(TW serious illness, TW cancer)
In Kel's own Headspace was a place he dubbed The Bone Palace.
It was exactly what it sounded like, bones bent and broken to construct an opulent castle. He went there when he wanted to be like a kid again, and there he would play with Hero and Aubrey and Sunny and Basil and even Mari sometimes—all of them hiding behind thick femurs and sternums, looping around eye sockets, playing xylophone on finger bones and sliding off of ribs. None of his friends felt the need to ask whose skeleton it was, because wasn't it obvious? It was his.
Far and away from Heartland and Brainscape and the all-you-could-eat buffet that was Tummy World, The Bone Palace was his foundation, the one place he could always return to to feel safe. The sky surrounding the palace was a medley of pink and purple, pockmarked with bunched-up circles that all varied in size and shape. He never worried about what it was, because to him it was obvious: the sky was him, on the smallest possible level.
He never told anyone about those dreams, those places in his head where all his secrets lived. He didn't want to think about what it might mean.
It began with an accident on the court.
It was Kel's final game as a junior in high school, and as with every game he went out of his way to invite all his friends—Aubrey, Basil, the Hooligans. It was Faraway High vs Harrisburg Prep, and even the attendees who were ignorant to the rules of basketball could see Kel was lagging behind his teammates. It was no surprise, he'd been feeling so very tired lately, at least since winter break.
It was the game's final quarter. There was no way Faraway could catch up in the time they had left, but it was still in Kel's nature to try. He got hold of the ball, dribbled, weaved around and past Harrisburg's defense. He jumped up into the air and took his shot. The ball landed on the edge of the hoop, hovered for a moment, then tumbled inside—a score for Faraway, not that anyone cared after what happened next.
Kel landed on his left leg and continued to fall, collapsing hard on his back. The room was spinning. The fluorescent lighting of the gym blurred the stalks of fans standing up shocked in their seats. His coach shouted his name; a familiar voice—Aubrey?—yelled for someone to call an ambulance. Later, his teammates would say the crack had been audible to everyone on the court. His tibia bone had broken clean in half beneath the weight of his body, bending out at an obtuse angle. Kel couldn't stop laughing.
He joked about it later in the hospital—who ever heard of someone breaking their leg the way he had? No one, because it didn't happen. His doctors decided to run some tests.
A few days after Kel's release, Basil invited everyone over to his house for dinner to celebrate. Polly had been teaching him how to cook, and he was excited to show off his new skills.
Kel showed up in crutches, but it was Hero who lagged behind him, absent gaze sliding from focal point to focal point. He'd come rushing home from college as soon as he got word Kel was in the hospital. He only vaguely acknowledged Aubrey when she said hello, and when Basil asked Hero whether rice or potatoes would pair with the turkey he was preparing, he said okay and preceded to take a seat next to Kel in front of the TV. He sat there in silence while Kel and Aubrey bickered over what to watch.
The argument petered out eventually—Aubrey had control of the remote, and with a broken leg there was only so much Kel could do about it. He figured that lull was as good a time as any to tell them. "So, anyway, I'm sick."
He said it so casually Aubrey didn't look away from the TV, continuing to flick through channels, the artificial glow reflected in her colored contacts. Nor did Basil miss a beat in his dinner preparation. "You have a cold?" he called from the kitchen. "Want me to make you some tea?"
Kel shook his head, though no one in the room was looking at him to see it. Hero stared blankly at the floor. "No, it's my hip."
"Oh, Spooney?" It was the name Kel had given it, the hard lump on his left hip that developed just after his seventeenth birthday. It had only grown bigger in the six months that passed. "You should really get that thing checked out," Aubrey said.
"If it still hurts, I have a salve that might help!" Basil offered. "Or do you want a painkiller?"
"I don't think that kind of stuff works on tumors."
Too casual. Basil threw something hard into the kitchen sink. Aubrey glared at him from the corner of her eye. "That's not funny," she warned. She crossed her legs and continued channel surfing, thumb mashing the button with more force than before.
Hero pressed his eyes shut. Kel couldn't deal with that right now; he turned away from his brother. "C'mon, you know I'd never joke about something like that!"
"You're exactly the sort of idiot who'd make that kind of joke!"
The rattling in the kitchen grew louder.
"Since when?"
"Since the day I fucking met you! One of Basil's flowers fell out of his hair, and you said he 'lost it in the war'!"
"That was funny, though!"
"There are people who actually live through wars and shit, asshole. Hero, why don't—?" Aubrey paused. "Hero?"
