Styx & Stones

by Carmen Jenner

  STYX & STONES

  CARMEN JENNER

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Styx & Stones

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  WANT MORE?

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NEVER MISS A NEW RELEASE!

  MORE BY CARMEN JENNER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AUTHOR LINKS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Styx & Stones

  Copyright © 2019 Carmen Jenner

  Published by Carmen Jenner

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the author’s work and not pirating this book. Pirates suck!

  Styx & Stones: Carmen Jenner August 25th,2019

  carmen@carmenjenner.com

  Editing: Creating Ink

  www.creatingink.com/

  Cover Design: © Tall Story Designs

  www.tallstorydesigns.com.

  Photo Credit: © Sara Eirew

  www.saraeirew.com

  All children, except one, grow up.

  — J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

  DEDICATION

  For David—Dad—who shows me every day what a real father is, thanks for being our family’s rock, my mother’s babysitter—oops! I mean soulmate—and a kickass poppy. Cancer may have started the fight, but you’re sure as hell going to be the one to finish it.

  For Trev, we miss you every day.

  For Helen, I adore you.

  For Ma, we think of you often and fondly.

  For my own Nan, I miss your hugs, our late-night cup of tea, and always setting your table for the following morning.

  And finally, for Kristina Zolnar, who read this whilst enduring her own personal hell with this disease. I can’t thank you enough. I wish I could have been there in person to hold your hand. I have no words for how much I value your friendship.

  PROLOGUE

  STYX

  Cancer sucks.

  And then you die.

  At least that’s how it’s supposed to go.

  Only sometimes, fate likes to screw with you. It makes you hold on just long enough to lure you into thinking that you’re gonna make it, that you won’t lose the most important things to you—like your epic collection of Rolling Stone magazines dating back thirty years. Like family, your youth, or your sense of self. Like the girl who walked into my chemo session and stole my heart.

  Stones was unlike any teen I’d ever met.

  We thought we had forever.

  We were wrong.

  Sounds like some fucked up Romeo and Juliet shit, right?

  Only it wasn’t the Capulets and Montagues trying to keep us apart.

  It was life. It was cancer.

  This isn’t one of those poor-me-I’ve-got-cancer books. It’s a race against the Grim Reaper. It’s a fucked-up fairytale—if Prince Charming was a cynical, bratty eighteen-year-old ... who dies.

  Oops! Spoiler alert.

  You might not want to get too attached. But don’t feel bad, because despite making my grand exit at the tender age of eighteen, I lived.

  If nothing else.

  I lived.

  CHAPTER ONE

  STYX

  Balls.

  This is balls. I sit in the front seat and stare at the hospital entrance.

  Fucking balls.

  I’m a kid. We’re supposed to do stupid shit, cut school, drink, do drugs, go to parties, have sex, get felt up in a theater, maybe feel up someone else in a theater, and make thoughtless, spur-of-the-moment decisions.

  We’re supposed to outlive our parents.

  We don’t die at seventeen. Cancer doesn’t kill us; middle age does. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to go.

  Reality is different.

  Reality is sitting in a fucking chemo center while a frumpy nurse jabs a tube in your port and pumps your body full of poison to kill the cancer currently eating away at your insides.

  Reality is watching your mom and dad argue over money when they think you’re asleep because they can’t afford the roof over your head and the medication that’s supposed to keep you alive.

  Reality is walking into school and everyone knowing, everyone staring at you like you’re a pariah, or worse—believing cancer’s contagious.

  Reality is puking up your guts for two days straight after a chemical cocktail.

  Reality. Is. Fucking. Balls.

  Luckily for me, I don’t dwell much on reality. Not when I was given the all clear at twelve, not when I just had time to grow my hair out again into kickass, flowing locks that I refused to brush no matter how my mom begged. And I definitely didn’t dwell when cancer came back again.

  “You ready?” Mom switches off the engine and grabs her oversized purse. These days, it’s full of pills, contraptions, paperwork, and a defibrillator. Okay, she’s not really carrying a defibrillator, but she may as well be.

  I glance at the entrance again, wishing I didn’t have to go in there, and silently cursing the cancer for not killing me the last time around. “Why don’t you go surprise Dad at work?”

  “What?”

  “This isn’t my first time. You’ll be fidgeting like you always do and it will drive me nuts. I’ll snap, and you’ll cry, and think you can fix me by grabbing snacks from the vending machine. Let’s just skip all that. Go see Dad at work, hang out like you used to when I was a normal kid.”

  “Your dad and I are separated, Styx, and you are a nor—”

  I hold up my hand to halt he
r words. “We both know I’m not normal. I’m dying.”

