Sunny Days Inside Page 9

  When he pretend-swung — weeeeee! — across the imaginary bottomless gap between bed and door, then reached for the next Spidey line tied to the knob (the belt of Syl’s bathrobe).

  These lines were all over the apartment, Spidey Max’s means of locomotion, tripping hazards for everybody else.

  If Claudia was lucky, she fell back to sleep after he left the room, but she was mostly not lucky because he was only going to the bathroom. He came swinging back — weeeeee! Then Spidey Max would pull his Spider-Man action figure from wherever it was buried in the bed and begin acting out Spidey adventures, all of which involved a steady stream of BAMs and POWs.

  If Moma had worked the night shift, Claudia worried that the sound effects would wake her, too.

  She got up and made breakfast.

  Spidey Max couldn’t just come to the table and sit down on his chair. No. He had to crouch-hop Spidey-style from Spidey line to Spidey line, then onto the seat where, squatting, he ate his bowl of mummified bugs and flies (aka Sugar Puffs).

  Spider-Man Hallowe’en costume, Spider-Man underpants, Spider-Man sheets, T-shirts, pajamas, lunch box, baseball cap, coloring books, action figures …

  The whole Spidey thing was out of control! Claudia would have loved to take a big can of Raid and blast the Spidey part of her little brother away.

  Instead, she streamed another Spider-Man cartoon on the computer to keep him quiet until Moma woke up.

  •

  Moma was short for Mom-A, or Mom-Aisha. Moms was Mom-S, or Mom-Sylvia. Spidey Max still called her Moms, but Claudia had switched to Syl when she got older. It was easier than explaining the whole Moma/Moms thing to friends.

  A year and a half ago Syl got sick. Max was only four at the time, Claudia ten and a half. Moma broke the news at a family meeting with Syl beside her on the sofa, looking embarrassed, rubbing the back of her neck where her hair was shaved close. Claudia loved that place on Syl, loved to brush the tips of her fingers against the prickly bristles.

  Moma was a nurse so she explained everything that was going to happen to Syl in a calm and reassuring way, but she was also honest.

  “Moms will be very sick and fragile for a long time. A couple of years.” She looked at Syl and squeezed her hand.

  Syl said, “When I go into the hospital for the transplant, I’ll need you two to be patient with each other and helpful to Moma. Right, Max?”

  Max was lying on the floor parallel parking his Matchbox cars, making engine sounds with his lips. He nodded.

  Obviously, he didn’t get that their lives were falling apart.

  “Claudie-Baby?” Syl said. “Are you okay with all this? Need a hug?”

  Claudia did, but she shook her head. She was afraid she’d start to cry.

  Moma explained chemotherapy in a way Max could understand. “It will kill all the bad cells in Moms’ blood. Then she’ll get new bone marrow so she can make healthy blood cells again.”

  Max said, “Pow! Bam!” and everybody laughed.

  A few months after that they moved from their townhouse to this apartment building because it was right across from the hospital. They felt squeezed together with Claudia and Max in the same bedroom, but it was only temporary. Once Syl was better, they’d move again.

  The night before the transplant, they all crossed the street to visit Syl. It would be the last time Claudia and Max would see her for a long time. Until the new bone marrow was up and running, even something like a cold was dangerous to her. And kids were so germy, especially little kids.

  Max started running around Syl’s bed, BAMing and POWing.

  “What are you doing, you wacky kid?” Syl asked him.

  “Killing the bad cells!”

  They all laughed again, but later, back in the apartment, Claudia threw herself on her bed and sobbed. What if Syl died?

  The tears eventually stopped, but for a long time she lay in the dark feeling the fear grow inside her. When Moma was pregnant with Max, her whole body swelled. She said her organs were getting squashed. The fear felt like that to Claudia, like it was crowding out her insides. It grew and grew until it just had to leave her body — a separate being hovering above her while she lay paralyzed on the bed.

  Fear with a capital F. It was formless, but had a temperature. Cold. It had a weight. Heavy.

