Midnight Sun Read online

  I can tell Morgan doesn’t want to. I know she hates how much I’m hurting right now. That she’s even willing to forgive me for being an awful cranky beast and yelling at her when none of this is her fault.

  “Okay,” she says quietly, clicking through my phone. Deleting, deleting, deleting.

  I nod gratefully and go back to my guitar. But it’s just not sounding right tonight. Morgan watches me for a second, then picks her phone back up. I strum and realize my fingers are on the wrong strings, the wrong frets.

  I hold up my hand. My fingers are shaking uncontrollably. I push my guitar away before Morgan can notice.

  But I know.

  I know.

  20

  I can’t sleep even though I’m tired. I can’t eat even though I’m hungry. I toss and turn, throw the blankets on and off because I’m alternately shivering and then sweating. I hear a car door slam, then the doorbell ring.

  I get out of bed and look out the window. It’s Dr. Fleming. In all the years I’ve been seeing her, she’s never come here—I always go to see her at the hospital. She’s far too busy to make house calls.

  This is not a good sign. Although she’s not delivering any news I don’t already assume.

  My dad steps out onto the porch and closes the front door behind him. I can’t hear what Dr. Fleming says to him, but the next thing I know, he’s yelling, “We should do another set of tests. They could come back different!”

  “Her brain has begun to contract,” Dr. Fleming says, loudly enough for me to hear this time. “Once the neural pathways start—”

  “What about the study?” my dad bellows. “What about UW? There has to be—”

  “They shut it down,” Dr. Fleming tells him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I found out this morning. There won’t be a phase two.”

  My dad breaks down at this news. He’s always been so strong. He’s never cried in front of me, not even when my mom died. And now he’s a wreck because of me. Because of my actions.

  “I did everything I was supposed to,” he says, choking out the words. “When she was little, no matter how much she cried and moaned, I wouldn’t let her go outside. Play in the park. Go to the beach. She begged me. For things she had every right to do, and I denied her all of them. To protect her. And for what? For this?”

  Dr. Fleming pats my father’s back as emotion overcomes him. “XP is a disease that tends to take the joy out of a child’s life,” she tells him. “But all these years I’ve known Katie, she’s never complained, never sulked, only seen the good in things. And the way she talks about you—I’ve never seen a teenager so openly adore her father.”

  She’s crying along with Dad now. And I’m crying with them both. They hug.

  “Katie’s not only held on to her joy, she brings other people joy. Katie shines brighter than almost any patient I’ve ever treated. And that’s because she’s so well loved. You’re a good father, Jack.”

  My dad swipes at his face with his sleeve and nods. “How long?”

  “It’s hard to know for sure,” Dr. Fleming tells him.

  “Days? Weeks? Months? What?”

  And in typical Dr. Fleming fashion, she tells him, “Most likely one of those.”

  I feel numb, like I’m frozen in time. I can’t do anything but blame myself for ruining everyone’s life, including my own. How could I have been so ungrateful? This is what I get for not wanting the life I had anymore, for wanting so much more. I get to have no life at all. A life cut even shorter than it already was going to be.

  I’ve got to make this better somehow.

  I’m sitting with my dad in the darkroom later. He’s dipping photos in solution, drying them, hanging them. Doing what he does best.

  “You know I know, right?”

  He stops what he’s doing. Stares at me. Clears his throat. “What?”

  “I heard you and Dr. Fleming talking on the porch earlier. When you thought I was sleeping,” I tell him.

  Dad comes over and scoops me up in a hug. “I’m sorry,” he says over and over. “I’m so sorry.”

  I tell him It’s okay and I’m sorry, too more times than I can count. I’ve been thinking all day about how I can possibly make some meaning out of this awful situation, and what I’ve finally come up with is this: I have to find a way to give back. One last message of love. I suddenly know what I can do for my dad.

  “I’ll be upstairs,” I tell him. “When you’re done down here, we can order some takeout, okay?”

  “That’s it, Katie?” he asks, palms up, with a little shrug. “No questions?”

  I shake my head. “Nope.”

  An hour later, he makes his way to the den. I’m sitting on the couch still typing away on my computer. I’ve been working hard on my masterpiece, and it’s almost complete.

  “I’m starving,” my dad says. “Should we order from Hunan Chinese?”

  I make one last change and look up at him. “Huh?”

  “I said, are you in the mood for Chinese?” he says. “What are you so engrossed in?”

  I turn my computer around so he can see it. “Chinese, sure, always. You know that. And I’ve been making you an online dating profile.”

  My dad is momentarily floored. “What?” he asks, his mouth hanging open.

  But really now. This is a long time coming. No one should have to be alone. Everyone should have someone special. That’s basically the key to happiness, as I found out with Charlie.

  “What do you think?” I ask, showing him two different options for his profile picture. “I like your hair in this one, but in the other you have your camera.”

  Dad tries to force my laptop shut. “Nope. This is not happening—”

  I stay firm. “This—is—happening! You need to go on some dates! You can even help me write it. Sit.”