Hero's face was clenched in agony, jaw wound tight. "I-I'm sorry… I'm sorry." He shook his head, abruptly rising to his feet. He staggered to the bathroom.
Aubrey watched after him incredulously. "What the hell...?"
"I told you, Spooney's a tumor. Not the only one, either—just the biggest. It's how my shin broke so easily."
"But what does that mean?"
"How do you not know what it means?!"
Aubrey slammed the remote on the coffee table. "Tell me what you have, exactly!"
"I have osto… osters—damnit, Hero knows the name." Kel glanced in the direction of the bathroom. "Stage 4. It's not… I'm not—"
Basil tore into the living room. "You don't have cancer! You don't have it, stop saying that!"
"I didn't say it, but I do." He kept his sights on Aubrey, ignoring how her eyes shone just a bit brighter than they had moments before. "Not saying it doesn't make it go away."
Basil burst into tears.
Basil was loathed to cook after that. On a whim, Hero took them all out to eat ice cream.
"Man, I love pistachio," Kel said as he happily licked the side of his cone.
Aubrey stared listlessly at her cup of rocky road. "So… what happens now?"
"Hm?" Kel swallowed his mouthful. "What do you mean?"
"You're gonna fight it, right? The… the thing. Osteo-whatever."
"Well, mom wants me to go see this other doctor in Senema Town for a second opinion. We have an appointment there Saturday."
"Why do you need a second opinion? Isn't stage 4, like, pretty bad? You should start chemo right away!"
"She thinks they're wrong. Says there's no way I'm that sick."
"How could she possibly know?"
Kel took a bite of the ice cream swirl from the top. He shuttered for a moment—sensitive teeth—before swallowing. "'Cause they were being super negative about it. They were all like, 'his options are limited, and you may want to consider…'" He drifted off, face screwing up. "What was the word?"
"Hospice care," Hero droned.
"H-hospice?" Basil gasped. His vanilla was melting over his cone, coating his fingers.
"What's that?" Aubrey asked.
"Doesn't matter, it's not happening. Mom'll kill me before she lets me go on hospice care," Kel laughed.
"I don't get how this is funny to you!" Aubrey shouted.
"It's not funny." Kel took a small bite of the cone. "But I still gotta live, you know?"
"It'll be fine." Hero said. He tried to smile. "Those doctors were wrong. They absolutely have to be wrong."
In the center of Bone Palace was a floating mirror.
It behaved exactly like a mirror ought to, until it didn't. Kel looked into it and the glass shattered straight down the middle, the left side of his face rendered to bone. He couldn't bring himself to approach it again.
If there was one google search Aubrey wished she could take back, it would be what is hospice care.
Kel's doctors, at least the ones in Faraway, did not think he could be cured—of course his parents would want him to get a second opinion. Before he got on anything that could help him beat his cancer, he needed someone to think he could beat it at all.
Stupid punk-bitch doctors. Kel was fine. They had geometry together, a pair of juniors learning amongst sophomores, and there he was sweating over proofs like it was just another day. "You know the answer to this one?" he asked her.
"No."
"Then stop looking at me like that."
Aubrey could smack him, but she didn't feel like going to the principal's office. She got back to work.
"Man, am I tired." Kel stretched dramatically, shirt gliding up. He and Basil were in Study Hall. From where Basil sat Spooney was clearly visible, the oppressive mass straining red against the stretch band of Kel's boxers. He'd been wanting to ask so very, very badly, but held it back because of course Kel needed to get that removed eventually, right? But Spooney was still as big as ever. "Um, Kel?"
"Hm?"
"I-I'm sorry for asking, you don't need to answer if you don't want, but well, um… were they wrong?"
"Was who wrong?"
"The doctors in Faraway?"
Kel absently opened his marble notebook to a blank page, writing his name and the date on the upper left-hand corner. "I mean, the docs in Senema agree that I have stage 4."
"… oh." Hospice hospicehospice hospice hospice hospicehospicehospice—
"They said I might be able to beat it, though."
"Really?"
"Yeah!" Kel grinned. "They're gonna start me up on chemo at the end of the month. Mom also found these guys out in Harrisburg who take a natural approach to cancer and stuff." It was the first time Basil heard Kel say the word and not try to substitute it with some mangled version of his particular subset. "She wants to take me to see them."
Basil scowled. Kel immediately began to laugh, doubling over and knocking down one of his crutches. "Hero thinks it's bullshit, too. I would've pinned you as the type to be into that sort of thing." He tore out the sheet he'd written on, balled it up, and tossed it into the trash. "Score!"
"I need to pick up a few things from the supermarket," Hero told him one day, a week after school let out. "You wanna come with?"
