Chapter Three
October 2002
**********
Cassie was reading a story to Jenna when Alicia Keys showed up. The little girl was having one her bad days…one of the worst, in fact since she’d started radiation, and couldn’t get up the energy to get out of bed.
They heard Shannon starting to screech out in the hallway, and they both looked up, ready to go see what had happened when the singer knocked on Jenna’s open hospital room door. And there she was, dressed to kill in a pair of flared hip huggers with a braided brown belt, dark green heels, and a loose, flowing, gauzy, green shirt. And her braids were covered in a gold print scarf.
“Hi, are you Jenna Parker?”
Jenna stared at her idol, her mouth ready to catch flies. She nodded dumbly. “Uh huh.” Cassie imagined that she had the same look on her face and quickly snapped her jaw shut. Reaching over to the little girl, she closed her jaw too. Jenna came back to her senses long enough to stick her tongue out at Cassie.
Alicia smiled, that Alicia Keys smile, and Cassie almost died. Alicia Keys was standing there, in Jenna’s room. Wow. “Is it okay if I come in?” Jenna nodded.
As Alicia walked towards the bed, Cassie scrambled out of the chair, ready to hand it over to her. Alicia smiled. “That’s okay. I was wondering if I could sit here?” she asked, patting the end of Jenna’s bed. Jenna nodded again.
“So I guess you know who I am?” Alicia asked. Jenna nodded…again. “And you would be Cassie?”
Oh. My. God. Alicia Freaking KEYS knew her name!! This time, it was Cassie nodding.
Jenna finally managed to find her voice. “What are you doing here?” she whispered in a wonder-tinged voice, so excited Cassie was afraid she might begin to have trouble breathing.
“Well,” Alicia began, focusing all of her attention on Jenna. Which was a big deal, to have all of your idol’s attention. Cassie could tell that for the first time in her life, Jenna was turning just a little bit shy. And Cassie had thought THAT day would never come! It looked like she might lose the power of speech all over again. “A little birdie told me that you liked my scarves.” She brought her handbag up onto the bed.
“I thought that while I was in Seattle for a radio interview and a photo shoot today, I might stop by and give a couple of them to you.” She started pulling handfuls of scarves out of the bag, the brightly colored fabric escaping from her fist in wisps.
Jenna protested, “But if you give them to me, then you can’t wear them!” She tried to shove the scarves back into the bag, but Alicia grabbed her hands.
“Well, that’s the really cool part. Before I came to Seattle, I went out and got doubles of all my favorites. That way, we can both wear the same one!”
Cassie stared at the two, trying not to cry. But damn, Lance was amazing. She didn’t know how he had gotten Alicia Keys to show up at a Seattle hospital, but whatever he had done, Cassie loved him for it. Oh, wow. She loved him.
Thankfully, Marie interrupted these scary thoughts, running in like a freight train and screeching to a halt at the foot of Jenna’s bed. “ALICIA KEYS!”
Although her excited shout had almost scared Cassie out of her skin, Alicia took it in stride, grinning at the pig-tailed Marie. “And who might you be?”
Cassie’s head almost shook off in her warning to Alicia, but it was too late. The little girl had already started talking. And once someone got Marie talking…
“I’m Marie Louisa Scarlett Emmeline Melissa McKenzie. This is my room too, and that’s my side of the room, near the window, cause I like to look out the window when I wake up. My best friend is Justin Timberlake, did you know that? Well, he is, cause he said so when I asked him when he was here last month. Did you know that he came to visit me? Well, he did. I’m six. I’m exactly seven months and thirteen days older than Jenna. Did you know those were my lucky numbers? Well, they are. My momma said so. She said that’s why she had to give me such a long name, cause I was gonna be a lucky person, and I needed good lucky numbers, and a long, lucky name. I looked it up in one of my momma’s newspapers once, but the newspaper was wrong, cause it said my lucky number was twenty-six, and I know that’s not right, cause my momma doesn’t lie, but I looked up Jenna’s lucky number for her, cause she can’t read yet, but I can, and it said her lucky number was twenty-one, and I asked my momma, and she said it was, so we know that’s what Jenna’s lucky number really is. But Jenna doesn’t have a lucky name like I do. Her name is only Jenna Parker.”
…it was only a matter of time before Jenna and Marie got into a talking argument, pretty much seeing which one could outtalk the other. Cassie tried to keep her groan quiet as she sunk down into her chair. Alicia Keys looked at her, her expression one of laughter, seeming to ask, Is this kid for real?
