“No, thanks, Meg. I’ve got all the cancer friends I need right now. I brought a book.” She tapped a backpack at her feet.
“OK. If you change your mind, let me know. I’ll be back in a while to check on you.”
Ruthann was waiting for her outside Lara’s room. “You OK?”
For the briefest of seconds, Meg considered pulling Ruthann into the staff room and confessing all. Instead, she offered her colleague an exaggerated thumbs-up. Once Ruthann was back at the intake center, Meg ducked into the bathroom, closing herself into a stall and allowing the tears to flow.
ALEX
“How are you doing, Alex?” Camo Man stalked her in the rearview mirror, smiling. Bored, Alex decided to at least pretend to be interested. She stretched. “Where are we?”
“Still in Connecticut,” the woman said. “We’ll stop in about an hour. You can use the bathroom then.”
“Cool.” Just the mention of a bathroom made her want to pee. She’d had to go so bad last night when Evan dropped her at home. He must be pissed off by now. It was Friday; people needed supplies for the weekend. Now she had to worry about getting word to him, on top of this magical mystery tour.
Evan was Logan’s friend. She’d met him at Shana’s, the first time she saw Logan after the funeral. When the two boys showed up, Logan caught her eye, tipping his head at Evan. Alex got it: Don’t talk about it in front of him. She was glad Evan was there. They needed a neutral party.
“I’m Alex,” she’d greeted him as she dropped onto the floor of Shana’s room.
“Hey,” he returned, taking a seat on Shana’s zebra-striped bench. “Is it cool?” he asked Logan. When Logan nodded, Evan dug into his pocket and tossed a joint to his friend. Alex’s eyes widened as she watched Logan light it. He inhaled so hard, she was afraid he’d swallow it. Exhaling, he offered it to Alex, who waved it away.
Shana was next. She hesitated, surveying the prescription bottles on her nightstand. “I better not. I’m, like, already buzzed from my pain meds.”
Evan took a hit, then held it out to Alex again. The sour-sweet smell tickled her nostrils.
“Come on. It’ll mellow you out.” Logan, the king of good judgment, sitting back, eyes closed.
Alex wavered. Mellow sounded loads better than she felt right now, her heart hollow, her brain in constant-replay mode. She took the joint, pinching it between thumb and forefinger like Evan had, and inhaled.
“Harder,” Evan ordered. “Hold it in as long as you can.”
She did as he said, containing the acrid heat in her lungs until she thought they would burst, then exploded in one choking exhale.
“You might not feel anything the first time,” Logan volunteered. What was the point of that? Alex thought. When it came around again, she took the joint from Evan. Soon, the sharp edges of her anxiety softened, silencing the jackhammers. She floated to a little corner of her brain where there was nothingness. It felt safe.
That was the first night the four of them started hanging. Her mother didn’t think their constant togetherness was healthy.
“I’m just suggesting it might be good to hang out with some other kids,” she said one Saturday morning.
At the kitchen island, Alex mentally reviewed her “other” options. First, there were the nosy kids, creepers who wanted all the gruesome details: Was Logan drinking? What was the last thing she said? Did you see her body?
Alex wished she had the answers; she’d asked Shana a million times what happened that night. When Shana said it was better if she didn’t know, Alex tried to fill in the gaps herself, but there were too many blurry bits between Cass’s cool touch in the ladies’ room and coming to under a fuzzy white blanket covering her like a dusting of snow, straps tight around her waist. A violet silkiness had been tucked under her chin, with no one sure how it ended up there.
Beyond the nosy kids, there were the avoiders, who never spoke to her directly, instead just pointing and staring as though Alex were parading around in prison stripes. The avoiders were right: losing Cass was Alex’s fault.
Possibly worse than the avoiders were their friends from before, all sobby and sad at the funeral, then within a few weeks acting like Cass never even existed, expecting Alex to feel normal, to want to go to the mall on Saturdays like they always had.
Only things weren’t like before. Why couldn’t her mother see that? Why did she have to act like Alex could just march down to Walgreens and pick out new friends the way she picked out a new lip gloss?