  All those months when Syl was in hospital, Claudia sensed Fear lurking nearby. If she thought of Syl, which she did pretty much all the time, or if she went out on the balcony and looked across at the hospital, Fear would be there, ready to paralyze her again.

  Moma took leave from her job at the clinic so that she could help look after Syl. She spent the day at the hospital, then picked up Claudia and Max from school with the Syl Update: So-so day, Okay day, Bad day.

  On weekends, Moma would go for a short visit. On Okay days, they would Skype.

  “That’s not Moms,” Max said when he saw Syl for the first time on the screen. “Moms isn’t bald. She’s not orange.”

  It was true that she looked different. Not only had her hair fallen out — no more prickles! — her skin had turned a funny color, like she’d washed her face in orange Kool-Aid. Not because she was dying, Moma assured them. These were side effects from the chemotherapy.

  Still, every time Claudia saw Syl’s unprickly head and her orange-stained face, she felt Fear creep up behind her …

  Finally, Syl came home, though she was still weak and needed a walker to get to and from the bathroom.

  Max ran off to the bedroom and changed into his Spider-Man Hallowe’en costume. He dragged along a skipping rope, which he wound around Syl and her chair.

  “BAM-BAM! POW!” he hollered. “I’m killing the bad cells!”

  Syl said, “You can untie me, Spidey Max. The bad cells are all gone.”

  “Then why’s your hair funny?”

  Syl’s hair had grown back curly where before it had been straight. So curly it made her look like she could have given birth to Claudia and Max instead of Moma. Syl would never be prickly again.

  “I’m going to make sure those bad cells never come back!” Spidey Max told her.

  And so a superhero took over the bed across from Claudia’s.

  It was his way of dealing with what had happened, Moma and Syl explained to Claudia. As Spidey Max, her little brother didn’t feel so afraid.

  •

  Moma quit her old job at the clinic for good and started working at the hospital across the street. It was more convenient. Syl still couldn’t work — she was a manager at the city parks department — but she was improving slowly. If she had a doctor’s appointment, she usually spent the rest of the day in bed. Claudia helped out with Spidey Max.

  By Christmas, Syl said she felt strong enough to drive to see Grams and Gramps, two hours away. Gram-S and Gramp-S. (They’d have to take a plane to see Gram-A and Gramp-A.) They stayed in a hotel because Grams and Gramps lived in a no-kids, no-spiders complex. Also, their apartment was too small.

  They made up Spidey carols in the car: We Wish You a Spidey Christmas, We Three Superheroes, Spiders We Have Heard on High.

  “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me … a Spider-Man DVD!”

  Their bellowing songs filled the car, steamed the windows.

  As she sang, Claudia realized something. Fear hadn’t been around in ages.

  At the time, she thought that it was gone for good.

  •

  Then, six weeks later, the bedroom door creaked open. Claudia sat up in the dark with the blankets under her chin. She couldn’t see it, but she knew it was back. The room felt icy.

  In the bed across from hers, Spidey Max slept on.

  Fear came to Claudia before most other people were even worried about the virus. Though the radio and the TV reported on it, not many local people had caught it yet. Moma and S
yl were worried, though. Syl was still “immune compromised.” If she got sick, she could die.

  The next morning Moma said at breakfast, “Moms is going to visit Grams and Gramps.”

  “I want to go, too!” Spidey Max said.

  “You have school. Syl will only be there for a few weeks. Just until the danger passes.”

  Syl came out of the bedroom with a suitcase. She set it down and crouched with her arms open wide. Spidey Max ran to her, but Fear threw an icy arm around Claudia’s neck and held her back.

  “Claudie-Baby?” Syl said, still crouching.

  Claudia broke free. As she hugged Syl, she stroked the feathery back of her neck. It didn’t comfort her the way the prickles used to. When Syl was prickly, she seemed so strong.

  Moma and Syl drove Claudia and Spidey Max to school. After school, they went home with Juliet, Claudia’s friend in Apartment 4B. Moma wouldn’t be back from dropping off Syl until later that night.