Cassie shook her head as it fell forward before looking back at Alicia and returning a look of her own, one that said, Just you wait…
“That’s not true!” Jenna screeched as she sat up in bed, finally talking to Alicia. “I do too have a long name. My name is Jenna Elizabeth Parker, but my mom said I could add some names to it, so I could have a lucky name like Marie, and I even got to CHOOSE mine! So now it’s Jenna Elizabeth Cassandra Alicia Ariel Lilo Parker! And that’s one name longer than Marie’s, so that means I’m luckier than her. And Justin might be her best friend, but you’re mine, and I like you better than Justin anyway. And I can too read! Even ask Cassie! She’s helping me, since I can’t go to school yet. But I can read some words, and I even read a Little Critter book the other day. Do you like Little Critter? I do, and since you’re my best friend, you do too.”
“Well, Cassie’s helping me read Harry Potter, and he can do magic, and my momma says it’s good that I can read Harry Potter, only that what he says about…div…divnation! isn’t true, that’s it’s real, so I know it’s real, cause my momma said so, and she never lies. Did you know that? Well, she doesn’t…”
**********
As soon as Cassie left the hospital (ten minutes after Alicia had escaped the talking war), she called Lance.
“Hello?”
“OH MY GOD! What did you do? Alicia Keys was just at the hospital! ALICIA FREAKING KEYS! How did you do that?”
“Cassie?”
“No, the other person who’s been calling you everyday at almost the same time for the past three weeks!”
“Sorry, it was hard to tell it was you over the SCREECHING!”
“I’m sorry I was screeching. But Alicia Keys?!” Cassie was so busy talking and screeching to Lance that she walked into a parked truck, with a loud oomph! Was she the only one that ever did that? she wondered as she rubbed her hip and continued on her way to the bus stop.
“Cassie, you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. I just got hit by a truck.”
“Hit by a truck. Uh huh.” Cassie could almost see Lance nodding over the wireless line. “You walked into another car, didn’t you?”
“Ehhh, shut up. Get back to the Alicia Keys thing!”
“Oh, I didn’t really do that. I just asked Justin if he would call her up for me and find out when she would next be in Seattle, and if she felt like making a hospital visit while she was there.”
“Still…you’re amazing, Lance, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know I’m amazing,” Lance replied smugly. Cassie could hear Joey dying of laughter in the background and she couldn’t help grinning.
“I take it Joey disagrees?”
“Well, yeah, that too. But also, Justin dyed his eyebrows red. It’s providing endless amusement for us all.”
“He dyed his eyebrows red?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure if he meant too, or if Joey put red Kool-aid on them while he was sleeping and when it got wet it stayed dyed that way.”
“Kool-aid…right.”
“Trust me. Joey’s evil with that stuff. He once dyed my hair to match my eyes.”
Cassie sat on the bus stop bench, and stared off dreamily. “You know, that’s actually something that I wouldn’t mind seeing.”
“Well, I go on vacation in a couple of weeks. Maybe I’ll just have to wander back that way and show you.”
“Heh heh,” Cassie laughed nervously. “You’re on vacay in a couple of weeks?”
“Yeah, we have two weeks off while Justin does some major promotions for his album. Hey, is it okay if I head up to Seattle?”
“Uh,” Cassie stalled, unsure what to say. “Of course. That’d be great. Just call first. Oh, my bus is here. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Sure. Bye.”
As Cassie climbed onto the bus, she was lost for a few moments, wishing that it was possible for Lance to come visit her during his vacation. Unfortunately for them, by then she would be long gone from Seattle.
**********
She’d always felt connected to Jenna. Cassie sat next to the sleeping child’s bed, just watching her breathe in and out. It was such a reassuring thing, in reality. She’d spent too many nights watching children fight for every breath, as they neared the end of their short lives. Held too many hands as parents watched their child take a last, ventilator-assisted breath.
Cassie sat next to Jenna’s bed for some time, just thinking: about life, death, Lance, the hospital. Lance.
For the first time, she was struggling against her acceptance of fate. She’d lived with her own tumor since she was seven. It was why she’d always felt closer to Jenna; they had the same type of low-grade astrocytoma, the same diagnosis, the same ticking time bombs in their brains. Maybe, if they could shrink hers enough to remove it, it wouldn’t become a high-grade astrocytoma like hers had, and Jenna would be luckier than her, live past the age of twenty.
There it was again! Never had she felt “unlucky.” She’d been living with her tumor for thirteen years, gone through radiation when she was seven, and again when she was sixteen, both treatments neither ridding her of the tumor or shrinking it, but attacking it enough that it went into a dormant state. When she thought about it, life had actually been very kind to her; she had a terrific, supporting family. She’d gotten through high school and two years of college before the tumor had started growing again, uncontrollably this time. Always knowing that her time was borrowed, she’d focused on just living.
And if she was feeling sappy, she could even say that she’d finally had her first love. Even if that first love wouldn’t understand why she had to cut him out of her life, without any warning or explanation.
Tomorrow morning, they left for Hawaii: Cassie, Jo Beth, Michael, and their parents. It may have been morbid, choosing your place to die, but her family had been understanding. They had their beach house rented and ready to move into for the next month or two. The doctors weren’t sure how long she had left. They’d guesstimated six weeks. Most likely less.
