"Dr. Pepper" by Leanne Sowul
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Itwas the spring of eighth grade, and Laura and I had fallen for the same guy.His real name was Derek, but between us we called him Dr. Pepper based on hisinitials, D.R, and occasionally Mr. Green after the T-shirt he wore most often.Multiple code names were required to cloak our constant conversations abouthim. Our joint crush was thrilling and its exposure my biggest fear, until thecancer diagnosis that would come after school let out for the summer.
Ourfriend Jessi was the only one who knew that we were both crushing on Dr.Pepper, and she didn’t get it. Derek wasn’t physically built like Kevin ornerdy-cute like Matt. But he was smart and funny, constantly joking around withour teachers, even the aptly-named Ms. Payne who painted over the clock in ourclassroom so we couldn’t count down the minutes to the bell. I didn’t know theword at the time, but Dr. Pepper had charisma,and Laura and I were enthralled by his confident presence. I sat behind him inEnglish; Laura gazed across the room at him in Social Studies; the three of usstruggled through Earth Science together.
Laura’scrush was more casual— she also liked a boy named Mark. But I was fully devotedto Dr. Pepper, writing “Leanne & Derek” in the corners of my Five-Starnotebooks, hiding the scribbled hearts behind my cupped hands whenever heturned around to whisper a grammar-related pun or check whether he’d gotten theright answer for problem twelve. Those were the moments that filled me withbubbly happiness, distracting me from the changes in my own body.
“You’regetting super-skinny,” Jessi said one day in French class, not bothering tokeep the envy out of her tone. But I wasn’t trying to lose weight. I was barelyconscious of my body at all. There must have been other physical changes, onesthat my parents dismissed as teenaged hormones but would later learn werewarning signs of something much more serious. I took no notice. My world wasthe sum total of my friends, my classes, and my secret crush.
Inmid-May, Jessi— out of jealousy, perhaps— outed Laura’s and my crush to ourentire Earth Science class. Whispers flew around the room, reaching Derek inseconds. “Leanne and Laura BOTH like you!” His cheeks, always a bit ruddy,brightened magenta. That was the last glimpse I had of him before I buried myhead in my arms, shielding my face with a curtain of hair to protect me fromall the giggling and pointing.
Lauratold everyone she didn’t like Derek any more, even though she did; I wore blackto school the next day and tried to act invisible. But our crush-revelationstill fueled every conversation about the approaching eighth-grade semiformal.Would we go? Would Derek ask one or both of us to dance? Laura had gone todances in the past, but I’d always been too shy. I finally purchased my ticketon the last day and found a ten-dollar periwinkle dress printed with sunflowersat the mall.
Theschool gym looked just as I’d feared: girls grouped together, giggling andswaying to the music, while boys gathered in the corners, watching us. Some ofthe popular girls got asked to dance, but Laura and I were second-tier. Beforelong, though, my friends and I were dancing with abandon, feeling the swirl ofour dresses around our legs, taking up space. I can only fantasize that it wasthis version of me letting go of my shyness and giving into the thrill ofdancing that prompted Derek to approach me when a slow song began playing nearthe end of the night.
“Doyou want to dance?” he asked.
Thiswas how we danced: a foot of space between us, sweaty hands on shoulders andwaists. For once, Derek was quiet— no jokes, no teasing. To the outsideobserver, it must have looked tame. But inside my head: fireworks. My skin wasfizzing with nervous joy. The first time I’d ever been asked to dance, and itwas a guy I liked— a guy who knew I liked him, and asked me anyway, which meanthe must like me back. His lack of conversation, so different from his usualbanter, felt significant, as though he trusted me with his quietude. It was thebest two-and-a-half minutes of my nascent teenaged life. At the end of thesong, he released my hand and we each returned to our friends. I went straightup to Jessi and laughed in her face. In hindsight, I probably should havethanked her for blabbing.
Weall waited to see if he’d ask Laura to dance, too, but he never did. She wassatisfied by her dance with Mark. Secretly, I rejoiced in the indisputable factthat Derek had chosen me.
Fordays afterward, I trolled the radio in search of the song we’d danced to,“Lightning Crashes.” I caught it four days later and added it to mycrush-struck mix tape along with a Mariah Carey song and some Boyz II Men. Asthe school year ended and summer began, I daydreamed for hours while listeningto that tape, reliving the moment when Derek put his hands around my waist. Ilistened to it on the morning my pediatrician first felt the lump in my neck. Afew days later, I popped it into my Walkman on the way to see theendocrinologist who told my parents and me that a biopsy would be pointless. Itwas cancer.
Withindays, my list of teenaged firsts expanded to include not only my first bigcrush, my first mean-girl experience, and my first dance, but also my firsthospital stay, my first surgery, and my first dose of synthetic thyroidhormone. My first shot of pre-surgical Demerol delivered my first experience ofwhat it felt like to be drunk. I acquired my first scar, a gash that lookedlike an extra mouth, twisted into a cruel smile, sewn into my throat. Iwitnessed my solid, predictable parents fall apart for the first time, thenknit themselves back together again, a pattern that would continue over thenext four years. As those real and scary firsts accumulated, they all seemed tobe happening to someone else. This couldn’t be my real life; my real life wasback in that Earth Science classroom, hidden under the covers of Five-Starnotebooks, fantasizing with Laura about boys.
