I was shocked. “He drove home? Livvie, that’s like . . . impossible. He could barely walk.”
She shook her head. “He only drove there. Calvin drove him home.”
I dropped my eyes and toyed with the edge of her comforter.
“Okay,” she continued eagerly, “so you got drunk. And . . .”
“Well, there was dancing.” I wrinkled my face as if trying to remember the exact sequence of events. It was the funniest thing. One second I was dancing and the next I was trying to get Calvin Taylor to have sex with me in Mack Wilson’s pool house.
“And what?” Livvie tossed a small throw pillow at me. “I’m dying here. Not literally,” she added quickly.
“Ha-ha.”
“Now, tell!”
I looked at her. With her blue cap and her wide green eyes, she looked like a Renaissance painting of an angel. She was an angel. If anyone would understand what I’d done, it would be Livvie.
But how could I ask that of her? Livs, I know you have cancer and you’re losing a year of your life and you’re taking this medication that makes you really sick. So if it’s okay, I’d just like to ask you to deal with one more thing. . . .
“Come on,” said Olivia, mocking impatience but also clearly impatient. “Tell me. I have to live vicariously through you, so I hope you did something awesome.”
It was impossible. Maybe if she’d been healthy, I could have told her. But if she’d been healthy, I never would have been at the party alone last night. I never would have gotten drunk and fooled around with Calvin in the first place. In fact, if she’d been healthy, maybe she would have been the one fooling around with Calvin last night.
The thought made my blood run cold.
I shrugged and gave a little laugh, then looked back down at the blanket scrunched up in my hand. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“Oh.” She looked disappointed.
“It was just because you weren’t there,” I promised, finally making eye contact with her. “The next time we go to a party, it will be way more exciting.”
The look she gave me was definitely puzzled, but whatever answers she was seeking in my face, she didn’t find them. “Yeah,” she said finally. “Okay.”
“Okay,” I echoed. “Great. Now.” I slapped my hands on my thighs. “Enough about the stupid party. Tell me about you. When did your fever break?”
“Well,” Olivia began, “it was crazy, really, because my mom was totally freaking out. . . .”
The whole time she talked, I kept almost interrupting her, almost telling her the truth about what had happened with Calvin. But each time, instead of saying something, I just squeezed my lips together until the urge passed. Even when every cell in my body screamed, Now! Tell her now!, I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
Somehow, it felt as if my decision to stick with it was as inevitable as the choice I’d made to lie.
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20
Mind over matter.
That is something you learn when you study dance. Your feet are cracked and bleeding and your legs ache and you’re so tired you feel you can’t take another step, and then the curtain goes up and the music starts and you dance. You put a smile on your face and you dance.
I danced around what had happened all day, and by Sunday evening I found I wasn’t working nearly as hard as I had been not to think about Calvin. The party took on a vague quality, something I might have imagined or dreamed or made up.
Besides, there were more important things to think about. Dr. Maxwell had said that if Olivia’s fever didn’t come back, she could still go to school Monday. The only conditions were that she had to stay away from people who were sick and she had to agree to wear a surgical mask indoors at all times. Livvie said she wasn’t even sure she wanted to go to school at all since she’d look like such a freak in her wig and surgical mask. This, of course, thrilled her mom, who was adamantly against the whole plan and would have been happy to have her daughter in isolation until she started chemo again next week. But I kept promising Livvie it was going to be okay, that nobody would care, that everybody just wanted her to be there with them, and Sunday night, as we picked out clothes for her to wear, Livvie started getting excited.
“You realize you’re getting excited to go to Wamasset, right? I mean, it’s not like you’re spending the week in Paris.”
Livvie laughed. She’d been laughing all evening. The tiniest, stupidest joke could make her crack up.
“This is the dark side of cancer,” she said, making her voice serious and taking me by the shoulders. “Even the dullest existence feels fantastic by contrast.”
When Jake and Olivia pulled up in front of my house Monday morning, my mom and my dad were actually standing with me on the front porch, as if the day were as big a deal for me as it was for Olivia, and I hugged them both, then dashed down the steps to the driveway. Livvie cracked up when she saw me.
“What?” I asked, pressing my face with its surgical mask on it up against the car window.
She shook her head, still laughing, and when I slipped into the backseat, she got on her knees, turned around, and hugged me hard. “I love you, Zoe,” she said. “I just love you.”
When we pulled up to the school, the first thing Livvie saw was five cheerleaders standing on the front steps wearing surgical masks.
“Oh. My. God,” she said. She studied the scene for a long minute, then turned to Jake. “Did you organize this?”
Jake raised his hands to show he was innocent—“Don’t look at me!”—but then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a surgical mask of his own. “I just do what I’m told.”
Slowly, Olivia turned to face me. “This was your idea, wasn’t it?”
I shrugged. “I might have mentioned it to Stacy. But, I mean, who can ever know what’s registering in that cotton-candy brain of hers.”