Cassie had never had any regrets about dying. And then Lance had literally stormed into her life, turning it upside down and stealing her heart. A heart that didn’t have time to love Lance the way she wanted to. The way she wanted to live long enough to love him.
She’d always known that it was most likely she’d not live long enough to get married, have a job, have children. She’d avoided any kind of relationships with guys for that reason, knowing that anything permanent just wasn’t possible for her. She didn’t want to leave some guy grieving for her after she was gone. It was what she’d avoided at all costs. Seeing so many kids die in the hospital and the people that got left behind, Cassie had tried to keep her own circle of “survivors” small; she herself had mourned when one of the kids didn’t make it. The last thing she had wanted was to leave people like that.
That was why she was leaving without telling Lance. Let him think what he wanted, get angry at her, hate her. It was better than being sad for her after she had died.
She sighed as she stood up and stretched. She’d been at the hospital for over an hour, sitting next to Jenna’s bed. She kissed her on the forehead, saying goodbye. Placing Mariah Carey’s single, Through the Rain, on the girl’s bedside table, she sent up a silent prayer that Jenna would get to experience everything that Cassie didn’t have time for.
*********
Lance threw his cell phone against the wall. Or, as his aim sucked, at the door. Justin dodged it as he stepped onto Lance’s bus.
“So, the phone…evil reincarnated?” he asked casually, going for the fridge, first thing. As was his habit, whether he was on his bus or one of his bandmates.
“I can’t get a hold of her! I’ve called her house and no one answers. I’ve left so many messages, I think their stupid answering machine might be reaching maximum soon. And her cell phone has been disconnected. If I had heard that goddamned, stupid recorded message one more time…” Lance was literally seething. It had been three weeks now, since Cassie and her family had up and disappeared.
“Did you try calling the hospital? See if she’d gone into work?” Justin suggested as he popped the tab of a soda and tried to gauge Lance’s frustration level. Cassie had been a sensitive subject for the last two weeks, since Lance had first figured out that she was avoiding him.
He was treated to one of Lance’s do-I-look-like-an-idiot stares. Justin shrugged. It had been worth a try. Lance had been in a funk for awhile, and nothing the guys did was working. As Lance’s frustration level had grown, the guys became even less inclined to talk to him, say what had been on all of their minds after the first couple of days. That maybe Cassie didn’t want to be found by him. That she had ditched him and been too chicken to actually come out and say it.
“I’m starting to get worried, Justin. What if something happened to her?”
“Like what? Their whole family was murdered, and that someone cut off Cassie’s cell phone, and that they disconnected their home phone literally overnight?”
In return for his sarcasm, he received one of Lance’s darkest looks. And the group had been receiving them a lot lately. Justin could tell that Lance was reaching the end of his rope. He wanted to wring the bitch’s neck, as did all the guys, for putting Lance through this.
“Lance…Maybe it’s time to face the fact that Cassie doesn’t want to talk to you. Maybe she doesn’t want you to find her.”
“Shut up, Justin.”
Justin was growing angrier himself. Why couldn’t his friend see what this girl was doing to him? “Lance, it’s been three weeks. Face it! She doesn’t want to talk to you. You’ve been ditched by her!”
“Get out, Justin.”
At the very real rage just below Lance’s almost-composed surface, Justin took a deep breath, calming himself before trying, very cautiously, one last time. “Lance, I’m just saying-”
“Get. Out.”
Shaking his head, Justin left the bus, hurling his soda can into the nearby trash barrel. They were at a loss as to how to help Lance. And Lance wasn’t ready to face the fact that he had been dumped by the girl.
**********
The next day, the group broke for a two week break and Lance was on a plane to Seattle first thing that afternoon.
He had an angry cabbie drive him all over the freaking city that night, from the airport to a hotel where he dropped off his bags, to Cassie’s locked and empty house, to the hospital, where he finally paid the driver an outrageous amount and ran inside, the rain pounding down on him.
As he stepped off the elevator, he was greeted by a wheelchair race, the teenage girl Alexis and the little boy Jack. He jumped to the side, just in time to avoid being pinned against the closing elevator doors.
“I won, I won!” Jack cheered as he grooved his bone-thin body in his child’s size wheelchair.
“Yeah, whatever. Next time, you’re mine!” Alexis threatened, laughing as she slowly wheeled over and purposefully pinned Lance against the wall.
“So, a popstar graces our presence. Again. What’s up?”
“Hmm.” Lance slowly stepped to the side, giving the girl a you-really-don’t-want-to-start-with-me look. “Don’t suppose you’ve seen Cassie recently?”
“Naw. She’s taking a vacation. Has been for awhile now.” Quickly losing interest in the pop singer who apparently had no exciting reasons for being there, she turned and started to wheel away.
