Naked in School: Michelle's Story,part 1

dating, and rapidly falling for, around for half the summer was no fun. But I adjusted. He even gave me permission to see other guys if I needed to. I didn't. Anyhow, here we were, the first day of school, and I hadn't seen him. He hadn't even been around for football practice-I'm a cheerleader-and he was supposed to be the starting running back. I still couldn't wait to find out what had happened in his family to take him out of town for six weeks and wreak havoc with football. Until he walked into Mr. Tilling's office. And then I knew. I knew. And my stomach dropped to my toes.

Eric was muscular-of course he was, he played football. Well, he had been. His muscles were gone. His face was sunken, with bags under his eyes. He was pale. And all his hair was gone. Oh, please, no, I thought. Please, no. But I knew. And, looking up at him, I said it. "Cancer." "Leukemia, actually," he replied. "I'm sorry you had to find out this way, but I just got back in town. They sent me to Baltimore, to Johns Hopkins, for the beginning of the chemo. I can do the rest outpatient, at Westport General, but they wanted to start me at Hopkins. I have it every three weeks-I have it this Friday, actually." I was dying. Inside, bit by bit, I was dying. We offered to exempt Eric from The Program, but he wanted to go through with it." "Let's get it over with," he chuckled. "Let 'em see me in all my chemo-ravaged glory. That way, I'll only have to answer all the questions all at once." He seemed to be taking this well. This made one of us. I had to ask. I didn't want to, but I had to ask. "Did they give you a prognosis?" "Good," he said. "Better than fifty percent. Well, what the Doc said was 'well better than fifty percent'. You know those guys, they won't put a better number on it. But it's not one of the more virulent strains of leukemia, and they caught it early." He was optimistic. Chipper, even. Me? Death. That's all I could think about. I'm seventeen years old, looking at the man I love, and thinking about death. I couldn't handle it. Could not handle it. And I did something that I'm not proud of. I bailed. I spent the first day and a half of The Program completely avoiding the guy who was supposed to be my Program partner-not to mention was supposed to be my boyfriend. I just went out of my way not to have any contact with him. He even called Monday night, and I made an excuse about homework. I had my reasons. No, what I was doing wasn't fair, wasn't right, wasn't generous or loving or all those things I had always supposed I was. It was rotten. But I had my reasons. And I just couldn't deal with it. Until I got called on it-by my best friend Amanda's boyfriend, Jared. "How's Eric?" Jared asked. "I don't know. We haven't really talked." Amanda, who knew my reasons, gave me a look of sympathy. But Jared-who didn't-was just dumbfounded. "I thought you guys were going out! In fact, it looked like you two were really falling for each other." I just shrugged. "C'mon, Mish, he's going through hell! And you tell me you guys haven't even talked?"

"I can't," I said. "You can't?" Jared said. "You can't support your sick boyfriend. I thought you were a better person than that." "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU KNOW ABOUT IT?" I burst out-then ran out of the cafeteria in tears. I sat in the stall in the bathroom crying for five minutes. I hadn't cried since I found out. I felt better. I also realized that Jared was right. I at least had to talk to Eric. I went back into the lunchroom and found Jared and Amanda. "Mish, I hope you don't mind," Amanda said, "but I told Jared." "No, that's fine," I said. "Mish, I'm sorry." Poor Jared looked miserable. "If I had known, I wouldn't have said all those things." Click for part2