by Nikki Loftin
“I know that,” she said, each word slow and measured. “But we’ll be gone for long enough. Two days, three—maybe more. Long enough that your parents will shut up for good once they do find you.” She started walking again, ahead of me, and I almost didn’t hear her next words. “Long enough that I’ll miss the start of my treatment.” Her voice got lower, almost a whisper. “Maybe long enough to make St. Jude’s an option.”
St. Jude’s? Hadn’t Annie said that was three months away? Three whole months. Her doctor had insisted it was too long to wait. How bad was Annie’s cancer? I wanted to grill her with questions, wanted to turn her around and make her tell me straight out what her chances of survival were if she waited—Fifty percent? Ten percent?—but I didn’t.
Annie needed someone to listen. Just listen. I could do that.
So I followed quietly, wondering what Annie’s mom could have been thinking. Annie shouldn’t have to feel so alone, shouldn’t be so alone out here in the countryside, with no one but a weird kid like me for company. Not when she had all this going on. Not when she and her mom should be talking, sharing the fear and pain. Not hiding from it.
Not running away.
Running away. Even the words sent a thrill through me—the thought of escaping, of being free. Being me. I remembered all the things my parents had said over the past months—years, even. About me needing to be more, better, different. Maybe they did need a wake-up call.
Maybe Annie’s mom needed one as well.
It wasn’t like we were really running away. We weren’t going to take a train or hitchhike somewhere crazy. We’d be practically in our own backyard.
Our own very big, very wild, very magical backyard.
The idea percolated through me. If all sorts of magical things had happened at the edge of the valley, what waited farther in?
What secrets would we discover as we got farther away from home, deeper into the quiet places?
“Peter!” Annie gasped, and I raced to catch up. She had found the rain lily meadow.
It was stunning. About forty yards of nothing but white lilies, each plant no taller than a foot, with flowers about two inches across. They glistened and bobbed with the mild breeze, showing hints of purple and green when they moved. Small white butterflies, like petals that had detached themselves and decided to float above the earth, filled the sky.
“I don’t want to cut these flowers.” I followed a pair of butterflies with my eyes as they danced overhead. “They’re too beautiful.”
“I’ll do it,” Annie said. She took the jar from my hand and pulled a small knife out of her shorts pocket. A wickedly sharp knife, from the look of it.
“You came armed?”
“I thought we’d be cutting grapevines,” she explained as she harvested a flower here, another there, taking care not to make a bald patch in the meadow. As she stepped, it seemed like the flowers bent out of her way, springing back up again after she moved her foot.
“Don’t you hate cutting them?” I asked. “Flowers are so beautiful when they’re growing—I’ve never understood why everyone wants to stick them in vases. Once you cut them, they’re dead in a day or two.”
Annie shrugged. “Cut or not, these’d be dead then, too.”
“What?”
She rolled her eyes. “Rain lilies, Peter. They only bloom for one day. They’re gone after that. At least the Colonel’s wife will get to enjoy them like this. She deserves something beautiful in her life.” Annie’s voice tapered off.
“What do you mean?” I said, skirting the edge of the meadow. Annie might fearlessly tread all over the flowers, but I wasn’t taking any chances on destroying what might be the most gorgeous place I’d ever seen.
“I don’t know. She just seems so sad. Didn’t you think?”
Sad? I would have said crazy, sure. Grumpy. Slightly sadistic, making a kid cut a quarter mile of grapevines for a sandwich. And nice, sort of, for covering for me today. But sad?
Now that I thought about it, there was something in her eyes, in the tightness around the corners of her mouth. I wondered what it was. And how Annie had noticed it when I hadn’t.
I hadn’t been paying attention. For some reason, the thought struck at me. Was I becoming like my family? So sucked into my own problems, I didn’t notice the other people around me? Maybe . . . maybe I needed to slow down, be more careful about my decisions.
Annie’s decision gnawed at me. I couldn’t even imagine . . . no. I couldn’t even think about it. How could she play with her life like that? Stalling the operation and medicine she needed just to make a statement? Talk about fighting back.
I would never have that kind of courage.
When the vase was full, Annie straightened. “So, what do you think?”
“Beautiful.”
Annie ducked her head. “Thanks.”
“I meant the flowers,” I stammered. “Not you. I mean, you are, too. Wait—”
Annie laughed, cutting me off. “Stop, Peter, you’re just making it worse. But I meant, will you do it? Will you run away with me?”
“I don’t think so,” I said honestly. “I mean, if you run away—if we did—and something bad happened, you got hurt down there. It’s really far from doctors, hospitals.”
“Um, that’s sort of the point,” Annie said, her voice darker than I’d ever heard it. “I’m not going back to the hospital, not when they won’t listen to me. Even if I have to run away a thousand times. I’m not doing that treatment.”
Not doing the treatment? But without it she’d die. Wouldn’t she?
I couldn’t imagine it. Annie was the most alive, most energetic person I’d met in . . . well, ever.
“That doesn’t make any sense, Annie,” I said. I had to tell her—somebody had to. “You’re talking about risking your life.”
“Exactly,” she answered, picking apart a rain lily with the bitten-down fingernails of one hand. “My life.”
