It was the first full week of my senior year in High School when I got called down to the office.

I'm Michelle Ingemi, Mish to my friends. I figured I was going to be put into the Naked In School Program, to kick off senior year. That was fine. I had no problems with my body.

I'd been sexually active for quite some time. My friend Amanda Frazier jokes about me being "into watersports"-you know, peeing-and there's some truth to that, but it's exaggerated. I've done it a few times, and found it nastily erotic and exciting, but it's not something I do all the time. However, I think I waxed rhapsodic about it a bit too enthusiastically to Amanda once or twice. Oh, well!

What I do like is sex. I don't apologize for it. I don't think I have a list like our other friend Maggie Benson, but I've had enough. I figured, I'm young, now's the time, right? However, lately things had changed.

Anyhow, I walked into the office, and smiled at our principal, Mr. Tilling. "I take it you called me down here to get nekkid?" I joked.

"Yes, I did," he laughed. "We're just waiting on your partner."

"And that would be?"

"Eric Andrews."

Eric. Now, this was gonna be interesting!

Eric was the reason things had changed for me lately. Now, I've known Eric all through high school. I think we were attracted to each other right from the beginning of freshman year, but we never acted on it. I think I knew, deep in my heart, that if I ever ended up in bed with Eric, that'd be it, that I'd never be able to look at another guy again. I think he suspected the same thing. Anyhow, we were friends, good friends-but that was it. I made my rounds through the guys in the class, and Eric was a confirmed pussyhound-and, being a football player, he had no trouble getting any.

Until, towards the end of the last school year, he asked me out. I eagerly accepted.

I guess I was ready-we were ready. Just sex had lost its appeal to me. So, we started dating. We didn't even sleep together. We decided to hold off on that-to try to get to know one another, as people who were dating, before we did anything seriously physical. Weird, for both of us, but we figured we had time. And, you know what? I was right. Even without sleeping with him, I wasn't caring about any other guys. Just going out with him was all I'd anticipated. We really did click. I'll admit it-I was falling in love with him, and I think he was, too.

This went on from about mid-May to about mid-July. Suddenly, he called me, and said he had to go out of town, and wouldn't be back until the school year started. Something about a "family emergency." He sounded really upset. He wouldn't tell me more, though, said he'd discuss it when he got back. I was upset, of course-not having the guy I was 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."

"It's OK Jared," I said with a watery smile. "Because you were right. Maybe I needed someone who doesn't know to kick me in the ass."

When Eric and I met at the entrance, I asked him to meet me after cheerleading practice. He came towards the end, was warmly greeted by his football buddies, who asked about him, showed concern, tried to keep his spirits up. All the things I wasn't doing. Some girlfriend. But this was so hard. At least, after today, he'd know why.

After everyone had gone, we sat down in the middle of the football field.

"You've been avoiding me," he said simply.

"Yes."

"I thought we had something," he said. "I thought I could count on you."

"You should be able to," I told him. "This isn't about you." Then I said it. "This is about my little brother, Danny."

"I didn't know you had a little brother," he said.

"I don't anymore."

He looked at me, his eyes wide with shock. "Oh, God, Mish, no."

"He was three years younger than me," I went on. "He was six when he was diagnosed. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and the worst kind of it there is. At least you got a better prognosis. His was, basically, plan the funeral. He beat the odds by lasting two years. He was eight when he died. I was eleven." I took a breath. "You know I live alone with my father?" He nodded. "That's why. When he was diagnosed, my mother left. Couldn't deal with it. Just took off. I haven't seen her since I was 9." I needed to take another breath. "So, when I was between the ages of 9 and 11, I had to deal with a dying-and then dead-little brother, and a completely devastated father. With no help. When my own heart was in tiny, shattered pieces all over the floor."

"Oh, Jesus, Mish, I'm so sorry."

"That's why, when I saw you yesterday, I just couldn't deal. It all came back to me. I know you have a better prognosis, but it all came back to me. Plus, you seemed like you were handling it so well, and it made me such a basket case, I was afraid I'd bring you down."

"Handling it well?" he snorted. "Not hardly. Mish, I'm terrified. Absolutely scared shitless. Look at me. I'm seventeen years old. What's 'better than fifty percent'? Is it seventy? Eighty? Even at that, I'm seventeen years old and I've just been told I have a twenty or thirty percent chance of not seeing eighteen. I'm scared out of my mind. I have my whole life ahead of me. College football. Med school. And, I was kind of thinking, you. And the dream just got very cloudy." He took a deep breath. "My parents are frantic. My younger brother and sister are worried sick. Somebody has to keep a stiff upper lip. So I do it-and cry alone in my bed at night."

"That's why I'm here," I managed. "Jared yelled at me at lunch today," I smiled. "He didn't know about Danny, so thought I was just a callous bitch. Said it wasn't like me. He knows now-Amanda told him, so he wouldn't keep thinking I was just a callous bitch-but it really didn't matter. I needed the kick in the ass, because he was right." I took a deep breath. "Eric, do you know how much I resent my mother? You could probably even say I hate her. She ran out when we needed her. And left a nine-year-old to pick up the pieces. And, here I've been, the past two days, doing the same damn thing."

"No, not even close. I'm not your son, or your husband."

"Close enough for me," I maintained. "Close enough to make me examine just what in the hell I was doing. Eric, when you left-well, I knew what was in my heart. I just hadn't worked myself up to saying it yet. I was waiting for the right time. Eric Andrews, I love you. And I can't turn away from that."

"I love you, too," he said. He chuckled. "I was waiting for the right time, too."

"I can't promise you that it'll be easy. I can't promise you I'll be able to keep a stiff upper lip. The only think I can promise you that I'll try. And that I'll be here."

"That's good enough for me."

We had been sitting side-by-side on the field up until then. We hadn't touched. Then we found ourselves in each other's arms. He hugged me so hard I thought he'd break my ribs. That was fine with me.

"Do me a favor," I whispered. "Don't cry alone in your room anymore."

He didn't. He cried right there in my arms. I did, too.

After we parted, and I was headed home, I felt strangely better. Look, worry and guilt are a particularly unhealthy combination. I still had the worry, but the guilt was gone.

When I got home, I told Daddy. He took me in his arms on his lap like he did when I was a little girl and let me cry it out some more. I think his eyes were wet, too. Then he looked into my eyes and said, "I'm your father. You're my little girl. I'm supposed to protect you. And you have been through more shit in seventeen years than most people go through in fifty-and I haven't been able to protect you."