  “Don’t say that,” Mom hisses. “Don’t you ever say that.”

  “We’re all dying. Some of us just quicker than others.”

  Mom’s almost gray hair is pulled back in a bun so severe it looks like it hurts. The lines on her face deepen as she frowns. She’s too thin, has permanent bags under her eyes, and a pinched look about her that she never used to have. She’s only forty-two, but my cancer has ravaged her body almost as much as mine.

  She shakes her head. “I’m not leaving you in there by yourself.”

  “Yes, you are.” I grab her face and kiss her cheek. I can’t remember the last time I did that. Her wide-eyed expression tells me she can’t remember either. I climb out of the car and grab my messenger bag full of Rolling Stone and snacks that I know I won’t eat. “I got a stack of magazines, and Carissa will take good care of me.”

  “No.”

  “It’s not open for debate. I can’t fucking stand you hovering. I can’t”—I inhale and exhale slowly so I won’t lose it and say something I’ll regret—“you can’t be there. Go see Dad, and the two of you can cry it out or screw or whatever it is old people do when they’re alone, but I’m doing chemo on my own from now on.”

  “You’re seventeen years old, Styx.”

  “Yeah, and you gotta let me live sometime.” I shake my head and tap my hands on the car. “Don’t make this harder than it is.”

  “Fine. But I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to sit right here until you’re done, and if you need anything at all, you call me.”

  “I won’t.”

  Her jaw tics, and I can’t hear it, but I know she’s grinding her teeth. “Call me or need me?”

  “Both.” It’s a shitty thing to say to your mom. I know that, especially given my situation, but I’m not lying. I need space. I need to feel like she’s not always there, holding my hand. Or, more importantly, I need her to know my hand won’t always be there to hold. It’s better this way.

  ***

  When I walk into the oncology ward, Carissa is leaning against the nurses’ station. She’s a badass black woman with a wicked sense of humor. She’s also overworked and underpaid. I know because she constantly tells me she doesn’t get nearly enough money for putting up with me.

  I like Carissa. She’s probably the only adult in the world—scratch that—the only human in the world who doesn’t treat me like I’m going to blow away with a strong breeze because I have cancer.

  She looks up from the patient’s file in her hand and purses her lips. “You can’t be in here without your parents.”

  “Pfft.” I tuck my hair under my knit cap and screw my mouth up to show my disbelief. “No one else here has their parents with them. Did you tell Jan that same thing?”

  Her brow arches and a humorless laugh escapes her lips. “Honey, Jan is almost a hundred years old. I doubt she’d hear me even if I did say it.”

  “I can hear you assholes just fine,” Jan mutters from her open cubicle, flipping us the bird.

  “Of course you can, Jan. Good for you!” I shout, though I know she can hear everything just fine. It’s what we do. Give each other shit to avoid the reality of what we’re doing here. “God, Carissa, you’re such an insensitive bitch.”

  Carissa snaps her file closed, throws it on the counter behind her, and crosses her arms over her chest. I grin like a madman.

  “I’m the bitch who’s pumping you full of drugs for the next six hours so if I were you, junior, I’d be real nice to Carissa.” She pushes me toward the cubicles. I always get the very last one ... so I don’t annoy all the old people in the room. “Now go sit your ass in the booth.”

  “Nope.”

  “What do you mean nope?”

  “I mean today”—I throw my arms wide—“I’m sitting in the middle.”

  “In the middle?” Carissa asks in disbelief. “The middle of what?”

  “Let me ask you something. We have all these cubicles sectioned off by thin little curtains to give the illusion of privacy, but no one really has any privacy. We all have a disease that’s trying to kill us. We come in here to get pumped full of shit, but we gotta do that in private? It’s not like we can’t hear everything anyway. I know Jan has mucinous carcinoma of the breast, Garry—two rooms from the end—has pancreatic cancer, Shaniqua has that thing with her eye, and Wan has shitty lungs. Oh, and they all know I have ARMS.”

  “What, are you goin’ around reading everybody’s bags?”

  I twist my lips up in a half smile. “Pretty much. Wait,” I say, as a man with long hair like mine and the kind of looks you only see on an Abercrombie & Fitch commercial enters the oncology ward. He walks up to Carissa and I, one hand in the pocket of his jeans, the other clenched at his side. “Fresh meat. Who the hell are you?”

  The guy raises a brow and glares at me. “I’m Harley Hamilton”—he glances at Carissa—“The new patient. Who the hell is this kid?”

  “I’m Styx.” I grin. “I’ll be your chemo buddy.”

  Harley grimaces. “No one told me there’d be children present.”

