thing I could be doing.
"I started thinking about how little kids put cylindrical pegs through a circular hole, and how they do it for so long once they figure how, and how basketball was just a more aerobic version of that same thing. Anyway, for a long time, I just kept sinking free throws. I hit eighty in a row, my all-time personal best, but as I kept going, I kept feeling more and more like a two year old. And then, for some odd reason, I started thinking about hurdlers. Are you feeling alright?"
Seconds ago, I'd taken a seat on his little brown couch. I get a bit tired when I have to stand a lot, there'd been the kitchen and the stairs, and then more standing, which was a lot of standing for me, and I don't want to faint or anything. "I'm fine, just listening. Hurdlers?"
"Yeah. I don't even know why. I started thinking about them running their races, and jumping over these totally arbitrary objects that had been put in their way. And I wondered if they ever thought, 'this would go faster if we just got rid of the hurdles.'"
"This was before your diagnosis?" I ask, hoping I'm not overstepping.
"Well, there's that, too." He smiles. "The day of the existentially fraught free throws was, coincidentally, my last day of dual-leggedness. I had a weekend between the day they scheduled it and when it happened; my own little glimpse of what Riker is going through."
I nod. I like Ellington Ratliff. I really, really, really like him. I like the way his story ended with someone else. I like his voice. I like that he took existentially fraught free throws. And I like that he has two names. I've always liked when people have two names, because you get to choose what you call them: Ell or Ellington. Me, I've always been just Ross, univalent Ross.
"So, what's your story?" he asks, sitting next to me.
"I already told you my story. I was diagnosed when I—"
"No, not your cancer story. Your real story. Interests, hobbies, passions, weird fetishes, et cetera." I stay silent. "Don't tell me you're one of those who become their disease. I know too many people like that. It's disheartening. Like, cancer is in the growth business, right? The taking-people-over business. But, surely, you haven't let it succeed prematurely." he says.
It occurs to me that perhaps I have. I struggle with how I want to pitch myself to Ellington Ratliff, which enthusiasms to embrace. And in the silence that follows, it occurs to me that I'm not very interesting. "I am quite unextraordinary."
"I reject that out of hand. Think of something you like. Anything."
"I like reading."
"What do you read?"
"Everything. From hideous romance to pretentious fiction to poetry. Whatever."
"Do you write poetry, too?"
"N-no, I don't write."
"There!" Ellington shouts. "Ross Shor, you are the only teenager in the entire country who prefers reading poetry to writing it. I bet you've read tons of great books. What's your favourite?"
"Um..." I stall. I don't like to tell people about my favourite book, An Imperial Affliction. It's not even like the book's that good or anything, it's just that the author understands me in weird and impossible ways. Even so, I tell him. "It's called An Imperial Affliction."
"I am going to read this book, as long as you read this thrilling novelization of my favourite video game." He hands me a book, called The Price of Dawn.
I take the book, he takes mine, and we head up the stairs.
...
We watch the movies on the couch. About three-quarters through the first one, Ell's mom comes in and serves the enchiladas, which are pretty damn delicious.
The movies are about the heroic Steve Rogers who tried to join the army, but they wouldn't let him, until he did this Super Soldier Serum thing which made him the ideal soldier. In the first one, his best friend died and then he comes back in the second one, as 'The Winter Soldier.' All in all, I enjoy them.
As the credits roll in the second one, I stand. "I should go. Class in the morning." Ellington stands, as well, and searches for his keys.
I drive Ellington's car home with Ellington riding shotgun. He plays a bit of music, which is good, but not as good as it is to him, because I don't already know the songs.
I pull into my driveway and look over to him. He really is wonderful.
"Ross Shor," he says, my name feeling new and better in his voice. "It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"Ditto, Mr. Ratliff." I say.
"May I see you again?"
I smile. "Yeah."
"Tomorrow?" he asks.
"Patience, grasshopper. You don't want to seem overeager."
"Right, that's why I said tomorrow. I want to see you again tonight, but I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I roll my eyes. "I'm serious."
"You don't even know me." I say. I grab the book from the console. "How about I call you when I finish this?"
"But you don't have my phone number." he says.
"I strongly suspect you wrote it in the book."
He smiles again. "And you say we don't know each other."
A/N- I hope you enjoyed! Please review!
How about, like, 6 reviews for next? I'll try my best, but it does take a while to try and get it straight. I will try though! :)
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