She didn’t say anything. I leaned forward. “Are you crying?”
“Only a tiny bit,” she said, sniffling.
I hugged her, my arms embracing the seat as well as her body. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m crying a little bit too.”
The entire school wasn’t wearing surgical masks, but a lot of people were. It was so crazy. These people didn’t even know Olivia, not really.
“This is the power of the cheer squad,” I announced.
“Underestimate it at your own risk,” Mia agreed.
We were walking to lunch together. I’d tried to get out of history early to meet Olivia at her class on the other side of the building from mine and walk to lunch with her, but Ms. George was having exactly none of that.
“I know people came to the car wash, but everyone looked hot at the car wash, you know?” I said. “People don’t mind doing things if they look hot. People look dumb in surgical masks.” Talking to Mia in her surgical mask as we walked down the hallway together made me feel a little like a doctor on some medical show.
We turned the final corner before the cafeteria. Standing by their lockers were Jake and Delford.
And Calvin.
I stopped so abruptly that Mia walked into me. “Hey,” she objected.
It is one thing to pretend something didn’t happen when there is no evidence that it happened. It is another thing to pretend something didn’t happen when the person it happened with is staring you in the face. Calvin and I made eye contact, but neither of us spoke, and then the current of people flowing through the hallway carried me and Mia away from the guys and toward the cafeteria.
Mia gave a brief whistle. “O-kay. You want to tell me what that was all about?”
“What what was all about?” My heart was beating extremely fast. I sounded breathless.
Mia glanced back over her shoulder, then looked at me. “That Olympic stare you and resident hottie Calvin Taylor just exchanged.”
&
nbsp; I forced a laugh. “Wow, Mia, way to have a vivid imagination.”
“Oh my God, you are so totally gaslighting me!” Mia cried, putting her hand on my arm.
“I don’t even know what that is,” I told her. I used my hip to open the cafeteria door. “Come on. Let’s find Olivia.”
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part 2
Winter
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21
One week later, Olivia went back into the hospital for her second round of chemo. I’d thought I was prepared for it, but as I watched them slip on her plastic bracelet, settle her into bed, and set her up with her IV, it felt like I was letting my best friend be kidnapped. The walls of the hallways were decorated with paper turkeys and Pilgrims, and even though I knew the people who had put them up had meant well, it still made me mad. What exactly did people on a pediatric oncology ward have to be thankful for?
Olivia wanted to talk about dance class, and since it seemed to be taking her mind off what was going on around her, I just let her float her insane theory that I was doing a fantastic job as her coteacher.
“While I’m in the hospital, you should keep trying to choreograph something challenging with them for the recital. Those girls will work hard for you.” The nurse said everything looked good and told us to ring him if there were any problems. When he left, Livvie sighed and stretched out on her bed. Her mom had gone to get her a ginger ale, and her dad was at work, so it was just the two of us in her room.
“I don’t know,” I said, tucking my legs up under me. “When you’re not there, they don’t really take the class that seriously.”
“That’s so not true!” Olivia objected. “They worked really hard on Saturday. They all learned that sequence.”
“Yes, because you were there,” I said, reminding her of the obvious. “Skyping the class equals your being there.”
“Trust me,” said Olivia, ignoring what I said. “They love you.”
I snorted, but instead of responding to my doubt, Livvie folded her hands on her chest. Then she turned her head to look at me. “This is what I’ll look like dead.”
“Will you stop!” I slapped her arm. “Jesus.”
She stared at the ceiling, eyes wide. “I cannot believe I have to start all over again.”
“Dr. Maxwell said it’s going to be much easier this time,” I said quickly.
“Might. She said it might be easier this time.”
“You’re such a stickler for details.” But now that she’d said it, I remembered. Dr. Maxwell had said might.
Eyes on the ceiling, Livvie asked, “What are we doing for your birthday?”
“For my birthday?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s still a month away.” The fact that my birthday was coming up had crossed my mind a couple of times recently, but given everything that was going on, I hadn’t been able to get especially psyched, not even about the fact that I’d finally get my license. Besides passing my road test, I didn’t have too many big-ticket items on my birthday list this year. Maybe because All I want for my birthday is for my friend to be in remission doesn’t exactly have a festive ring to it.
“I want you to plan something,” said Livvie. “Something great.
I stared at her. “You want me to plan something for my birthday?”
Still looking at the ceiling, she nodded.
“Like, a party?” I asked. For my sixteenth birthday, I’d had a bunch of people over. It was hardly the elaborate sweet sixteen that a lot of girls at Wamasset had, but it had been a fun night. Even though seventeen’s not a special birthday (outside of the whole driver’s license thing), if I played the my-best-friend-has-cancer card, my parents probably would have thrown me another party.
Livvie made a face. “I don’t think I’ll be able to be around a lot of people then.”
I did the math. In four weeks, when I turned seventeen, Livvie would be out of the hospital, but she would still be immunosuppressed. “God, right,” I said. “Sorry.”