“I worry this Evan boy is a bad influence,” Meg had said again that morning.
“You don’t know anything about ‘this Evan,’ Mom. And maybe I’m the bad influence.”
Her mom scooted around the island to hug her. “Of course you’re not.” Despite ragging on Alex about her friends, her mother seemed to be trying very hard that morning to avoid a fight. She’d even suggested they do something together. Alex had refused, even though it made her feel bad. Everything made her feel bad.
After releasing her from the hug, Meg grabbed Alex’s high school newspaper and flipped it open to a notice about auditions for the spring musical, suggesting she try out.
Alex stared at her mother. How could she not know how ridiculous that idea was, on so many levels? Any play tryouts were dead to Alex now—not just because of Cass’s absence, but because her parents had chosen that morning, the day the Annie cast was due back at school to strike the set, to tell her they were separating.
Their announcement from opposite ends of the living room couch—that the life Alex knew up to that point was over—would forever be intertwined with the dismantling of the show’s backdrops, the breakdown of props and costumes, the ceremonial burning of leftover programs.
She would never step onstage again. To this day, Alex couldn’t stomach the orphans’ lament that taunted her from a constant loop on the school’s cable TV channel, the cast singing how throwing in the towel was a lot easier than putting up a fight.
At school that day with the cast, Cass sensed Alex’s anguish right away, wrestling the news of her parents’ split out of her best friend. By sheer brilliance, Cass gave her hope, by proposing the most incredible idea—a milestone to anticipate and plan and experience together.
Happy Corner.
It became their mantra, whenever things got a little rocky—Happy Corner, Happy Corner—bolstering Alex through the initial blow of her parents’ separation. Then, in an instant, Cass was no longer around to help decode her mom and dad’s confusing behavior. Or to calm Alex’s concerns about the future: What if her parents found new boyfriends or girlfriends one day? Would she have to act like she liked their kids? Or, OMG, share a room? There were a bazillion more questions Alex didn’t dare ask, terrified of the answers.
So, of course, she found a new crew.
That morning in the kitchen, Alex wrenched the school paper away from her mother. “I’m out of here. My friends know what I need.” Shana and Evan could never fill Cass’s shoes, but they were all Alex had.
In this evening’s performance, understudies Shana and Evan will play the roles of Alex’s best friends . . .
Her mother followed her outside to Shana’s car, begging her to finish some lame chore first.
“Alex. Alex.” A hand was shaking her.
“Leave me alone, Mom. I’ll do it later.”
“Wake up, Alex. We’re here.”
Disoriented, she opened her eyes to find Mom Haircut smiling at her. “You slept for quite a while. We’re at the rest stop. Time for lunch.”
MEG
“So tell me. Is he hot?”
“Is who hot?”
“Your new guy.” Lara Ryan’s blanket had slipped off her shoulders. Meg set down her own lunch tray to rearrange the woman’s cover. The treatment rooms’ arctic temperatures were designed to ward off the patients’ nausea.
“What new guy?” Meg snuck another look at her phone to see if Carl had called from their lunchtime stop.
“You know. The one you were so distracted over earlier?” Lara offered up her bandaged forearm as a reminder.
“Oh, no. You’re kidding, right?” Meg pushed some chicken broth toward Lara. “Try to eat some of this. It will settle your stomach.” Meg sat down and picked at her own salad. She had chosen her meal carefully from the cafeteria, avoiding any strong odors that might set off sensitive stomachs in the treatment area.
Lara toyed with her soup. “You’ve been glued to your phone all day like a lovesick teenager. I just thought you might have something . . . you know . . . going on.”
Meg laughed. “Like dating? I’m such a hot mess, no one would want me.” She fingered the spot where her wedding rings had been until a few months ago, their absence alerting the world to her single status. She still felt their phantom weight sometimes. She shrugged off the twinge of guilt. There’d been nothing wrong with slipping them on yesterday before Carl’s visit; she was still married.
“I might know somebody,” Lara offered.