  Carissa rolls her eyes. “Styx is also known as our resident pain in the ass. Don’t worry; you’ll get used to him. It’s nice to meet you, Harley. Why don’t you go take a seat in cubicle five, and I’ll be with you in just a moment?”

  “Thanks,” Harley says, and walks down the line of curtained off cubicles as if he’s slowly trudging toward death.

  Carissa turns her angry gaze on me. “Look, kid, you sit wherever the hell you wanna sit, just be sure you and your pole are happy to be there for the next good long while, ’cause I ain’t moving you when you’re puking up your guts.”

  “Then hook me up, sugar mama, ’cause I’m staying right here.”

  “Call me that again, and I might just whoop your ass into an early grave before your cancer does.”

  I chuckle. “Oh, Carissa, you say the sweetest things.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALASKA

  This blows. I stare at the closed doors to the oncology ward while my mom fishes in her purse for her insurance, or Tic Tacs, or ... God knows what.

  Cancer.

  That’s what I’ve been reduced to.

  Cancer.

  That’s what I have become.

  A cancer on my family, on their emotions, on their time, and on their bank account.

  Cancer sucks.

  I grow tired of waiting for Mom to fish through her purse, and I walk through the doors. I don’t know what I expected from chemotherapy: puke everywhere, patients strapped to beds writhing in pain, their loved ones drowning in a puddle of tears?

  I hadn’t expected everyone to be sitting in a circle, laughing like they were front and center at Cobb’s Comedy Club. I hadn’t expected amusement and conversation, and I hadn’t expected to recognize the kid who stared back at me with wide, horror-struck eyes.

  Loner boy.

  He goes to my school, sits by himself at lunch, never talks to anyone, and worms his way out of handing in assignments by playing the cancer card. It’s odd that when the doctor told me I had a brain tumor, this Styx kid was the first person who popped into my mind. Not my parents, or my friends, or that I might die, lose all my hair, or that they’d cut open my skull and fish out the thing growing inside my head, but that I had cancer ... just. Like. Styx.

  I don’t know why my first thought was of him, a boy I’d never so much as uttered a word to, but I think I hate him on principle now. I hate him because he reminds me of the thing that’s trying to kill us both. I hate him because he represents a fight I’m not sure I’m ready for. I hate him because despite being a weird loner, who’s never so much as looked in my direction, I wanted to question him about all this cancer stuff the second I found out. Which, I guess, just makes me an asshole. Why would he want to talk to some rando girl about her newly diagnosed cancer?

  Teens are so fucking entitled. Myself included.

&nb
sp; All six patients watch me, but it’s the weight of one stare in particular that puts my teeth on edge.

  Styx Hendricks.

  What the hell is he looking at? Hasn’t he ever seen a teenage girl with cancer before?

  “You must be Alaska Stone?” A sweet-faced black woman blocks my view of loner boy.

  “Yeah,” I reply on autopilot, wishing I could be anywhere else in the world right now but in this room. Why did he look at me like that? And why doesn’t he have a parent here with him?

  “I’m Carissa. I’m going to be taking care of you today.”

  “Carissa, I’m Joanie Stone,” my mom says. “We spoke on the phone yesterday.”

  “Hi, Joanie. Good to meet you.” Carissa opens the file in her hand and peruses it. “Okay, Alaska, we’re trying a new open-treatment situation, and you’re welcome to join the others if you like, but let’s set you up in a booth while we get your weight and run some tests to make sure we have the right dosage.”

  She leads the way to a sectioned off cubicle. My Mom follows, but I dare a glance at that Styx kid. His gaze is still wide, panicked even. He opens his mouth, and closes it again, and I walk away before he can tell me how sorry he is.

  CHAPTER THREE

  STYX

  What the fuck is she doing here?

  I watch Alaska be led away by Carissa, and I lean forward in my seat, afraid I might be sick.

  Or ... Sicker.

  She has cancer.

  She has fucking cancer.

  This can’t be happening. I rake my hands through my hair. I want to go over there and demand they tell me what’s wrong with her. I want to know what drugs they’re giving her, and how they plan to eradicate her illness.

  But I can’t.

  I can’t demand answers, or ask to see her file. I can’t do any of those things because while I know her, she doesn’t know me. We’ve never even spoken beyond a conversation we had two years ago about the note she’d dropped under her desk. A note that I read over and over for two days, just to memorize the whirls and loops of her handwriting before returning it to her.

  The girl I’ve watched from afar for seven years has cancer. The girl I’ve loved since the fifth grade just walked into my chemo session, and I feel as if my whole world just fucking imploded.