Then one afternoon, he came home from school and found Kate in her bedroom, sitting cross-legged on her unmade bed, eyes closed, one hand on her chest. He paused in front of her doorway. Her eyes were still closed, but somehow she knew he was there.

“Does cancer have a sound?” she asked.

“What?”

“A sound. When all those abnormal cells are growing, do they make some kind of noise?” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I swear I can hear it. It’s like a whistle.”

“You have cancer?” Shawn backed away a step. Then took a step forward. Then back. It was like a dance. He was fifteen – moving towards adulthood, moving away from it. At that point, moving away from it, mostly.

“I have something,” said Kate. “Abnormal cells are destroying my healthy cells.”

“That sounds like cancer,” said Shawn. He felt himself growing angry. Kate was such a good person, and he was still at an age when he felt life should be fair.

“So it does have a sound,” said Kate. “Maybe it’s more like a hum.”

She was like a three-year-old trying to understand it. The rudimentary details of disease. Does it move? Is it alive? Does it feel? Shawn didn’t know, so they looked it up in the old Encyclopaedia Britannica on the shelf in the living room. Their research just led to more questions. What is a cell? What makes a cell abnormal? How does it kill you? So many things you think you understand until it is inside of you, and then you realize you don’t even know the basics.

Kate kept reading and reading. Walter wasn’t due back from his guiding trip for another four days, so Shawn made dinner for the twins. It was only Hamburger Helper, cheeseburger macaroni, but it was the first meal he had ever made by himself and he didn’t screw it up. Nicki ate two bowls and told him he should be on That’s Incredible! for being the only teenager who could actually do something useful. After the twins went to bed, Shawn made Kate some tea and put a shot of whisky in it.

“Do you want to watch TV?” he asked.