“So you’re a matchmaker now?” Meg teased. “That’s sweet. I’ll let you know when I’m ready, but don’t hold your breath. The truth is, I’m just waiting on news about my daughter. It should be anytime.”
“How are you holding up?” Lara asked.
Meg blinked. How could she know about Alex? Then it dawned on her Lara meant the separation, a development her observant patient pulled from her some weeks ago. Things got personal in treatment rooms sometimes. Meg tried hard not to cross the professional line, but you grew attached to some patients. Like Lara Ryan.
“Honestly, I’m still getting used to it,” Meg said. “I never thought I’d be one of those women. Anyway, you don’t need to hear my problems.”
“I don’t mind. I’ve got plenty of time. And it takes my mind off this adventure.” She jerked her head at the IV. “So . . . your daughter’s giving you a run for your money?”
Meg rolled her eyes. “You know teenagers. It never ends.”
Lara leaned forward, and Meg sensed her loneliness. Though Meg had finished her lunch and was scheduled to orient a group of new patients, she inched her chair closer to her patient. “I remember this one time, when Alex was in seventh grade,” she began.
Alex’s science class had watched a movie about slaughterhouses. Meg described the scene for Lara now: Alex coming home in tears, swearing off eating red meat—and everything else.
“She dragged me through the supermarket, filling the cart with tofu, sprouts, a bunch of very expensive frozen vegan meals.”
“Let me guess,” Lara said, eyes shining. “She lasted six months.”
“Try one month. We caught her at Playland devouring a cheesesteak.” Meg described Alex’s chin, slick with grease. “She said she couldn’t help it, that it just smelled so good.”
“She was back.”
“Yes, but that’s not the end of the story. I ended up with a freezer full of tofu. And a dog.” Her fleeting vegan experiment inspired Alex to begin volunteering at the local animal shelter a few weeks after the cheesesteak incident. When Meg picked her up after her first day, Alex wrangled a scruffy Lab mix of indeterminate age on a leash.
“They said we can take her for the night, Mom.”
The dog leaped up to lick Meg’s arm through the open window. “One night, Alex. That’s it. A dog is a big responsibility.”
As Meg had known would happen from the moment they drove away from the shelter, Angel’s one night turned into forever.
Alex barely volunteered these days. It saddened Meg that since the accident, little inspired her daughter.
“But Alex is good now, right?” Lara asked.
“Really good,” Meg lied, patting the woman’s hand, pleased to have cheered her. Other recollections might not have had the same effect.
Like the day a few months ago when Meg opened the front door to face Alex and a police officer. He had picked her up in the pharmacy downtown, headbands stuffed up her sweatshirt sleeves, he said. The officer knew the Carmodys—Meg monitored his father’s prostate cancer treatment—and had convinced the store manager to let Alex off with a warning, a kindness that went unappreciated by her unrepentant daughter, who seemed more upset over being caught. And who couldn’t explain to her mother why she would have stolen headbands at all, with bins full of them upstairs in her room.
Finishing her lunch, Meg regretted not holding Alex more accountable for that action.
Or others that followed, usually brought to Meg’s attention by an alert from the school’s attendance office. The first time, Meg called back in annoyance. “My child is not absent today. I dropped her there myself.” It had been their usual tense parting at the school curb—Alex’s hand on the door while Meg reeled off reminders: after-school dentist appointments, the check for SAT prep class, undone chores. Alex had pulled away from Meg’s good-bye kiss and slipped into the school. Hadn’t she?
During the frenzied hours that followed, both Meg and Jacob had texted and called Alex, with no response. By late morning, she had been ready to involve the police when Alex texted to say she was back at school and could Meg pick her up after detention.
Detention did not deter Alex. After the next school alert, Meg decided to tail her. After dropping Alex off as usual, she pulled a couple of car lengths ahead and waited. Sure enough, not ten minutes later, Alex emerged from a side door and bounded across the school lawn in the direction of downtown. Following at a discreet distance, she watched Alex slip into Perk Up. Finding her inside alone—who skipped school alone?—Meg marched a scarlet Alex back into school herself right as the late bell rang.
