Kristy appeared beside me. “This is the coolest party ever,” she said. “Come on, let’s eat. The sandwiches are great.” I agreed and let her pull me over to the tea party table, glad to be distracted from my thoughts.
We were standing on the food line when I noticed a stretch limo pulling into the driveway. Gram hurried through the rabbit hole to meet it. The chauffeur opened the door, and out stepped an elderly woman — in a caterpillar outfit! It was the craziest sight. She was carrying a big hookah like the one the Wonderland caterpillar smokes.
Gram hugged her tightly, and I realized who she was. Aunt Leah. She and Gram walked arm in arm back to the party. The chauffeur trailed behind, carrying an enormous papier-mâché mushroom.
“The costumes are the best,” Kristy said, loading up a plate with one of each kind of tiny sandwich.
“Yeah,” I agreed. A lot of the guests had gone all-out.
As I was about to bite into a sandwich, the music stopped abruptly. Gram and Grandpa stood in front of the band. “Attention, everyone!” Grandpa Morris called out. “My beautiful bride would like to say a few words.”
Everyone quieted down as Gram Elsie began to speak. “I wanted to thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for being here today,” she began. “Now that we’re together, there’s something I’d like you to know.”
My heart stopped. That’s how it felt.
This was it, the moment she told everyone she had only a short while to live.
Everything I’d read about breast cancer flew out of my head — all I knew about the high cure rate, the many new ways to treat it, how cancer was not a death sentence. Every bit of it disappeared.
All I could think was that Gram, one of the people I love most on earth, was about to announce that she would soon die.
Tears sprang to my eyes.
“I want you to know,” Gram said, “how much you mean to me and to Morris. There aren’t many chances for us all to be together, so I am thrilled that you made it here … and …”
Gram’s voice began to choke with tears. Grandpa squeezed her shoulder. Gram wiped tears from her eyes, but more came. “What Elsie is trying to say,” Grandpa filled in for her, “is that she is deeply touched at seeing you here because she loves you very much.”
That was it. I was gone. Tears poured from my eyes.
Kristy grabbed my arm. “What’s the matter?”
I was crying too hard to talk. I could only shake my head and dart toward the house. There was no way I could stay at the party a second longer.
I raced inside the house and down the stairs to the laundry room, a place where no one would ever look for me. Leaning against the washing machine in the dark, I dissolved into tears, letting them run down my face, not even trying to stop them.
Suddenly, a light snapped on. Gram Elsie came down the stairs. “My Abby!” she said gently. “I saw you run into the house. What’s wrong?”
The sight of her made me cry even harder. She rushed to me and wrapped her arms around me. “Tell me,” she urged. “What happened?”
Her voice sounded so worried that I had to be honest. “It’s you!” I blurted out. “I know … I know.” I was overcome with tears again and I began crying too hard to say anything more.
Gram held me away from her and studied my face. “Know what, honey?”
“That you’re sick. You have cancer!”
She drew me to her again. She stood holding me, rocking me comfortingly from side to side as if I were a baby. I buried my face in the ermine fur of her cape and soaked it. When my tears had subsided a little, she loosened her grasp. Still holding me, she led me to the stairs. “Sit down,” she said, indicating the step.
I sat. She leaned against the wall and faced me. “You’re right, Abby,” she said slowly. “I don’t know how you figured it out, but it’s true. Maybe.”
“Maybe?” I asked, wiping my eyes.
“My last mammogram showed a lump in my breast. Last week, when I went into town with Anna and Corley, the doctor took a biopsy — a specimen of the lump that he has to send to a lab to see if it’s cancerous.”
“You mean, it might not be?” I asked, suddenly hopeful.
“It might not be, but it might be,” she answered. “I should know early next week.”
“How could you keep something like that to yourself?” I cried.
“Why worry everyone when I’m not sure?”
“But we’re your family. You should count on us.”
Gram smiled softly. “I do count on you. Grandpa knows. And I was going to tell your mother and Miriam after the party.”
“I think Mom suspects,” I told her.
“Yes, she does seem especially quiet,” Gram said. “I only wanted to make it through the party without everyone being upset. I kept telling myself I’d deal with it afterward. One thing at a time.”
“How can you be so strong?” I asked.
“What choice do I have?” she replied. “I have a lot to live for, Abby. I plan to fight this with everything I have. I don’t plan on letting it win. If I have to tough it out through an operation, through radiation, through chemotherapy, that’s what I’ll do. People survive this, and I plan to be one of the survivors.”
I shook my head sadly. “I could never be so strong.”
“Yes, you could. You come from strong people. You are surrounded by family, by a family who would form a circle of love around you if you needed them. Don’t ever lose track of that. It’s helped me so much.”
“Even though you haven’t told anyone?”
“Of course. The important thing is not that everyone should worry about me, but that I know they love me. Look at all those people out there. They’re here for me and Grandpa — and they are here for you too, if you ever need them.”
My tears had stopped. Gram reached out and whisked some black eye makeup from my cheeks. “Go freshen up and come back to the party,” she said. “I can’t leave my guests for much longer.”
“All right,” I agreed. I followed her upstairs and went into the bathroom. I wasn’t in the mood to redo my makeup, but I did wash away the smeared stuff on my face.
Talking to Gram had helped calm my terrible panic and ease my sorrow. I knew what I had to do now: I had to be strong too. If Gram did have cancer, then we’d face it together, as a family.
When I returned to the party, things still seemed weird, yet now this didn’t disturb me. Since I was no longer off balance inside, I didn’t mind things being a little topsy-turvy on the outside.
The sun was setting, and it threw a golden light on everything. The colored lanterns had been turned on. The bug torches were lit. Everything seemed to flicker and glow. The band was playing cool jazzy music.
I caught sight of Gram talking to Aunt Leah. They were standing by a red lantern, and it cast a pink light on their faces. Gram seemed to sense that I was looking at her, and she turned to face me.
I was seeing Gram in a new way. She was even stronger than I knew. And we were a family who really loved each other. I’d taken that for granted before, but I suddenly saw what a special gift it was. And how important. That love was going to carry us through the hard time that might be coming, and all the others that might follow it.
Gram smiled at me warmly.
I mouthed the words I love you.
She put her hands across her heart and nodded.
* * *
Dear Reader,
In Abby in Wonderland, Abby secretly discovers that her grandmother may have cancer, which makes Abby feel helpless. It’s never easy learning that a member of your family faces a serious medical problem, but as Abby found, one of the best things you can do is learn as much as possible about the illness. It also helps to be able to talk to your family to share information and feelings. One nice thing that often happens when a family member is sick is that the rest of the family pulls together to help out. When my father had open-heart surgery, my family and also our friends rallied around with support, fo
od, advice, phone calls, and visits, all of which made my father’s recovery smoother and quicker. You don’t need to throw a big party to show your love for someone — the little things count just as much.
Happy reading,
* * *
The author gratefully acknowledges
Suzanne Weyn
for her help in
preparing this manuscript.
About the Author
ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.
There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.
Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.
Copyright © 1998 by Ann M. Martin
Cover art by Hodges Soileau
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First edition, August 1998
e-ISBN 978-0-545-87454-0
Abby in Wonderland Page 8