“Wait! Do you have any idea how I could reach her while she’s on her vacation? Do you know where she went?”
“Nope,” Alexis tossed over her shoulder. Apparently, she decided to take pity on him, though, because she added, “You could try asking Jenna though.”
Lance wandered through the halls of the Children’s Wing, trying to remember the way to Jenna’s room, from when he’d last been here with Cassie.
He found what he thought might be her room and peeked in. Yup. The girl was inside, wearing Alicia Keys’ Grammy’s scarf.
Knocking on the door, he asked, “Hey, Jenna. Do you remember me?”
The little girl clapped her hands excitedly, looking away from the Toon Disney channel on the television mounted on the opposite wall. “I know you! You’re Lance, and you’re Cassie’s friend.”
“Hey, you do remember me. It’s always fun to be memorable.” He smiled as he walked in and took a seat in the chair next to her bed.
“And you remember me!” she exclaimed. “You know what? Alicia Keys knew who I was too. And she’s my best friend. She even said so.”
“Really? Is that where you got the scarf from?”
“Uh huh. And she even gave me more too, but this is my favorite.”
They were interrupted as another little girl stampeded into the room. Lance racked his brain, finally remembering her as Marie, but found that his good memory didn’t matter in this case.
“Oh. It’s just you. I thought it was Justin.” So said, she flipped her hair over her shoulders and marched herself back out, to wherever she had come from.
“Don’t mind her. She’s just mad cause her best friend, Justin, hasn’t come back to see her.” Lance made a mental note to let Justin know that he had a fan waiting for a letter or something.
“How come you came back, anyway, and how come you didn’t bring Justin?” Jenna asked as she picked up the TV remote and turned it down.
“Well, I decided to come visit Cassie, only I can’t seem to find her. Someone thought you might be able to help me with that.”
“Oh.” Jenna picked up the edge of her scarf and started playing with it. Lance could tell that before they’d shaved her head, twirling her hair around her finger was one of her nervous habits. “Nope. Haven’t seen her.”
“Yeah. I gathered that much. No one’s seen her. I was just hoping maybe you’d heard from her.”
“Nope. She turned off her phone.”
“I found that out already,” Lance said dryly. “So, nothing? No letters or her calling you?” He found it hard to believe that Cassie would cut off one of her favorite little kids in the same way that she had dropped him.
“Uh…”
“Jenna?” Lance looked at her with raised eyebrows, hoping against hope that she would tell him where Cassie was. “Please? I need to talk to her.”
“She made me promise not to say a word.” She made a zipping motion across her mouth, and then added a gesture of turning a key and throwing it over her shoulder, before crossing her little arms over her chest.
“Please, Jenna. I REALLY need to talk to her.”
The little girl’s eyes started darting all over the place, and her head kept twitching to her left side, along with her shoulder. Lance half stood, afraid she was having some kind a seizure.
“Jenna? You okay? Do you want me to get a nurse?”
She shook her head vigorously, dispelling all ideas that something was medically wrong. Had the girl just decided to go a little crazy?
Her head started jerking again and she made sounds behind her locked lips.
“Jenna, I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say!” Lance exclaimed, frustrated with this game already.
“Jeepers, you’re dense!” she shouted, startling Lance. She uncrossed one of her arms and pointed to her bedside table behind Lance’s chair.
Looking over the small surface, Lance saw only a glass of water, a Lilo & Stitch watch, and a Lilo & Stitch postcard.
“You want some water?”
“Jeez, what the heck does Cassie see in you anyway?!” Jenna shouted. Lance was again taken aback. What the hell?
At long last, Jenna picked up the brightly colored postcard and threw it at Lance. He made attempts to grab it out of the air, but ended up looking like an idiot when it escaped every endeavor and fluttered to the floor.
Picking it up, he turned it over and spotted Cassie’s handwriting. Reading quickly, he looked up at Jenna.
“What the heck is Cassie doing in Hawaii?”
“Finally! Jeez, no wonder you became a singer! You must have dropped out of high school, huh?”
Lance decided to ignore these slurs coming from a five-year-old, and waited expectantly.
“Do I have to explain EVERYTHING?!” Apparently, she decided to take Lance’s glare for a yes, and continued, “She’s there cause she can’t make it through the rain.”
“Come again? What are you talking about.”
Lance knew he would definitely not be leaving an impression of intelligence, as Jenna looked at him like he was younger than her. “Hello? Mariah Carey’s new single? Duh! I thought you were supposed to be into music.”
Lance gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the fact that this slip of a girl was making him feel like an idiot. “And that has what to do with Cassie?”
“Her tumor came back. She went to Hawaii cause they couldn’t fix it, and cause she wasn’t gonna make it through the rain, and she wanted to be in Hawaii when she died.”
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