“‘Save a life: Get your car washed,’” I read out loud. I looked up at her. “Who knew that was all it takes?”
“What?” she asked. Then she laughed. “Oh, I get it. Well, you know . . . it’s just meant to get people psyched and stuff.” When she blinked, her sparkly blue eye shadow shimmered in the early morning sun.
“No, I know.” I shook my head. “Sorry, I’m just a bitch sometimes.”
Stacy looked genuinely surprised. “No you’re not.” She gave me another hug. “Don’t forget to bake something for the bake sale! And just wait until you see our cheer at Friday’s assembly.” She stepped back and kicked one leg high in the air, then placed her hands firmly on her hips. “Goooo, Olivia!”
There was something beautiful—almost balletic—about Stacy’s sharp, precise movements. “Hey, that was really good,” I said. “You’re a really good cheerleader.” I meant it too. For what might have been the first time in my entire life, I was talking to Stacy Shaw without being even a tiny bit sarcastic.
Stacy shrugged almost shyly. “I know. Well, gotta go.” She waved the flyers in my direction. “Can’t go home holding any of these.” Then she turned back to the crowd. “Save a life! Get your car washed!” she cried.
If I believed in that kind of thing, I might have seen some link between what the cheer squad did for Olivia at Friday’s assembly and the text I got from her twenty minutes later. Was it possible that their shouting her name and kicking their legs and waving their pom-poms had led to the four miraculous words that appeared on my screen halfway through math?
MY COUNTS ARE NORMAL!
Immediately I asked Mr. Schumacher if I could go to the bathroom.
“Livvie, that’s amazing!” I said as soon as I was safely ensconced in the girls’ room. I knew she’d been getting stronger, that her counts were going up. But normal was huge. Normal meant . . .
“If it’s warm tomorrow, Dr. Maxwell said I can go to the car wash,” she crowed.
I screamed and pounded on the tile wall. “You’re free!”
“Is that dumb?” Suddenly Livvie sounded embarrassed. “Maybe it’s dumb for me to want to go. I mean, it’s kind of a stupid event, right?”
“God, Livs, it’s not dumb. It’s an event in your honor. Of course you should go.”
“Did I tell you that Stacy’s mom sent over dinner for my family a couple of nights while I was in the hospital?” Olivia asked.
“She did? Wow that . . . that was really nice of her.” To my embarrassment, my first thought was, Did my mom think to send dinner over to the Grecos?
Livvie was already on to a different subject. “My mom made an appointment for me to get my wig on Saturday morning. So at least any little kids at the car wash won’t run screaming when they see me.”
“No one’s going to run screaming from you, Livs. You’re beautiful even when you’re bald.”
“Yeah, well, just imagine how beautiful I’ll be when I’m rocking that pink wig!”
It was obvious just from her voice how much happier she was now that she was out of the hospital. Why did she have to go back for more chemo? It was so awful I could have cried. But then I remembered what my dad had said about how anticipating bad things wasn’t helpful to Olivia. Here she was all excited to come to the car wash on Saturday afternoon, and here I was upset about her having to go back to the hospital soon.
I was the antifriend.
“Livs, you are so going to be rocking that pink wig,” I agreed, and when she laughed—really laughed, even though it hadn’t been much of a joke—I felt grateful to my dad for pointing out the obvious.
Team Livvie needed to look on the bright side.
While Livvie and her mom went into Manhattan to get her wig, I headed to Newark to teach dance class. I’d come up with some steps for the recital, which had been surprisingly fun to do. It was harder than I’d thought, not so much trying to fit together pieces of a jigsaw puzzle as trying to create a jigsaw puzzle out of thin air. So I was excited to show the girls what I’d done and to see if any of them had ideas for building on what I’d choreographed.
But even though I’d been looking forward to teaching the class, when I got there, nothing went the way I’d planned. It was hard to get them to focus, and I ended up getting impatient with them. I didn’t want to lose my temper, so instead I made a few snarky jokes to get them to stop fooling around. At one point Aaliyah kept doing cartwheels while she was waiting for her turn to glissade across the room, and finally I snapped, “I guess some people don’t know the difference between tumbling and ballet.” I laughed right after I said it, but she could tell I was irritated.