  That was their last play date, but they didn’t know it then.

  •

  One of Claudia’s responsibilities during the lockdown was to help keep herself and Spidey Max safe. That meant helping Moma follow “protocols” after work.

  If Moma was on the day shift, Claudia and Spidey Max would bang pot lids on the balcony at 7:00 p.m. for Moma and the other frontline workers at the hospital. Then Claudia would hurry downstairs and prop open the back door of the building so Moma wouldn’t have to touch the handle. Moma used that door to avoid the lobby, where she was more likely to run into another tenant.

  Though Moma wore Personal Protective Equipment over her scrubs, she insisted on extra precautions. Claudia dropped a bag of clean clothes in the laundry room for her to change into, and detergent so she could throw her hospital scrubs straight into the machine. Back upstairs, Claudia left the apartment door open.

  As soon as Moma came in, she heading straight for the shower, disinfecting everything in the bathroom afterward. Only then were Claudia and Spidey Max allowed to get close her.

  They had dinner while Skyping with Syl and Grams and Gramps, everybody sharing the non-events of their day. Moma never mentioned what it was like at the hospital. She waited until Claudia and Spidey Max went to bed.

  But Claudia couldn’t fall asleep, not with Fear squatting on her chest, pinning her down on the mattress. She struggled for breath just like the sick people Moma described to Syl when she Skyped her later. Claudia heard them talking through the wall. Syl begged Moma to quit.

  “You’re already exhausted. I can see it, hon,” Syl told Moma.

  “They’re desperate for nurses. How could I let them down after they saved your life?” Then she said, “I just wish I could have sent the kids with you.”

  “Me too. I miss you all so much!”

  “They’d be safer away from me. And I worry about Claudia. This is too much responsibility for a twelve-year-old.”

  Claudia could have dealt with it, if not for Fear. She would be working on her school assignments, forgetting that Moma was risking her life every time she went to work, forgetting that Syl had to live far away from them and that if the virus ever reached her, she would probably die.

  But then Fear would sneak up behind her. She’d feel its cold presence, get goosebumps. Her fingers froze on the keys.

  An icy whisper. “Check the stats.”

  Claudia would have to. She’d Google the virus and read the horrifying tally of infections growing by the minute around the world, then escape to the balcony. But it was no better there with an overflowing hospital across the street.

  Her friend Danila lived in the apartment above, Jessica one floor down and across. Jessica had made friends with the new girl, Meena, and now they were all learning sign language. That distracted Claudia for a while.

  If the girls weren’t on their balconies, Claudia sometimes talked to Conner, aka Loudboy, from next door. She didn’t use to like Conner. Before, he was always sneering. But he seemed different now.

  For one, he actually talked to her without curling his lip. Once, after she helped him with his math, he tossed her a roll of toilet paper from his balcony.

  “Are you sure?” Claudia asked.

  “Yeah. My dad scored a package yesterday.”

  “Thanks a lot!”

  Soon Claudia began to notice something. If she was talking to one of her friends, a parent would step out on the balcony, too. “Tell your mom thank you,” they’d say, just before they pulled their kid back from the railing, farther from Claudia, though they were already more than six feet apart. Once Conner’s dad ordered him to come back inside.

  Only one person in the building had caught the virus so far — Mrs. Watts from the first floor. Everybody must have thought that the next people to get it would be Claudia’s family, because Moma was a nurse.

  So Fear, too, was contagious. It followed Claudia out on the balcony, stretched out its invisible arms and closed its icy grip around her neighbors.

  All day long Spidey Max annoyed Claudia. If Moma was sleeping, somehow Claudia had to keep him from shouting, “BAM-BAM! POW!” He set traps with his Spidey lines, which she tripped on. He licked her and claimed to have poisoned her with his venom.

  If only they were allowed to leave the building! He could have yelled all he wanted, run around and tired himself out. But they were forbidden to go outside. Instead Spidey Max swung on his Spidey lines around the apartment, from sofa to coffee table to armchair. He spilled a glass of juice. He broke a lamp.