  My dad starts to protest again, but I shoot him my most serious look. He seems to accept that I’m not joking around here and will not give up on this idea. He plops down next to me.

  “Here’s what I have so far. World’s greatest father and handsomest photographer—”

  My dad makes a buzzer noise. “Veto.”

  I ignore him and continue. “Looking for fellow adventurer interested in art, photography, nostalgia about the SuperSonics—”

  “SuperSonics, now that’s important,” my dad says, nodding.

  “And a partner in crime to travel the world.” I look up to see whether he is getting all this.

  But he’s staring off into space, at the wall, at one of the pictures he and my mom took way back when. “I don’t travel,” he finally says, shaking his head.

  “You will, though,” I tell him. I don’t add the second part of what I’m thinking, which is: You can again. After I’m gone.

  It’s like my dad hears my unspoken thoughts. The air is basically sucked out of the room. He gets up off the couch and turns to leave. “All right, we’re not talking about this—”

  I grab his sleeve. “Please. I want to. I have to.”

  He stops. Exhales long and loudly, like a creaky old radiator. I pat the couch next to me.

  “We had each other before. And now…” I am trying to gather my courage to say what neither of us has acknowledged out loud yet. “We lost Mom, and you’re gonna lose me, too.”

  “No!” my dad protests. “There’s always a chance that—”

  “I know it sucks. For you probably even more than me. But reality is reality,” I tell him. “We’ve always known it’s a matter of when, not if… and it is going to happen, like it or not.”

  Nothing in history has ever been so hard to say. From the looks of my dad, nothing in history has ever been so hard to hear. But we need to talk about these things while we still can. He needs to know how much I love and appreciate everything he’s done for me.

  I take a deep breath and continue my speech. “I want you to travel and start photographing the world again. I want everyone to see your photos, Dad.”

  And with that,
he breaks down in tears. In front of me. Another first. I’m honestly kind of proud of him. For so many years we’ve pretended to be okay to each other. And now it’s okay to let each other know we’re not.

  I want my dad to know that some good can come of this—that he can have all his dreams back when I’m gone if he’ll only let himself. That I want more than anything for him to be whole again. And that he can be, even without me or Mom. He has to be or I won’t be able to bear what comes next.

  “Stop,” my dad says through his tears. “I can’t…”

  I forge ahead even though it’s hard to weather his grief. “I just want you to have as great a life as the one you’ve given me. I need to know you’ll try to be happy, and have adventures and someone to share them with because… well, that’s the best part.”

  Dad composes himself with a few deep cleansing breaths, like we learned from those meditation videos we tried a while back. When I can see he’s almost ready to agree, I try to close the deal fast.

  “Just go on one date,” I urge him. “Pick a rando lady and take her out. Please.”

  He finally nods. “Okay.”

  I grab his hand in mine. “Promise.”

  “I promise,” he tells me.

  I wrap my arms around him and we hug each other tightly. My tears fall fast on his shoulder. His tears soak into mine. I’m the first to break away.

  “Now let’s call Hunan Chinese,” I say, wiping my face on my shoulder.

  Dad gives me a smile, and says, “You go upstairs and rest for a bit. I’ll order us dinner.”

  My heart feels like it’s somehow stitching itself back together. I know I can still make a difference for as long as I’m here. And maybe even after if I work fast enough.

  21

  The doorbell rings forty-five minutes later, so I head downstairs.

  “Our dinner is served,” I yell as I take the last step and see my dad still sitting on the couch.

  “Hey, can you get that, honey?” he asks, his eyes never leaving the baseball game on the TV screen. “It’s full count with two outs and two men on base.”

  I laugh at how intense he’s being about a regular-season matchup. “Sure.”

  I walk to the door and open it. My mouth falls open. It’s not our delivery guy after all.

  I slam the door shut and fall against it. “I think you better come here!” I yell to my dad.

  But he’s already standing right in front of me. “I think you better let him in,” he says, offering me a hand up. I take it.

  “How did you know it was Charlie?”

  “Because I’m the one who called him,” he says. “Having someone to share your life with is the best part, right? Isn’t that what you just told me?”

  “I can’t see him,” I whisper. “I mean… can I?”

  “Go,” he says, opening the door and shooing me outside. “Talk.”

  Charlie’s standing there, holding out two bags from Hunan Chinese. After a moment, he says, “Dinner is served?” and we both laugh a little. How does he do that? Take an awkward moment and make it feel… not as awkward. Still, his ease doesn’t make me feel any less uneasy. It’s like the first time we met all over again.

  “You do exist,” he says. “This time I was positive I dreamed you.”

  I start to smile but stop when I realize that this is not what I came out here to do. I know what my dad said and I know what I want. But if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that you can’t always get what you want in this life. This is for closure. My gift to Charlie so he can move on: letting him go.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, that was unforgivable, and I wish I could make it up to you, but unfortunately, this arrangement”—I gesture to him and then me, indicating, y’know, us—“it, it… can’t go on.” My speech is coming out oddly formal and stilted. I take a deep breath and try to sound normal. “You and I continuing to see each other is just… a really bad idea, and I—”

  Ugh. I look up at Charlie and he’s biting his bottom lip. He looks like he’s going to laugh, not cry, like I was worried he might. Now I feel dumber than ever. I start over.