"No, I'm beat."
"But you've been in bed all day. It's almost time for dinner."
"Is it?" Kel checked the digital clock that rested on top of his boombox. Damn, it was already six.
"Get up." He tossed a t-shirt Kel's way. "At least go downstairs."
Kel promised he would, but went right back to sleep after Hero left the room.
Kel hated sharing a room with his brother.
It hadn't always been that way, but ever since Mari passed on (passed on, died, not murdered) Hero had been plagued by nightmares. He'd moan in his sleep—deep, ghoulish sounds that always woke Kel but never Hero himself. Walking the stretch of room over to his brother while half asleep always sucked, doubly so with his broken leg.
One night in late June, two days after his first chemo session, Hero's wailing woke him. Kel grabbed his crutches, groggily rose to his feet, and started off to save his brother from whatever misery his subconscious was torturing him with this time.
Kel's left crutch landed on something round—a balled-up shirt? a deflated basketball?—and he fell over hard, on top of Spooney. He wailed dreadfully enough to wake not only Hero but his entire family. His hip had crumbled beneath him like a crushed wad of paper. What he felt was far and beyond whatever concept of pain he had before, the sensation shooting violently up and down his side. "Hero!" he sobbed, clutching his brother's t-shirt.
Kel wound up back at Faraway Hospital for the second time in less than a month, this time for a broken hip. And he laid there in silence, staring up at the hospital's fluorescent lighting, trying to ignore his mother complaining to the doctor about what an irresponsible young man he was for not keeping his side of the room clean.
The Bone Palace had once been his most favorite place, but not anymore.
Everything was so weird there, now. Bones that had once been dense and sturdy became hollowed out and malformed, developing sharp edges that made them dangerous to play on. Basil tripped over his spine; his jaw scratched Aubrey up; Hero was stabbed through with his pelvic bone. Sunny and Mari didn't even bother coming around anymore, the former having run off to Brainscape and the latter in Heartland.
Kel didn't want to leave The Bone Palace, but what other choice did he have? Friends following along, they mounted a ship down The Artery Way headed for Tummy World.
It was Aubrey who first suggested they all shave their heads.
"I've always wanted to do it, anyway." Aubrey tossed her waist-length hair over her shoulder. "This way, you won't be the only one going bald."
"You guys don't have to do that!"
"But we want to," Basil said. He clutched the electric razor to his chest like it was something precious.
They went ahead with it at his first sign of hair loss. "God, I have such an egg-head," Aubrey complained, rolling her eyes.
Basil giggled. "Well, I have a surprise for you all." He reached into his bag. "I hope it's, uh, well received."
A trio of wigs—green, blue, and pink. Kel grabbed the pink one before Aubrey could claim it; she went for blue, which left Basil with green. Basil pulled out his camera, dusted off after years of neglect, and took a selfie-style picture with them. The afterimage of the flash burned Kel's eyes.
His first round of chemo came and went. His cancer growth slowed down some, but did not subside.
His had started in one of the most annoying places osteosarcoma could start, his hip. His left femur was also shot, his thigh's swelling indicative of the malformed mass of bone underneath. He had a choice—targeted radiation, or amputation of his entire left leg and hip.
Kel already dissociated whenever Hero or their father carried him around the house. He'd so been looking forward to being able to stand on his own again, to walk downstairs or to the kitchen or bathroom whenever he wanted. And basketball…
His medical team reiterated that they knew it was a hard decision—but that while radiation could produce results, amputation was his best possible chance of being of the minority who beat stage 4.
His mother cried into her hands. For the first time since his diagnosis, Kel felt the strong urge to apologize.
His left leg was in so much pain.
Only it wasn't, and it could never be again, because it wasn't there anymore.
"Now, I know what you're thinking," Kel slurred as soon as they walked into his hospital room. "But I'm so not letting you guys cut off your legs in solidarity."
Basil wanted to throw up, but Aubrey actually laughed. "Not even if you paid me, loser!"
If The Bone Palace was where he felt safe, Tummy World was where he felt happiest. He could eat anything he wanted there, and besides, digestion was so cool! He could drop anything at all into his bile pit and watch it be either absorbed or discarded. It's what happened to all the food he ate, so what about his fear? All the apologies lodged in his throat? The way he just wished he could just disappear and save everyone the headache?
Hero decided not to go back to school that fall.
"I'm not dropping out, just taking a break," he absently told their mother. If he was moved by her nagging, he didn't let it show.
