Promise the Moon

Deleted Scene

Elizabeth Photo

Anna with her friend Cheryl

(Cheryl was sadly removed from the story, because she wasn't intrinsic to the plot. I did love her, though-so I kept her in as a small cameo in the scene where Anna meets her grandmother...)

Caution: This section contains spoilers...

Anna

At every school, there is always somebody who nobody hates, but nobody really likes either. People will let her sit next to them or play with them, but they won’t try to find her if she isn’t there. If you look back at a school picture and can’t remember who someone is, that is the one.

Cheryl always wore the same thing, except in different colors. It was: a stretchy top that showed her shoulders, a necklace with beads, a watch that had switch-out wrist bands, bobble bands on her braids. All of her always matched, all red or yellow or purple or turquoise blue, and just when you thought she must be running out of colors, there she’d be, all orange. Sometimes she even had matching eye shadow.

She was being green when she came up to me at recess, and sat next to me on the bench. “You were in the paper,” she said.

Cam had told me his dad was writing about us. It seemed weird to me; I didn’t get why anybody’d want to find out about us like we were the president, but Cam said he’d been written about too. Which shows that people will read about anything.

“My mom said I should be nice to you,” Cheryl said, and then she reached into her pocket. “I have something for you.”

What she pulled out was a plastic horse with pink hair, the bottom of it dirty and scuffed. “It’s Pinkie Pie,” she said. “A My Little Pony. I have all of them, plus the game and a purse.”

I stared at it. What can you say to a present like that? “That’s nice of you, but no thank you,” I said.

“Really, you can have it! Oh, and I have this.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a little pink plastic brush. “You can brush her hair and stuff.”

I pictured Cheryl sitting with pink ponies lined up in a row, brushing their hair on a bed that probably involved a canopy. It was about the saddest thing I ever imagined.

“Well, thanks,” I said, and I took it. “She’s real pretty.”

“I know, she’s the best one,” Cheryl said, then, “How come everybody hates you?”

This is how Cheryl was. If she thought something, it just came out of her mouth. In ten minutes she told you everything she had to say.

I looked down at my knees, and then I said the truth which was, “I don’t know.”

“You shouldn’t be Cam’s friend,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been in his class since kindergarten, and he just isn’t right.”

There was a squishy feeling in my stomach. I said it again, “What do you mean?”

She sighed like it was too much to get into, then said, “Did you know he draws on himself? That’s one thing. Always weird stuff, like once he drew somebody’s face covered with a spider.”

Compared to the picture I drew of Gary throwing up, I thought a spider on somebody’s face didn’t sound so bad. I curled my fingers under the bench seat, felt for the piece of chewed gum I’d stuck there earlier in the week. It felt smooth but also wrinkled, like a scar. I could feel the imprint from my teeth. “So?” I made my voice mad. “So what?”

“Believe me, he’s just weird. I don’t want to be mean, but he is.”

I wanted to get madder at her. I wanted to be able to tell her to shut up, or maybe say something good about Cam that she didn’t know. That is what I should have done, but. But I didn’t. Because I could feel how the hole in my bubble had opened just a little bit, and for the first time somebody else had stepped inside to look around. And yes, that somebody was only Cheryl, but it was better than being alone in there with a boy who scared me a little. And I wanted to be able to sit there with another girl and teach her French braiding, practice on her hair which was different from any hair I ever played with, sticking out from her bobble bands like tiny SOS pads.

So, this is what I did. I told her everything. “ Cam stole these pens from a drugstore a couple weeks ago,” I said, “and he wanted me to steal something too. And then he tried to steal money from an old lady by messing with her mail.”

“Whoa,” Cheryl whispered. She sounded like a teapot steaming.

So I said, “I mean, she really deserved it. She put Cam’s dad in jail and she maybe killed his neighbor’s cat.”

“Whoa,” Cheryl said again.