At least she stopped doing cartwheels.
But even if the cartwheels stopped, the class didn’t improve. No one seemed excited about coming up with their own steps, and everyone was fidgety. It felt like they could tell how much time I’d put into preparing and they were trying to let me know me what a waste it had all been. I thought of how obedient the students at NYBC were—we’d have just as soon stripped naked and run through the streets of Manhattan as messed around during a class.
The more I resented how they weren’t taking class seriously, the more frustrated I got, and the more frustrated I got, the worse they behaved. It was looking like they’d be performing twenty minutes of standing still when that recital date rolled around.
Luckily, before I actually started screaming at the girls that they didn’t deserve to study steps that dancers had been working their asses off to perfect for centuries, the bell rang. Everyone started packing up, and I crossed the room to shut off the music, rolling my eyes to myself as soon as my back was turned on the class.
Right when I hit stop, I felt someone throw her arms around my waist. It was so startling I gave a little yelp, and then I looked down and saw the top of Imani’s head. Her whole body was wrapped around mine; she’d even wound her feet around my calves.
“Thanks, Zoe,” she said. “That was really fun.”
Surprised, I hugged her back, a little bit of my frustration dissolving. “Really?”
She arched her neck so she could look up at me, her expression puzzled. Then her face suddenly split into an enormous smile. “I get it,” she said. “That was a joke.” She laughed. “You’re the funny one,” she explained.
Now it was my turn to be confused, and not just because my Really? had been genuine. “What do you mean?” I asked, unraveling her from my body and kneeling so our faces were level.
“You know, with Olivia.” She smiled and shrugged. “You’re the funny one.”
“Then what’s Olivia?” I asked. I poked Imani lightly in the side and made my voice deep and my face mock stern. “The serious one?”
“Not exactly,” said Imani. I had the feeling she was debating whether or not to add anything, but she just gave me one more quick hug and a wave, then ran out of the room to join her friends.
Washing my hands in the bathroom after class, I was still thinking about what Imani had said. Or hadn’t said. If I was the funny one, what was Olivia?
It took me about a thousandth of a second to answer my own question: the nice one. She was the nice one, and I was the funny one. Which was kind of just another way of saying Olivia was the nice one and I was the bitch.
God, what was wrong with me? Even little kids knew I wasn’t nice. I had to be nicer to people. I looked at myself in the mirror. “I vow to be nicer to people.”
A second later, the bathroom door opened and Stacy Shaw walked in.
“Really?” I said to the universe. “You’re seriously testing me on this right now?”
“He-ey,” Stacy said, giving me an enormous grin. “Are you on the phone or something?”
“No, I’m just talking to myself.”
“Oh,” said Stacy. “That’s cool. I do it all the time.” She looked at herself in the mirror, fluffing her hair. “We’ll see you at the car wash later, right?”
“Of course. I mean, I don’t have a ca
r or anything. But my mom and dad do.”
“Oh, good,” said Stacy. She opened her purse and fished out a large cosmetics bag, from which she removed a lip liner. “You can donate blood, too. If you’re seventeen.”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
“That’s okay.” Carefully tracing her lips, Stacy continued. “I just want, like, everyone to come out to show support for Olivia,”
As irritating as she was, I had to be grateful to her for all the work she was doing. I mean, it wasn’t like I’d been busy recruiting people to come to the car wash.
“Are you going over to school now?” I asked, unable to take my eyes off Stacy as she slathered her lips with gloss. “I mean, to set up?”
“Oh, not yet.” She blotted her lips with a tissue. “We’ve got an away game.”
“You’re cheering today? And then you’re doing the car wash?”
“Mmm, yeah,” said Stacy. She smiled at me. “So, I’ll see you later?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Later.”