“But I want it to be something really special.” She sat up abruptly, the tube of her IV swinging. “Something fantastic. Something I can look forward to while I’m surrounded by this.” She gestured around the hospital room.
I thought for a minute, chewing on the inside of my cheek as I did. “Okay,” I said finally. “Let me get this straight. You want me to plan a spectacular celebration that doesn’t involve a lot of people, won’t tire you out, and that your mom won’t veto the second she hears about it.”
“Exactly,” said Livvie. When I didn’t respond right away, she added, “I’ll just take your silence as a sign that you’re already busy thinking of something.”
What was I going to say—no?
“Of course,” I assured her. “I’m on it.”
I didn’t call my parents to pick me up from the station, deciding maybe the birthday celebration idea that hadn’t come to me on the train would come to me in the brisk evening air. But even the streetlights popping on around me didn’t inspire a eureka! moment. The truth was, I wasn’t very good at planning birthday stuff in general; Livvie had always been much better at it than I was. Even my sixteenth birthday party had been her idea. But I had the feeling my telling her to come up with something fantastic wouldn’t exactly satisfy her need to look forward to some big birthday surprise.
When I got home, my mom and dad were sitting in the living room. I assumed they were going to ask how Olivia’s return to the hospital had gone, and they did, but it quickly became clear that wasn’t why they were waiting for me.
“We need to talk,” said my dad, and he patted the couch next to him. Livvie and I were always joking that my parents were trapped in a tragic 1970s vortex. They both drove Priuses, and they belonged to an organic food co-op, and they were obsessed with recycling. But the most obvious proof of their love for the 1970s was our living room. The couch my dad wanted me to sit next to him on was brown corduroy, and his feet rested on a multicolored shag rug. I sat down.
“Honey, did you know that you’re getting a C in history?” asked my mom. She slid a yellow slip of paper onto my lap. It was something called an academic notice, and it informed my parents that my average in history was more than ten points lower than it had been at this time last year.
“Really?” Actually, I had no idea how I was doing in history. Or in any of my classes, for that matter. At the bottom of my paper on the Thirty Years’ War, Ms. George had written, This could have used a little more thought. Then she’d given me a grade. B? Or had it been a B-minus? I hadn’t paid much attention. The truth was, I didn’t have any more thought in me. The only thing I thought about was Olivia.
“We know there’s a lot going on for you right now,” said my dad, his voice serious. “This is an unimaginably hard time. And of course you’re going to be distracted. But you’re a junior in high school. You have to think about your future.”
“College,” my mom explained.
“Thanks, Mom. I get that when Dad says ‘future’ he means college. And that when he says ‘college’ he means Yale.” Actually, my dad didn’t say Yale. He said New Haven, as in When I was a student in New Haven . . . Both my parents went to Yale, though they didn’t know each other there and my mom wasn’t nearly as obsessed with it as my dad was.
“Don’t get testy,” said my dad. “Your mom and I were very supportive when you were dancing. We never pressured you to make different choices from the ones you wanted to make. As long as you kept your grades up, we let you dance.”
“But now that I’m not dancing, who’s going to want me?” I refolded the letter and dropped it onto the glass coffee table in front of me. “That’s your point, right?”
He held up his hand. �
��I never said that. But you don’t want to make decisions now that are going to limit your options in the future.”
This was unbelievable! “Well, maybe I have been a little distracted lately. Perhaps you remember that my best friend has cancer,” I reminded them.
There was a brief silence. Then my mom said, “Olivia’s illness is a tragedy, Zoe. Don’t turn it into a petty excuse.”
My parents limited my hospital visits to three days a week. Theoretically I was spending more time on my work, and I guess technically I was spending more time on my work, but I was also spending a lot of time trying to figure out what amazing thing Olivia and I were going to do for my birthday, which, like helping with the dance class, was proving to be a bigger pain in the ass than I’d anticipated.
Clearly we were going to have to go out. My birthday was on a Thursday. On Saturday I’d take my road test, and if I passed, I could drive us somewhere.
But where?
Two weeks later, with less than two weeks left before I turned seventeen, I was no closer to an idea than I had been when I’d promised Olivia I was on it. After a dance class that wasn’t as bad as the last one had been but wasn’t exactly productive, I even asked the girls what they thought Olivia would want to do, but the only thing they could all agree on was “go to Disney World!”
I promised to give their suggestion some serious consideration.
“There’s always Deco’s,” suggested Lashanna. Despite the calendar’s saying there should have been an autumnal chill in the air, Mia and Lashanna and I were sitting on the lawn outside eating sandwiches. It was so warm we weren’t even wearing coats.
Deco’s was a fancy restaurant in downtown Wamasset where a lot of people went on special occasions, but it was small and crowded. Mrs. Greco would never agree to Olivia’s sitting there in the middle of flu season.
“What about going into the city?” said Mia. She wiped some mustard off her lip with a napkin.
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