“But . . . ” I had to ask. “Won’t you die without the treatment? You can’t just throw your life away.”
“News flash, Peter. My life already got thrown away. I’m just trying to do what I want with the cruddy piece I have left.”
“Annie. I never thought of you as the giving-up type.”
“Don’t be a jerk. I already have my quota of jerks, thanks.” She threw the petals down on the ground, and as I watched, they seemed to fade and wither on the way to the earth.
I was angry, and more. But I wasn’t sure who I was angry at. Myself? Her mom? Annie, for one. As much as I’d wanted to run away, her actually deciding to do it meant she really had given up hope. It meant she would rather die than try to beat the cancer again.
And the thought of that made me feel worse than I had when I was getting beat up, worse than I’d felt cutting grapevines all day, even worse than when Mom insisted on summer camp.
“You’re talking about dying,” I said. The words were too loud, angry, and I smelled something strange and rotten on the breeze. Sorry, I whispered to the valley.
“No. I’m talking about fighting back. Running away. Making them listen for once. Anyway, it’s like you said. They’d probably find us before long.”
“They?”
“Well, my mom, your parents. If you go with me.” She faced me again. “Come on, Peter. You promised, remember? I’m serious.”
Serious? I didn’t even want to imagine how seriously mad my mom would be if I really did this thing.
“Your mom would be terrified,” I said softly. “She probably already is. Could you . . . do that to her?”
“Yes! Maybe. Maybe . . . it’ll get her attention.” She sighed. “You can’t understand. You probably never considered what I’m considering. You never had a problem so bad it seemed like you couldn’t get away from it. Like it was a monster, chasing you, and all you could
do was run.”
Yes I have, I wanted to say. But the words didn’t come. I didn’t want to tell her what I’d gone through. What I’d been thinking of doing, no matter how many times I denied it to my mom.
I didn’t want to give Annie any more ammunition.
“I’ve got my stuff ready,” she said, her voice as steady and clear as I’d ever heard it. “I packed my backpack with everything we talked about. The canteen, the food, extra clothes—I even stole a knife from the camp kitchen.”
“You stole a knife,” I repeated. “You’re already packed?” She’d been thinking about this, planning. “You’re nuts.”
“Nuts?” Her lips drew tight together. “What’s the deal, Peter? You chickening out?” She paused, and when I didn’t answer, she went on, the words peppering me like a hail of stones. “You told me you were a coward. I didn’t believe it. I guess I should have. Well, just go home then, coward. I don’t need you anyway.”
“Annie!” My face blazed. “Stop it!”
“Why? It’s true. Either you’re a coward or a liar.” Tears made her words hard to understand. “Or both. You lied to me.”
She was right. But I had to explain. “I . . . I never thought . . . it was all just a story, right? Like making a wish you know is crazy. It’s never going to come true, so it’s okay to wish for something impossible.”
The air hummed between us.
“Annie, you have until Friday, right? You can talk to your mom again. Or . . . or call the doctor one more time. Come to my house, our landline works. We can go on the Internet and research some more treatments.”
“I have to do something, Peter,” she said after a few minutes of silence, offering the flowers in her hand to me. “You don’t have to come. I’ll do it alone.”
Alone. When she said the word, a storm cloud, heavy and dark gray, came into view on the horizon.
“No,” I said, panicking at the thought of her running off by herself. Doug and Jake might find her alone. Or she might fall, or . . . “Annie, you can’t.”
“I can try. I’m not afraid. Goodbye, Peter Stone,” she said, turning to go. “Have a nice life.”
She was leaving. Forever.
I watched her go, wondering if she really would do something so stupid. Wondering if I would let it happen. Wondering how to stop it.
Annie running away, maybe getting hurt or even dying . . . alone?
I had to come up with something.
I had to talk to someone who would listen.
Chapter 23
Of course, the biggest problem I had was just that: No one listened to me.
That night, I got Mom alone in the kitchen—just the two of us, if I didn’t count her laptop, which kept pinging Facebook messages and clicking as she typed away.
“Mom?” I said, louder than usual. I needed her to hear me. “Mom? Can I ask you something important?”
“Um, what?” She looked up, then clued in. “Oh, yes, of course. You know you can always come to me with anything. We talked about this last year. What’s going on?”
She rearranged her face to look interested, but behind her eyes was a hint of panic. Probably worried about what I’d say. Worried I was depressed again.
If she only knew.
“Well, I know this girl. . . . ” I began. I didn’t want Mom freaking out that I’d been hanging out with a girl all week. Too late.
“A girl?” Mom looked like I’d given her an early birthday present. “Is she cute? Where did you meet her—wait. This isn’t someone you met on a chat-room online or something? You know those are all forty-year-old men, trolling for—”
“Mom!” I shook my head, wishing I’d never even tried. “She’s a real girl. I’ve met her.”
“Where?” Mom’s eyes got sparkly. “When? I want to meet her. Will she go to your school next year?”
“Mom! She’s not even from here. She’s only here until Friday.” Friday, the day her mom was going to take Annie away to start her treament.
If she could find her.