“I mean, I actually kind of have respect for Stacy,” I said to Livvie. We were sitting in the backseat of her dad’s car en route to the car wash. I had a container of brownies on my lap that my mom had helped me bake for the bake sale. Olivia’s dad was driving; her mom was in the passenger seat. On the radio, jazz played quietly. “It’s weird.”
Livvie shook her head. “I hear you. But don’t try and tell me about weird. I spent the morning wig shopping.”
“It looks amazing, Livvie!” I assured her once again. “Seriously. You did such a good job.”
She put her hand to her head. “Do you think so? It feels . . . I don’t know, artificial.”
Despite her plans to get an outrageous wig, Livvie had actually gone with one that was almost exactly like her real hair, only shorter and with bangs that the wig seller had said would make the hair look more natural. It did look natural. Kind of. If you didn’t look too closely, you couldn’t tell, except that Livvie’s real hair had been such a distinct color that the wig was blah in comparison. But it wasn’t like there was anything she could do about having the most beautiful blond hair in the world.
“It doesn’t look artificial,” I assured her. “Actually, your real hair probably looked more artificial than the wig does. Everyone probably thought you dyed it to get it that color.”
“Okay, that’s, like, the weirdest compliment ever,” she said, but she was smiling.
Her dad pulled onto Westerly Road. Even though the car wash had only started about twenty minutes earlier, there was already a line of cars waiting to get into the school parking lot. A banner nearly fifty feet long hung across the fence next to the road.
BAKE SALE, BLOOD DRIVE,
AND CAR WASH TODAY!
WASH YOUR CAR. SAVE A LIFE.
SUPPORT OLIVIA GRECO!
She slid down a little in her seat. “This is weird.”
She was right. It was weird. As we pulled forward, you could see all the cheerleaders, in their uniforms, washing cars. The football team was also washing cars, but they were in regular clothes. In the far corner of the parking lot a bloodmobile was parked, and a few people were lined up, waiting to donate blood.
“See, honey!” her mom said from the passenger seat. “Everyone loves you. Jake said the team couldn’t wait to participate.”
“The football team loves you,” I whispered.
“I feel like such a tramp,” she whispered back.
We pulled into the parking lot. “Do you want to get out and walk around?” I asked. “I mean, you’re kind of the guest of honor.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s weird. It’s weird if I get out. It’s weird if I don’t get out.” She rubbed her hands together nervously.
I turned to face her. “Liv, people really want to see you. They do. I make fun of Stacy and Emma and you know I really do think they’re mentally disabled, but they seriously care.” She laughed. “Stop! I’m being serious. Look, I know we joke about how it’s just the two of us in our own little universe, but everyone’s always asking about you. Really. Bethany and Lashanna and Mia and . . . just all the other girls on the soccer team. And in class. You know how I used to come to the hospital and say that everyone asked about you?”
“Yeah.” She looked doubtful.
“Well, it’s true. Everyone. I must tell a hundred people a day how you’re doing. So, I mean, if you’re tired, don’t worry about it. But if you feel okay, you should get out of the car. People really do love you.”
A tear rolled down Livvie’s cheek, and she put her forehead on my shoulder. “I am such a cheese ball.”
“No you’re not,” I assured her, laughing.
“Okay.” She wiped her face. “Mom, Dad. I’m going in. I mean out.” Olivia put her hand on the door and cracked it open. But before she could step out of the car, her mom stopped her.
“Wait.” Mrs. Greco reached into her bag. “I’d feel better if you’d wear this.” When she turned around, she was holding what looked like a piece of white fabric.
“What is it?” asked Olivia, puzzled.
“It’s a surgical mask,” said her mom. She smiled nervously.
“You want me to wear a mask?” Olivia sounded horrified. “Today?”
“Adriana,” said Mr. Greco, his voice low, “I thought we agreed. Dr. Maxwell said she only had to wear it if she was going to be indoors in a crowd.”
Her mother gestured to the lawn, which held a significant portion of the student population. “Are you trying to tell me this isn’t a crowd?”
“But it’s outside, Mom.”
