Page 1 of The Heartbreakers
Chapter 1
Cara was clutching the latest edition ofPeopleas if it were the Holy Bible.
“If I didn’t have you to bring me magazines,” she said, “I’d go stir crazy locked up in this place.”
“I had to fight off some soccer mom for the last copy,” I told her. And I was serious. Fresh reading material was a hot commodity among inpatients and their families at the hospital.
Cara didn’t hear me. She was already tearing through the magazine, eager to consume her daily dose of celebrity gossip. Beside her, Drew was camped out in the room’s only armchair, staring down at his phone. From the scowl on his face, I knew he was either reading about last night’s baseball game or discovering that the spotty Wi-Fi was being particularly fussy.
Unlike a typical day at the hospital, today I actually had something to keep me occupied during visiting hours. After pulling a chair up to Cara’s bed, I started scrolling through the pictures I had taken with my new Canon. My parents had bought me the camera as an early birthday gift, and I had tested it out at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden this morning.
“God, could he be any more perfect?”
I looked over, and Cara had the magazine open to an interview with one of the guys from the Heartbreakers, her favorite band. The headline read “Bad Boy Still Breaking Hearts.” Underneath it was an abstract with a quote: “I’m not looking for a girlfriend. Being single is too much fun.” When I glanced back up, there was a look on Cara’s face—eyes avid, mouth partially open—that made me wonder if she was about to lick the page. I waited a moment to see if she would, but all she did was heave a sigh, the kind that implied she wanted me to give her a reason to gush over her favorite celebrity.
“Owen something?” I asked to be polite, but my attention was already focused back on my camera.
“Oliver Perry,” she said, correcting my mistake. I didn’t need to look at Cara to know she was rolling her eyes at me even though I had made my dislike of the band clear on multiple occasions, like every time she blasted their music through the house. I didn’t care enough about the Heartbreakers to learn their names; they were just another boy band whose popularity would sputter out as fast as it had shot up. “I swear you’re like a forty-year-old stuck in a teenager’s body or something.”
“Why?” I asked. “Because I don’t know the name of some boy-band member?”
She crossed her arms and glared. Apparently I had crossed the line. “They’re not a boy band. They’re punk.”
There were two reasons I didn’t like the Heartbreakers. First and foremost, I thought their music sucked, which should be explanation enough, but I had another reason: the Heartbreakers tried so hard to be something they weren’t, parading around as rockers when really, they were just a boy band. Sure, they played instruments, but no amount of vintage band tees and ripped jeans could mask the watered-down lyrics and catchy beats of songs that were undoubtedly pop. The fact that their fans had to constantly remind the world that the Heartbreakers were a “real” band only proved otherwise.
I pressed my lips together to keep myself from laughing. “Just because they site the Misfits and the Ramones as their inspiration doesn’t make them punk.”
Cara tilted her head to the side, eyebrows scrunched together. “The who?”
“See?” I reached over and grabbed the magazine. “You don’t know what real punk is. And this,” I said, gesturing down at the page, “is not it.”
“Just because I don’t listen to all your underground weird stuff doesn’t make you more musically cultured than me,” she responded.
“Cara,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
“Whatever, Stella.” Cara slid the magazine back into her lap. She looked away from me, shoulders slumping. “Honestly, I don’t care if you don’t like them. I’m just in a bad mood because I wanted to go to their concert.”
The Heartbreakers had performed in Minneapolis this past month, and even though Cara had desperately wanted to go, she had decided not to purchase any tickets. It had been a tough decision, especially since she had been saving up for months, but in my opinion, it was the right one. Because, when it came down to it, it didn’t matter how much she wanted to go. Her body was giving her all the signs that she couldn’t—nausea, vomiting, and fatigue just to name a few—and she knew it. One important lesson that Cara’s cancer taught us was that there’s a time to be hopeful and a time to be realistic.
Two weeks had passed since Cara started her first round of chemotherapy. The treatment worked in cycles—three weeks where countless drugs were pumped into her body, followed by a rest period before the whole process started over again. Then, after the regular chemotherapy killed off all the bad stuff in her body, Cara would be zapped with a single round of high-dose chemo just to make sure the bad stuff stayed dead.
I was never really good at science, but Cara’s trips to the hospital taught me a lot. Ordinarily, chemo doses are restricted to small amounts due to the threatening side effects. A higher dose might kill the cancer, but it also destroys bone marrow, which I’ve learned is kind of essential to life. But sometimes, regular chemo isn’t enough.
That’s how it was for Cara. After two recurrences, her doctors thought it was time for a more serious treatment, so once she received the high-dose chemo she would need to have an autologous stem cell transplant. An autologous transplant was where Cara’s own stem cells were removed from her bone marrow prior to her treatment. The cells were frozen and kept safe during her chemo, and they would be given back by a blood infusion. Without it, she wouldn’t be able to recover.
A small sigh escaped me, and I was careful with my words. “I’m sure there’ll be more concerts in the future,” I said and offered her a weak smile. “I’ll even go to one with you if you want.”
At this, Cara giggled. “Drew’s more likely to join a cheerleading squad.” At the sound of his name, our brother looked up and raised an eyebrow at Cara before returning to his phone.
“It was just a suggestion,” I added, but I was glad she found it amusing.
“You, at a Heartbreakers concert?” she said, more to herself than to me. “Yeah, right.”
At this, we both went silent. A thick kind of quiet settled around us; I could feel its weight bearing down on my chest, and I knew we were both thinking of stuff that was unhappy. Long days at the hospital tended to do that, and after a while, bad thoughts came more easily than the good ones.
A knock on the door pulled me back into my surroundings, and Jillian, Cara’s favorite nurse, stepped inside. When I saw her, I glanced up at the clock and was surprised to see how fast the day had disappeared.
“Stella, Drew,” she said, greeting the both of us. “How are you both?”