“Just . . . never mind.”
“No, Peter, I’m listening. What about this girl?” She was chewing on the edge of her lip, like the words were fighting to escape any way they could.
“Never mind. We’ll talk about her later.” I had to try another way of finding out. “Mom, there was this friend of mine at my old school,” I lied. “He had cancer.”
“Who? Wait, I want to hear more about this girl you mentioned—”
“Mom, not now. This is about my friend. With cancer.”
Mom shook her head slightly. “I never even heard about a boy having cancer last year. Was he in your class?”
“It’s not important. What I wanted to ask was, have you ever heard of late effects from cancer treatments?”
“Side effects?”
“Well, sort of. Yes. Have you ever heard of brain damage being one of them? Like, permanent brain damage?”
“Yes,” Mom said, as quiet as I’d ever heard her. “I had a friend whose little boy had leukemia. He was four when they found it. He had some brain damage from the radiation and chemo. But they do therapy, you know, to help them recover.”
“Do they recover?” I asked. “Let’s say if someone had a lot of radiation. A lot of chemo. More than usual. If they did all that, if the cancer was serious, would the side effects be so bad she would never recover?”
“She?” Mom said. “So, is this still the girl?”
“Yeah,” I said, my face going hot all of a sudden. “But not that kind of girl. What I wanted to know was—”
Mom’s brow furrowed, and she hesitated for a moment, considering. “There’s no way of knowing, I don’t think. And that’s the truth. So much about cancer treatment and recovery is uncertain. A lot of factors come into play.”
I was sort of stunned. She was listening. For the first time since I could remember, I had my mom’s attention.
“If I had cancer,” I asked, “or if Carlie or Laura or I was really sick, and—”
“God forbid!” Mom stood up and started walking around the kitchen, like she was looking for something to do. “Don’t say it. That’s the worst thing that could ever happen to a mother. Even talking about it gives me the chills.”
“But if we were really sick, and we had to do something drastic, that might cause permanent damage—and we didn’t want it. Would you let us have some say? Would you let us help decide on the treatment?”
Mom stopped and whirled around. “Are you kidding? No! That’s a decision an adult has to make. You can’t understand when you’re a child. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep my kids alive and healthy—nothing.” Her eyes were shining. “Peter, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You know that, right?”
“Even if we didn’t want it done?”
Mom’s mouth opened once, twice, like a fish. She reached out to hold the chair back, like she was losing her balance. “You’re not—oh, God, Peter. I thought you were done thinking about that sort of thing. Have you been—”
“No, Mom,” I protested, knowing where she was going. “I’m not thinking about . . . that. I never was. It was just a stupid journal.”
“I know. You said that. But the things you wrote back then. And what you just said. It sounded like you meant . . .” On the desk by the computer, her phone rang. She almost turned it off without looking. Almost.
Then she glanced at the glowing screen. “Oh, crap. My boss. I’ve got to take this. We’ll finish this conversation later, Peter. I think you might need to go back to a counselor, though. I thought it would be better out here, around new kids. Plenty of nature to keep your mind off . . . things. But it’s so isolating, I can see how you’re feeling. Camp . . . I hope it’ll help.”
And with that, she clicked the phone open before it went over to voicemail, and slipped out
the door.
“What if one of your kids ran away?” I asked the empty room. “Would that be worse than one of us being sick? If we were just sick on the inside, instead of with cancer or something, then would you listen? Then would you care?”
I waited, wondering if she’d hear me and come back in.
She didn’t.
Chapter 24
Wednesday came, and with it the babysitting.
“Mom,” Laura had yelled that morning. “I need you to take me into town. Some of my friends are meeting up at the River Center Mall.”
Mom fussed a little, but I could tell she felt sorry for Laura, being fifteen and alone in the countryside.
Me, she obviously felt nothing for. “Peter, Dad has to go to an audition at one. I’ll need you to be in charge of Carlie from eleven or so until I get home.”
No matter what I said—I wasn’t old enough, I didn’t feel safe out here with no adults—none of my arguments mattered.
I’d have to leave Annie alone again. It burned in my gut, the thought of her making life-or-death—literally life-or-death—decisions with no one to talk to. No one to convince her to change her mind.
Or to at least walk next to her.
Carlie took my mind off things for a while, with her baby talk and laughter filling the empty house. I brought her to my room and let her play with my old Duplo blocks for a while, then fed her a healthy lunch of Cheerios, applesauce, and more Cheerios.
She was almost down for a nap when I heard someone rattling the doorknob. Not knocking, just rattling. Like they were trying to get in.
Annie. It had to be her, no one else would bother—we were too far out in the sticks. For a minute, I was excited. I hadn’t ever thought of inviting her to my house. Possibly, I thought, looking around at the mess and seeing the shabby paint job like it was the first time, I should have made her promise never to come out.
Too late, though. I opened the door, slinging Carlie over my hip. “Hey, Annie . . . ”
It wasn’t Annie. It was Doug and Jake. I tried to shut the door, but Doug stuck his shoulder out, and it was like the door hit a tree. “What do you guys want?” I asked. “I’m busy.” My heart started racing. This couldn’t be good.