Brightside by Mark Tullius (story books to read txt) 📕

DAD’S BRIGHTSIDE GIFTS didn’t stop with Billy Bass. He sent a fishing pole. More D-Cell batteries. He sent a tuning fork, even though I’d never played an instrument. His letter said I should learn new hobbies. He wrote he’d been learning to kayak.

None of it made sense. I worried he’d developed dementia. It explained the last few years, the paranoia. There were studies linking telepathy to brain damage.

I shoved all the gifts in the closet. Some I didn’t even unwrap. I didn’t want to think about him, that if I’d just listened to his advice, I’d be in the real world, not staring at Rachel’s empty desk every day or hiding from Krystal in the Square.

The darkness was closing in. I didn’t want to leave my room. I just wanted to stay in bed, stare at nothing, but I didn’t have a choice. Isolation got you sent to the Cabin so I looked for reasons to go outside and act like everything was fine. I took walks, hung out with Danny, bought him some new comic books. He reminded me of Steven. But as bad as it was for Steven and me as kids, it was nothing compared to how Danny had it. The out loud taunts hurt, but not nearly as much as the silent ones, the kind even bullies kept to themselves.

Danny had heard them all, but somehow he was still happy. I envied Danny and tried to learn from him. I even stopped feeling sorry for myself about Rachel, Michelle, Krystal...

But still I felt awful for how things ended with Steven.

By eighth grade we’d stopped hanging out, rarely spoke. I’d been listening to other people’s thoughts, started hanging out with the jocks, the pretty girls. I knew what they wanted to hear. Said all the right things to make them think I was cool. Steven wasn’t, never would be, so I cut him off.

Then he got sick. Real sick. His parents pulled him out of school. I knew I should visit, but I couldn’t face him.

Dad found out, heard me thinking one night at dinner when Mom asked how Steven was doing.

Dad drove me to Steven’s house to make me apologize. He sat in the car, while everything was yelling at me to run. I breathed in, breathed out, told myself I’d be okay. I didn’t use the doorbell because I didn’t want to wake Steven’s parents if they were sleeping. I’d asked Dad to just let me do this over the phone, but he refused, said I needed to look Steven in the face, hear what Steven was really feeling.

I knocked on the door, prayed his parents would tell me to go home.

I didn’t know his parents well, even though I’d been over there a hundred times. They kept to themselves and never said a whole lot, hardly ever more than hello. Steven said they didn’t really speak English, but I knew he just didn’t want them doing it around me, embarrassed of how they sounded.

Steven’s mom opened the door, her straight black hair now frosted gray, her eyes tired black holes above pursed lips.

I bowed my head to show respect. “Hello, Mrs. Chang. Can I see Hong?”

Calling Steven by his real name reminded me why I’d cut him off in the first place.

Mrs. Chang gave the slightest nod and stepped to the side, revealing the path of clear plastic protecting the bright white carpet.

I slipped off my shoes and set them next to the other two pairs. His mom was waiting, not saying a word, glad I was there.

The plastic crinkled under my feet, the sweet smell of rice mixed with incense. I couldn’t turn back so I went down the hall. Steven’s room was the last one on the left.

The door was closed, nothing on it, his sign gone. HONG’S ROOM, nice and neat block letters, the most rebellious thing I ever convinced him to do, no way he’d ever write Steven.

I opened his door. His room used to be blue. Now it was brilliant white, every single inch. No more Star Wars posters. No superhero cardboard cut-outs below them. All of it was gone, Steven was done with childhood.

Everything else was just as white. The carpet, the walls, the ceiling. The candles in the corners. Everything gone except the giant silk screen that hung in front of the window, the soft white fabric with its border so green, a blue river and a big white bird floating down the middle of it.

I stepped forward. Steven, whiter than he’d ever been. So pale. So weak. So small.

Steven’s head was propped three pillows high. All his hair was gone, all that was left was his skull and some skin, his thin slits for eyes staring straight ahead at the picture. He was thinking about death and what it would be like.

Steven winced and let out a long sigh that sounded painful to say. “Unnhhhh.” Keeping his hand under the sheet, he grabbed hold of his hip. His bones hurt. All the time, even with the meds.

I stepped closer so my legs touched the bed. Seeing him like this made it hard to think. I didn’t know if I should call him by his real name. I cleared my throat so I wouldn’t scare him and said, “Hey, man.”

Steven slowly turned his head and blinked twice. His thoughts trying to figure out how he felt about me. If he hated me for making fun of him at school because he still played Dungeons and Dragons or if he was too embarrassed to be seen like this, bald, deteriorating, naked under the sheet. Or if he was just glad someone had finally cared enough to come.

I had no idea what to do. No one had ever told me what to say to someone dying. Someone who had less than ten days, two weeks at the most according to our teacher, Mrs. Kauffman. She’d made us make this giant card. We all signed our names, some words of encouragement. I only wrote, “Feel better.”

I nodded at the picture covering the window. “Cool goose.”

Steven spoke so low, I had to lean forward. “Swan,” he said. “That’s what Hong means.”

I’d never thought his name actually translated into anything. “That’s what it means?”

“Not gorilla,” Steven said through a cough. Then smiled.

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