Cancer.
Cancer.
"No," Enzo says. Shakes his head. "No, Dan, you don't, you don't have - "
Dan laughs, then. It is a wet kind of laugh. His eyes are full of tears. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry. I was going to tell you, I was, but then - then this" - he points at Enzo's cannula - "and I...I didn't. I just...I don't know. I didn't want to...hurt you, I guess."
He shrugs.
"Well. Anyway. Now you know."
"How long?" Enzo whispers. "How long have you - have you had..."
"A few months." He smiles. Enzo doesn't know how he can smile - how he can bear it - when, inside, everything is breaking. "I was diagnosed not long before I met you, actually. It's - it's kind of why I wanted to talk to you - you know, in the first place. Maybe I don't have very long in this life. But the time I do have - I'm not gonna waste it - no way. I want to do everything that I have ever wanted to do - all those things I'm scared of, all those things I love. I want to live, Enzo. You know?"
"One of those things," Enzo says, "one of those things, was it - was it - "
Dan smiles. The tears are on his face now. Enzo reaches out. Wipes them away, with his thumb.
"Yeah, Callahan. One of those things was meeting you."
Enzo closes his eyes. Leans his head against Dan's shoulder.
He feels Dan's arm go around him.
Press a kiss into his hair.
"What kind is it?" he whispers, after a moment. "What kind of cancer?"
"Leukemia," he says. Very softly.
"And it's bad?"
Dan doesn't answer that, for a while. But when he does, his voice is tight; Enzo can hear the shake in it. The tears.
"Yes," he says. "It's bad."
Gem finds them like that, a while later.
Enzo has cried a bit. So has Dan.
They are sitting now, together. Holding hands.
The telly is on.
Gem asks Dan whether he wants to stay for dinner. Dan - after a prod from Enzo - says yes.
Gem doesn't seem to think it's weird that they're holding hands.
Enzo doesn't think it's weird that they're holding hands, either. Enzo doesn't think it can be weird.
With Dan, nothing can ever be weird, ever again.
YOU ARE READING
The Anatomy of a Parody Heart
Teen Fiction|| Highest rankings: #1 in notfittingin (30/03/19) #9 in antibullying (25/05/18) || - COMPLETED - Enzo knows that he is different. He knows it in the way that people look at him. Talk about him. Bu...