I should’ve asked if she could keep a secret. I had a feeling she probably couldn’t. I dug my heels into the ground and felt the dirt crawl up into my sandals. “Promise you won’t tell,” I said.

She didn’t answer, just sat there and her face said nothing, but then she stuck out her pinkie. I looked to make sure none of her other fingers was crossed, and then I hooked my own pinkie around hers and we shook.

“He’s coming over to my house this weekend, but I don’t know if I want him to.”

She thought about this, then mashed her ear against her shoulder, and then she said something that surprised me. She said, “Can I come too?”

I stared at her. “How come?”

“I dunno.” She looked out over the playground and her face said all kinds of things, afraid, angry, sad, more angry. It was like the game me and Madison used to play where she’d make a face and I’d make mine into a mirror, and then I’d make a face and she’d make hers into a mirror: sad, surprised, angry, scared, crying, one after the other, and the first person who laughed is the one who lost. Cheryl’s face was like that, but all the feelings there at one time. None of them had anything to do with laughing. “I don’t know for sure,” she said, “but I think he could maybe help me with something.”

“Something what?”

She leaned back on the bench, her legs stretched straight onto the ground. Her shirt pulled up so I could see her stomach. Her belly button was an outie. “My dad doesn’t do stuff anymore,” she said. And then she pulled hard at the beads around her neck, wrapped them around her finger and unwrapped, wrapped and unwrapped, and she talked without stopping or looking at me until recess was over.

She told me the whole story of her life.

Another section with Cheryl (and Cam)

Mom wouldn’t let go of Toby, carried him around the house while she sat with Seth. Which was good, because not only did it keep her from holding Seth’s hand again, also we had important things to do.

We sat on Toby’s bed, flipping through the pictures on Cam’s camera screen, choosing our favorites. Me and Cam liked the one where Cheryl looked the sickest, where she’d hung her head over the edge of the bed until it was red and puffy and then pinched her arm until her eyes watered. But Cheryl liked the one where she looked prettiest, so we finally decided we would do both.

And then it was time to make the card. We used a piece of pink construction paper and folded it into quarters. On the front I drew a heart with a frowning face. And then we decided what to write. This is what we came up with:

Dear Daddy,

I am sorry to say that things with me are going bad. First I thought I would get better but now, I know I will not. I thought I should give you the opportunity to talk to me on the phone or maybe to come see me because I am your only daughter. And also because you are gay, you probably will never have another one or a son either. I hurt a lot, but I think if I talked to you that would be my last chance to feel better in my last days.

I am mad at you, but maybe I could forgive you if you called. In case you forgot, my phone number is 530-555-3476. Or you could come visit.

Love,

Your daughter Cheryl Groves

“We should write what sickness you have,” I said.

Cheryl looked at her pen, frowning. “I don’t know what I have.”

“How about leukemia?” Cam said.

“Do kids get leukemia?”

“Anybody can get it.” He looked into his lap, then said, “Don’t do leukemia.”

“Why not?”

“Just because. Because I don’t want you to.” I looked at the skinniness of him and thought how he would do a great job pretending to be sick. A movie star job. “Maybe say you have syphilis,” he said.

“What’s that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t completely know, but it sounds more real because not so many people have it.”

“How do you spell it?”

Cam thought a minute. “I don’t know.”

I went to look in my dictionary, but it wasn’t there so we had to guess, and Cheryl added it to the bottom of her letter. P.S. In case you are wondering, I have sifilus.

We folded the card into an envelope, and Cheryl wrote the address on the front. Cam would print the pictures tonight, and tomorrow he would mail them. And then we’d see.

I reached up my shirt, and I felt for the scab marks I did there yesterday with my nails while I was waiting for Toby to die. I thought about Cheryl lying on the white sheets, how her dad would cry about it and then he’d come. I thought about Toby, about the look on Mom’s face when he got lifted into the ambulance. And I thought how this was the difference with me. That all my hurts were in a place you couldn’t see.