Schoolwas out for summer, and social media was a decade away, so the news of mycancer only traveled by phone to the kids still in town. Friends brought giftsand hugs to my hospital room. Laura camped out for hours every day. To everystranger who walked in the room, we pretended we were sisters. I got flowersand cards and balloons, but nothing from Derek. “He probably hasn’t heard,” Itold Laura.
“Idon’t like him anymore,” Laura announced. She told me about a new guy from hertheater group who was cuter and funnier than Derek. “And anyway, Dr. Pepperdidn’t ask me to dance. He only asked you. So, it’s only fair that I give himup.”
Andalso, I said, because I had cancer now.
“Thattoo,” Laura said.
Itmust have been my fourth or fifth day in the hospital when Laura, desperate tocheer me up, started making out with a balloon. I’d been even more depressedthan usual after hearing that my doctors would be keeping me in the pediatricwing for at least another day. Laura turned on the transistor radio by my bed,grabbed a bright yellow, smiley-face helium balloon from my bouquet and held italoft with both hands.
“Who’sthis?” she said. “Is it… Dr. Pepper?” She danced the balloon around the room tothe beat of the music. It wasn’t “Lightning Crashes,” but it did the trick. Iwas transported back to our school gym, watching myself dance with Derek. For afew minutes, while Laura twirled around my hospital bed with a ridiculousyellow balloon, I wasn’t the cancer kid. I was ordinary Leanne again, with anordinary teenage crush, dancing sweaty-handed at a school dance.
Laurahammed it up, making exaggerated kissing noises against the shiny yellow mylar.“Ooh, Dr. Pepper, you’re soooo cute!” she crooned. The balloon bobbed comicallyin mid-air, and I began to laugh. She twirled, dipping the balloon back in herarms like the finale of a Disney princess movie, and just then, one of mynurses walked in. Laura froze, mid-smooch. The nurse put up both hands andbacked out of the room. We burst into hysterical giggling as Laura released theballoon.
Atthe time I’d thought that moment of unexpected joy was due to my crush and thereminder that there was a normal teenaged world to return to when the scarinessof hospitals and surgeries and radioactive therapy was over. I’d already begunto compartmentalize my life: this was the cancer-time, but when it was over I’dgo back to my real life. Real life was school and friends and vacations with myfamily. Real life held space for crushes on boys, giggling with friends,dreaming about school dances. The time in hospitals and doctor’s offices andstruggling with post-surgical pain was all something else, another world that Ionly entered when necessary.
Butas time went on, I began to see the real significance of that moment when mybest friend kissed a balloon. Laura became the bridge between my two worlds. Wewere together at school, passing notes in the hallways and sitting together inthe cafeteria, and together on the weekends, having sleepovers and movienights. Other friends joined us in those places, but Laura was the only personI let cross into the cancer-time. My third and fourth surgeries were in Boston,four hours away. She came for both, waiting with my family while I was insurgery, helping to keep my sister distracted and my parents from crying. Shewas there when I opened my eyes in the hospital room, there when the Demerolwanted me to jump out the window, and there when the surgeons told me that theyhadn’t been able to remove every scrap of the new tumor. In the middle oftwelfth grade, she was the first person I called when my PET scan finally cameback clean. Laura hadn’t merely kissed a balloon for me. She’d stepped up to bemy partner, dancing me through four years of cancer, keeping my spirits aloft.
Asfor Dr. Pepper, I saw him again the first week of ninth grade. The high schoolwas bigger than our middle school, and I didn’t seem to have any classes withhim. Finally, on the third or fourth day, I spotted him lumbering down the hallwith his L.L. Bean backpack slung over one shoulder, looking as cool andcharismatic as ever. As I rehearsed my opening line in my head, he saw me, andhis eyes lit. “Hey!” he called, not breaking stride as we passed each other.“Hey,” I said back, unsure if the cacophony of the hallway would swallow my oneword.
Andthen, surprisingly, I felt nothing. No “Lightning Crashes,” no sweaty palms, nodesire to close the gap between us. That gap had been filled by my best friend,my bridge between worlds.
I spotted Laura down the hall, caught up with her, and the two of us walked onward together.
***
Leanne Sowul is an award-winning writer whose publication credits include Juxtaprose, Hippocampus Magazine, Rappahannock Review, Confrontation, and Mothers Always Write. In early 2020, Leanne was selected to read her essay “The Band Room” at Read 650's sold-out "Gratitude" show at Lincoln Center. She is currently querying agents for her historical novel, The Eugenicist's Assistant. Leanne lives with her family in the Hudson Valley area of New York, where she teaches elementary band, takes long walks, bakes cookies, and reads voraciously. Laura is still her best friend. Please reach out to Leanne at www.leannesowul.com, where you can sign up for her newsletter, "The Joyful Creative," or on Twitter and Instagram @sowulwords.
Art by Steve Johnson on Unsplash. Artist Website: artbystevej.com