Even after that, no amount of detention deterred her daughter’s pattern of truancy. Alex seemed to have given up. Meanwhile, the sight of the school ID on her phone could still unnerve Meg, as if she herself had been summoned to the principal’s office.
She didn’t share any of these memories or thoughts with her patient. “Don’t forget to stop by the pharmacy before you leave,” she said in parting, tucking Lara’s prescription into the woman’s purse.
Before her next patient, Meg ducked into the restroom again and called Carl. It rang several times without an answer. Calm down, she told the reflection in the mirror over the sink. In the restroom’s flat blue light, the folds framing her mouth deepened into crevices. No wonder Jacob wanted a different model.
Meg’s phone buzzed in her hand. It was an auto text from Alex’s school. Her heart rate skyrocketed briefly before she laughed out loud.
In the morning’s excitement, she’d apparently forgotten one key detail: calling school to report her daughter’s absence.
ALEX
Outside, the morning’s relentlessly bright sky had dialed down to gray. A steady stream of travelers emerged from neat lines of parked cars and tour buses, drawn like lemmings to the faux colonial house that was the Charlton Service Center. The grass border alongside the car was dusted with snow.
“It’s chilly. You might want to put this on.” Murphy held the lame quilted ski jacket Alex’s mother had bought on clearance and left on her bed, another surprise. Alex usually tried to suck it up when her mother shopped for her, wearing stuff once or twice to avoid hurting her feelings.
But this was after—after her mother made her choose sides in their separation. OK, nobody ever came out and said that, but Alex couldn’t help but feel that way. So when she found that coat on her bed, the bribe, she brought it down to the kitchen and dangled it in front of her mother, claiming she’d never be caught dead in it, letting it drop to the floor. (Even as she uttered those words, she practically heard Cass tsk-tsking.)
Her mother did her trademark lip-tightening thing. Angel sniffed the coat, then walked away. Alex had waited for that gotcha! rush from this moment of rebellion, but she had felt only lingering anger over her mother’s belief that a stupid coat would make everything better. And while they were on the subject, why did she feel she could waltz into Alex’s room any time she pleased? She had n
o right to throw away her Sweet Sixteen dress—the first thing Alex looked for when she came home from the hospital. Had she really thought getting rid of the bloodied reminder would make Alex forget? Or that the new coat was a way to kiss and make up?
But it was freezing in the rest stop parking lot. And since her mom wasn’t there to gloat, Alex took the jacket and put it on. She had bigger things to worry about, like contacting Evan.
Once again, Carl and Murphy reattached themselves like leeches and aimed Alex toward the service center. If anybody thinks they’re my parents, I will literally die. Inside, a sea of brown and yellow diamond tile led them to a food court, where odors of grease and microwaved pizza assaulted them. There was a McDonald’s, where a cheesy fake fireplace burned in a slate wall behind some crayon-colored tables. And something called Fresh City, with wraps and other healthy stuff. Auntie Anne’s and Papa Gino’s rounded out the remaining food options, unless you counted the vending machine snacks.
Travelers milled around the open space, perusing menus or stopping to play one of the many arcade games.
“Good time for a restroom break,” Carl said.
Alex gazed at the McCafe, longing to sit and sip a frappé mocha by herself. “I don’t have to go. OK if I walk around?”
“Sorry, Alex. Rules.”
Is this woman planning to wipe me, too? Murphy led her toward a chrome “Restroom” sign over by a bank of pay phones. Standing in line with the woman, Alex leaned her head against the tile wall. It felt icy cold, like a brain freeze. Her lungs tightened in that familiar pull, signaling the need for a cigarette. The bathroom smelled like diapers and industrial-cleaning fumes so harsh she could taste them.
No sooner had they gotten in line than a noisy group of teenagers joined them.
“Let’s go, girls. We don’t have all afternoon.” A tall woman in an “I Heart NY” sweatshirt and too-tight powder blue sweatpants caught up to the teens, her laminated ID slapping against her sweatshirt’s plastic heart appliqué. Chaperone from hell. The girls hung in clumps, giggling and whispering.
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