“That’s enough,” said her dad, glancing at Olivia in the rearview mirror. He didn’t raise his voice, but Olivia got quiet. I would have also. If my dad said, That’s enough, you might say, Says who? But there’s no way you’d say that to Olivia’s dad.
I was positive he was going to make her wear the mask, but all he did was put his hand on Mrs. Greco’s hand. “Adriana, let her go.”
There was a long pause. I could hear the hum of the car’s engine and the muffled sounds of people outside talking and laughing. The car in front of us pulled up, but Mr. Greco didn’t move.
Olivia’s mom gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Okay,” she whispered. Then she turned around. “You can stay. For one hour.”
“For one hour?” Livvie’s mouth opened into a shocked O.
“Olivia.” Her dad’s tone required no elaboration.
“Fine,” Olivia said. She started to get out of the car, but then she stopped and leaned forward. “Thanks,” she said. Her dad stroked her cheek briefly, then gestured at the empty space in front of us. “Come on already! I gotta get my car washed here.”
I hadn’t realized that the air-conditioning was on in the car, but stepping out into the sticky warmth of the afternoon made me feel its absence. Still, I couldn’t exactly be sorry that it was unseasonably warm for the last weekend in October. Thanks to climate change, Olivia could be outside.
The car wash was set up at the corner of the parking lot nearest the school. All around on the lawn people were hanging out, manning tables that sold T-shirts, mugs, and glasses. Tacked up to the building was a sign that said NATIONAL BONE MARROW REGISTRY. SIGN UP. YOU COULD SAVE A LIFE. Underneath it, an older woman sat at a table.
Mr. Greco pulled the car forward as Olivia and I walked over to the lawn. We passed a cluster of freshman and sophomore girls, and as we walked by, one of them whispered something to the others. “Hey, Olivia!” one of them called. Olivia and I turned. The girl was waving shyly.
Livvie hesitated. “What am I supposed to do?” she whispered.
I waved at the girl. “Hey!” I called to her. Through my smile I told Olivia to wave also, and Livvie raised her hand and waved.
“Okay, this is bizarre,” she said.
“I think we can stop waving now.”
“Hey, Olivia!” Lashanna and Mia were standing a few feet away, and we walked over to them. They
were both wearing their soccer uniforms, with T-shirts over them bearing the logo for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
“How’s it going?” asked Lashanna.
“Okay,” said Livvie. “Nice T-shirt.”
“Thanks,” said Lashanna. She spun around so we could read the back, which said FUND THE CURE TO FIND THE CURE.
“Is it weird to be a cause?” asked Mia.
Livvie laughed. “Yeah, kinda.”
Jake came over to where we were standing. “Hey, little sister,” he said. “You gonna make yourself useful and wash some cars?” His wasn’t wearing a shirt, and he was pretty wet.
“Sure,” she said, laughing. He put his arm around her. “Come on. I’ll take you over to say hi to some of the guys.”
Livvie walked a few steps with Jake, then turned back to me. “You coming?”
“In a sec,” I said. “I’ve got to drop these off.” I indicated the container of brownies.
I watched Livvie and Jake make their way through the crowd. Everyone they passed, when they realized who Olivia was, wanted to hug her, but I saw Jake gently keep them away, more like a bodyguard than a brother. People’s being so excited to see Livvie, their wanting to touch and talk to her, made me feel better about Wamasset High and a little stupid for how down on it I tended to get. These were good people.
These were Olivia’s people.
I gave my brownies to the girls running the bake sale and bought a chocolate chip cookie for a dollar. While I ate it, I wandered over to the bone marrow registry table.
Sean Miller was talking to the woman sitting there. There was a pile of brochures lying next to them, and I grabbed one. Every year, thousands of people wait for a bone marrow transplant. Could you be the one to save a life? There was a rainbow coalition of people in the photo on the front page. Inside were frequently asked questions. I skimmed through them, stopping on Does it hurt to donate bone marrow? According to the pamphlet, Bone marrow is extracted from the back of the pelvic bone using a hollow needle designed for this purpose.
Maybe One Day Page 12