  The day he swung past and accidentally kicked her in the side of the head, Claudia lost it.

  “Ow!!! Stop it with that stupid Spidey stuff! Spidey can’t save anybody! Don’t you realize that? You’re just annoying everybody!”

  So Claudia turned out to be the one to wake up Moma.

  Moma found her crying facedown on her bed. She rubbed Claudia’s back. They weren’t hugging anymore just in case Moma did catch the virus.

  “You’re amazing,” Moma said. “You’re my superhero. We’ve been living like this for a month and this is the first time you’ve lost your temper.”

  A month? Moma had said that Syl would only be gone for a few weeks. Were they going to live inside and apart for the rest of their lives?

  Fear pressed down harder.

  Spidey Max appeared in the doorway, bare-chested, his Spider-Man T-shirt in his hand. With his wild pompom of hair and his scrawny body, he looked like a brown dandelion.

  She felt bad for yelling at him.

  “I’m sorry, Max,” she sat up to say. “You can be Spidey Max if you want.”

  Max’s face squished up. He hurled his shirt, then sank down in bug-shaped ball, arms covering his head.

  “Spidey Max? What’s the matter?”

  Claudia sat next to him on the floor.

  “I want Moms,” he kept saying. “I have to kill the bad cells.”

  “Moms is safer where she is, baby,” Moma said from the bed.

  Claudia thought of something. “Can’t Spidey Max help kill the Grown-up Virus instead?”

  Max lifted his face, his expression full of scorn. She obviously didn’t know the first thing about superhero powers! “Spidey Max kills bad cells.”

  “Okay. Then maybe you can be a new superhero. Come on. Let’s get you suited up.”

  Claudia went to the toy box in the corner. Max followed. Moma chose that moment to slip out of the room to try to get some more sleep. She mouthed, “Thank you,” to Claudia and blew her a kiss.

  “Your sword,” Claudia told Max, pulling a bright orange swim noodle from the box.

  Max humphed. “It’s a zapper!”

  “A zapper, then. And look.” She held it out at the end of her arm. “Six feet, right?”

  He snatched it from her and — whoosh — began slashing the noodle, ninja-style.
/>   “Hold on. You’re not ready yet.”

  They went to the front hall, which was as far as the basket of clean laundry had got into the apartment. Claudia pulled out a scrub top and helped him into it. It hung on Max like a green sack.

  Thanks to Syl, the super organizer, they easily found what they needed in the labeled tubs in the closet: gloves, swim goggles. Claudia considered a bike helmet, but thought of something better.

  In the magnified pictures she’d seen of the virus, it looked like a ball with fluffy red tufts all over it. She sat Max on a chair and got to work with a package of colored hair elastics, using just the red and pink ones. When she was done, she brought him to the mirror.

  Though the top of his tufts were brown, he got it.

  “Virus head!” he yelled, slashing the zapper around.

  Claudia shushed him. “Moma’s sleeping.”

  She added a finishing touch. One of his former Spidey lines became a belt to hold the zapper at his waist. The only thing missing was a face mask, but the box was in Moma’s room.

  “We have to wait until Moma wakes up.”

  “I know what to use,” Max said.

  He ran off to their bedroom and came back waving one of Claudia’s bras.

  Moma had just bought them — her first bras. She would have died of embarrassment if it wasn’t so funny.

  Claudia fit a cup over Max’s nose and mouth and tied the straps behind his head. He sauntered back to the mirror.

  “What’s your name, superhero?” Claudia asked.

  “BRA MAN!” He began a ninja noodle-twirling dance with sound effects.

  “ZAP, ZAP, ZAP!”

  He kicked the air. “Eeeeee!”

  “Shhh!” Claudia tried to say, but it was the first time she’d really laughed since Syl went away.

  At dinner, when they Skyped with Syl and Grams and Gramps, Claudia introduced the new superhero living in the apartment.