Kel tried not to think about the sports scholarship he'd was now ineligible for, about how drastically different his college experience would be from everyone else's once he did go. (Once he did, not if). Aubrey and Basil had no plans to even apply; the latter got a job in the gardening section of the Fix-It Shop, and Aubrey was talking about moving to Harrisburg after graduation, where Sunny lived.
"I'm not going until you kill this osteo-motherfucker dead. I want a front-row seat to that ass-beating," she slurred. They were up in his room, and he could smell the alcohol on her breath. "But afterward, who knows? It might be nice to live near Sunshine again."
Kel had never thought about moving to the city. He always imagined himself living and dying in Faraway Town.
"I guess he'll tell me what living there's like when he comes out to visit," she continued. Sunny long promised them he'd come before the year ended. "Shit, man. I know he hates going outside, but I figured he would've come running when he found out you had cancer."
Kel pulled at a loose thread on the hem of his t-shirt. "About that…"
Aubrey clutched the neck of her 'water' bottle, fake-blue eyes flaring. "You… did tell him you're sick, didn't you?"
Kel drew his right knee to his chest. "He has enough to deal with without worrying about me. I figured I could just beat it without him ever having to know."
"Are you fucking kidding? You don't have a leg anymore! He's gonna know something happened!"
"People lose their legs in accidents and stuff."
"I'm not gonna let you lie to him like that."
Kel shrugged, staring off at some invisible point in the air. "He lied to us for years."
Bad answer. Aubrey chugged down the rest of her water-that-was-not-water, and slammed the empty plastic down with such ferocity he just knew she was imagining it was his head. "Don't bring that into this!"
"Hey, it's true."
"You were the one who insisted we all ought to forgive and forget. Fuck, you're the only reason Hero didn't slam-dunk him down the stairs right there in the hospital."
Yes, that was right. He did hold Hero back that time. "It's my decision who to tell and not tell. I don't want you breathing a word to him."
"Fine." Aubrey was taken aback by Kel's unusually serious tone. "Fucking jerk."
In October, his doctors told him that his cancer was spreading again.
It was strange to think that that entire time—going to the park with Hero, listening to Aubrey's drunken rants, facetimeing Basil on his lunch breaks—his body had continued to break down. A part of him, the conspiratorial corner of his mind that believed aliens existed and doubted Sunny actually forgot what he did to Mari, thought his doctors might be lying to him. He felt about the same as he had at the start of the year—tired, but fine. Achy, but fine. Short of breath, but fine. Dizzy all the time, every day, but just fucking fine.
Another round of chemo, more aggressive this time. More medication. The first round had been unpleasant, but the second knocked Kel down. Whatever he ate came back up; he couldn't sit up without the world tilting violently on its axis; he couldn't form a clear line of thought, rambling on waywardly for several minutes before catching himself. He would apologize to Hero when it happened, more out of embarrassment than anything else, but his brother would always wave him off. "Not much different than how you usually talk," he'd rib, and Kel would smile despite himself. Cheeky bastard.
Kel spent his eighteenth birthday the same as any other—hold up in the living room with his family and friends. He sat at the head of the table with Sally in his lap, and she helped him blow out the candles. Unlike every other birthday he had after she was born, he did genuinely need her help.
Basil snapped several candid shots at the party: Kel feeding Sally ice cream, Kim and Vance going at the candy they put out, The Maverick making too sharp a turn and losing his blond wig, Hero helping Kel unwrap his gifts, Angel helping Sally build a block tower, Aubrey egging Kel on to finish a slice of cake, Kel's mother hugging him from behind. "I'm so tired," Kel complained as she hugged him. "Can I—?"
She kissed his temple. "Just hang on a little while longer, sweetie. It's not every day one of my babies turns eighteen."
January 1, October 10, November 11—they were his mother's own personal holidays. No one would take them away from her, not even her own children.
Kel knew he ought to be more grateful, because if there was anything spending so much time in Senema Hospital's Oncology Ward had taught him, it was that there were too many people out there who'd do anything for just one more birthday. But he was in so much pain—up his left side, his chest and upper back, his neck. The only time he was pain-free was when he was deep in the mire of his subconscious, where he could be twelve years old again, cancer such a foreign concept that he didn't even really know what it was.
When his cake came back up, Hero rushed him to the kitchen just in time for him to hack it into the sink. Small victories.
(A note on staging: to my understanding, osteosarcoma and other bone cancers aren't staged using the 1-4 scale. Its growth is instead measured by the MSTS system, which then translates to a 1-3 staging system. I chose not to use it because the 1-4 scale is much more commonly known, and I didn't want to create any confusion as to the severity of Kel's condition.)