  “Look, love is never fair, but this is particularly unfair, like Guinness Book of Records unfair, and so it should stop. It’s done. It’s not you; it’s me.”

  I wince. That was even more awkward.

  “Good-bye,” I say in closing, holding my hand out to shake his. He just stares at it. When he looks back up at me, his face is lit with one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen.

  “That was, like, the worst breakup speech I’ve ever heard,” he tells me.

  I don’t get it. He’s not accepting my breakup? That’s not even a thing as far as I know. “What?”

  Charlie rolls his eyes at me. “A D minus would be generous. Zeroes from all the judges. A total flop.”

  “I’ve never done this before!” I protest before realizing what’s underneath what he’s saying: He doesn’t want us to break up, even after everything that’s happened. And everything that’s inevitably going to happen. “But seriously, we can’t.”

  “We can, though,” he tells me.

  I stop talking and gaze into those melty eyes of his. My resolve melts with them. I want to believe we can. But how?

  He shrugs like he actually heard my unspoken question. “We can,” he repeats. “What I can’t do is stop seeing you. I tried it and it sucks. And”—here he makes his fingers into quotation marks and his voice sound formal like I did before—“it can’t go on.”

  I laugh, but the pain I feel is very real. I don’t want to hurt him more than I already have. That would kill me before the stupid XP does. “Charlie…”

  He jumps back in before I can start protesting again. “Katie. You can either have spent the past few weeks changing my life and becoming my favorite person only to leave me standing on your lawn like a chump, or we can keep making this the best summer of our lives.”

  I shake my head. He’s crazy. Most guys would be running for the hills and thanking their lucky stars I let them off the hook so easily. And here Charlie is, trying to convince me we should stay together even though our relationship is completely doomed.

  “I’ve done my research,” Charlie says, dead serious now. “I know what XP is. I know what’s going on. But we’re not people who don’t try. You knew that before I did.”

  I finally break down, laughing and crying. Why choose, when both fit the moment so well?

  “I’m not gonna sit back and watch this happen,” he tells me. “The choice is mine and I’m making it. I want to be with you.”

  I wipe my eyes. Look into his. Throw my arms around his neck and kiss him like my life depends on it. And in some ways, maybe it does. It’s the kind of kiss—real and passionate—people probably wait their whole lives to experience, and I’m lucky enough to have mine now.

  I realize that even in the worst of times there’s always a ray of hope. Charlie is mine.

  As I’m sitting on the couch between my dad and Charlie a little later, happily slurping up lo mein, I can’t help thinking that despite the enormous poop sandwich I’ve been dealt I’m still grateful for everything my life has given me. For everything I don’t have—my mom, a group of friends, the hope of a happily ever after—there’s so much I do have. And always have had. And now there’s Charlie. I think about what he said to me earlier, and I feel the exact same way: He exists. I didn’t dream him up. And as sure as I feel his warmth next to me on the couch as his leg brushes against mine, I know that we’re not just a summer fling. That what we feel for each other is everlasting. That nothing can tear us apart.

  Nothing. And that includes dying.

  22

  I have to beg and plead, but I convince my dad to go see Charlie’s big return to the pool. He’s been working his butt off ever since we swam together on what turned out to be both the best night and worst day of my life. And I’ll be damned if I’m not going to be there to cheer him on along with everyone who ever support
ed him in swimming, including his friends, family, and former coach—and, I hope, a new one from Berkeley.

  It’s kind of a pain to prepare for the trip to the high school pool—I have to slather myself in three coats of extra-strength prescription sunscreen and dress in thick layers that don’t match the summery weather. Dad has to apply a special protective film to the windows of his car to prevent UV rays from penetrating them, plus install basically what’s like a two-way mirror between the front seat and the back. As in he can see behind him but I can’t see through it and no light can get through. It’s a weird way to travel, like I am someone überfamous in a limo, too snobby to interact with my driver.

  “Come on, Dad,” I say, trying to jolly him out of the fear I see in his eyes. He has to get over the dread that has kept us from venturing out much for all these years. Especially now, when it really doesn’t matter how careful we are anymore. “What’s the worst thing that could happen? I could have a triggering event? Too late, I already did.”

  His lips stay pressed together in a thin line. “Not funny.”

  “Gallows humor,” I tell him with a shrug.

  It’s so hard to get used to the new realities each day brings. I feel old and sorry for myself, like everything that made me me is quickly being stripped away. That before long I’ll be nothing but a shell of my former self. The day I realized I couldn’t play guitar anymore was the absolute worst. I cried harder than I have in my life, not only because music has always been my greatest source of pleasure and pride but because it’s also been my longstanding hope to leave my songs as my parting gift to this world. And now that can never happen.

  Charlie is the only one who can make me forget how fast I’m going downhill. He somehow still makes me feel like the most beautiful, talented, normal, healthy girl in the world. He acts like he doesn’t even notice the stuff I can’t do anymore.