Alex Solowitz levered up the window and swung his leg outside. Curfew? What curfew? This was party night! But suddenly, he heard a cough behind him.

"Dude," said a voice. "You're going to hell, I swear you're going to hell."

Alex clambered back through the window and turned around. His friend Michael was looking at him. "What?" Alex exclaimed.

No answer. Michael just looked. And an uncomfortable feeling started creeping up Alex's neck...

"Don't try it, Mikey," he blustered. "You're not making me feel guilty about this. Hey, when you're 20 you'll understand."

They look again.

"Shut up, Mikey."

"I didn't say a word..." he replied.

But Alex was already slamming down the window. Mikey didn't have to say anything. Everything he felt was in his eyes. It had always been the same, ever since they'd first met. "He's just a kid," Alex would say to himself. "So why do I always end up listening to him?"

2Ge+her

Michael and Alex had been chosen to play lead roles in a new TV show, a spoof about a boy band called 2Gether. It was going to be shown in America and then on Trouble TV in the UK. Along with Evan Farmer, Kevin Farley and Noah Bastian, the boys were about to be famous.

"We were all really excited," says Noah. "We were sure the show was going to be big. And the director decided to give all five of us a couple of weeks just to hang out and get to know one another. It turned out we were all really different," he continues. "Alex came from a large Jewish family. My family are Mormons and Kevin's are Catholics. Evan's dad was in the military so he spent his childhood moving around all over the country and Michael was Canadian. We were all total opposies but, y'know, it worked. We all goofed around together."

The boys felt they really got to know each other in those first two weeks. Alex was the rebel, Evan was a bit serious, Kevin was the joker, Noah was the shy one and Michael was the cute one who seemed wise beyond his years. But one of the boys had a secret he didn't tell the others. And it was a while before everyone found out the devastating truth...

Revelations

As he was the youngest, no-one thought it odd that Michael's parents were always around. Or that he was so body-conscious. But then the boys were told the news.

"When he was nine, Michael was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease," the director told Evan. "It's a form of cancer which affects the bone marrow. He got over it but he had such huge doses of chemotherapy and radiation, his body was damaged. He's going to need surgery on his diaphram." The director paused. "You may find he has trouble breathing. I want you all to be aware of this." Evan couldn't believe it. Michael talked about soccer, girls and music...but he'd never mentioned anything about being ill. Not once. But now that he knew, Evan started to notice little things.

"I suddenly saw that Michael looked younger than his age," he says. "And I realized why he was so intent on keeping healthy and taking care of himself." He saw other things too, like how much energy Michael gave to everything he did, how funny he was and how he always knew the right words to say. "Michael was so much younger than us," Evan says. "He was only 14 when we met him [whereas the rest of us were in our 20s and 30s]. But he was so mature for his age...I suppose when you've been that close to dying you tend to respect your life and health so much more." For the first few months, Michael did more than respect life - he threw himself into it. He was at all the rehearsals, he could do all his dances, he knew all his lines. The boys began to see why he'd never mentioned his illness - he was too busy getting on with his life to waste time feeling sorry for himself. But, in time, the boys began to feel sorry for him. First there was the nosebleed. The rehearsal was stopped, Michael was mopped up and the rehersal continued again. The next day he had another.

"I looked at him once and thought he was coughing up blood," Kevin says. "That's how bad his nosebleeds got." Soon he was having trouble breathing too, just as the director had warned. He couldn't get to the end of a sentence without stopping for breath and, before long, an oxygen tank was brought to the set. "Michael would stop and be given oxygen," says Kevin. "Then he'd carry on again."

Fighting Back

More months went by, then a year, and Michael kept fighting his condition. But the boys couldn't help noticing he was getting worse. He didn't have the engery to dance anymore. His dancing had become jerky little movements.

"Then one day we had to do this scene together," says Kevin. "I was down on the floor and Mikey had to kneel down beside me. He said he couldn't do it. He told us that if he got down, he'd never be able to get back up."

When things like that happened, the other boys struggled to find the right words to say. They tried, "Are you OK?", "Do you want to talk about it?". But to each query, Michael's response was the same. That look again. The look where everything he felt was in his eyes.

"I got mad," says Alex. "I got mad at his parents, I got mad at the team, I got mad at us for not stopping him and I got mad at me. I was treating people badly - picking on Mikey, everyone. I wanted to help Mikey but I could do nothing at all."

Then Michael got pneumonia after being involved in a car crash.

"The pneumonia meant he had to have his surgery right away." Alex says. "Having surgery with pneumonia wasn't good but even then Michael kept positive."

There were complications with the surgery. Michael was left hooked up to a respirator, unable to speak. To communicate he had to scribble words in a notebook. And send out messages with those eyes. "His parents were with him every day but we were working and had to keep in touch over the phone," says Alex. "We talked to Mikey through his parents."

And then, suddenly, the talking stopped. On 13 January this year, a week after Michael's 16th birthday, the boys were told Mikey had died.

Saying Goodbye

"I couldn't believe it," Noah says softly. "It seemed like Mikey was going to live forever."

"I felt guilty," says Alex. "I kept thinking that if we'd done more then he'd still be alive."

All the 2Gether boys attended his funeral. During the service, an excerpt from Michael's notebook was read out to the congregation.

"Mikey's dad had his birthday while Michael was in the hospital," Alex says. "And in the book Michael had written: 'Dad I'm sorry you had to spend your birthday in the hospital with me. Next year we'll go someplace special.' "

Even at the end, Michael had been making plans for next year...

As they listened, the boys remembered how Mikey always knew the right words to say. And suddenly they knew what he'd be saying now...

"Never give up. However bad things get. Appreciate life. And, most of all, live your dreams."

"He's just a kid, so why do I always end up listening to him?" Alex used to say. Now he knows.

© Bliss Magazine June 2001