by Barbara Dee
LUCKY ME
Mom and Dad pounced on me the second I stepped out of school.
“So how was it?” Mom asked.
“Okay,” I said. “Long.”
“But good?”
“I guess.”
“Norah, are you going to share any details?” Dad was smiling, but his eyes weren’t.
I shrugged. “I like my English teacher, I think. She said we’re doing Greek and Roman myths, so that’s cool. Also, I got put into eighth grade math and science, but Ms. Castro said she told you that already.”
Mom and Dad exchanged glances.
“No, that’s not exactly accurate,” Mom said. “We discussed advancing as a possibility. But we never officially agreed.”
“Although we did agree it would be your choice,” Dad told me.
“Once we had a chance to talk it over.” Mom turned to me, her eyes looking worried through her glasses. “Well, baby, what do you think? Do you want to skip ahead? Because we’re ready to call the principal if that seems like too much.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not,” I said quickly, remembering the last time my parents phoned Mr. Selway. Some hospital people wanted to come to school to explain stuff to the other kids: why I wouldn’t be at school for two whole years, what I was doing at Phipps all day, how to visit me, why I had no hair. But Mr. Selway told Mom and Dad he wouldn’t allow the hospital people to come, because all that information about me “might upset the students.”
“Yes, cancer is ‘upsetting’ for Norah, too!” Mom had yelled into her cell.
I remember hearing Dad beg Mom to “please calm down for Norah’s sake.” (“Calm down?” Mom had shouted at him. “Don’t tell me to calm down! My daughter has cancer!” “So does mine,” Dad had answered. And then there was a lot of fierce whispering, just like there used to be before they got divorced.)
I mean, I was mad that the hospital people weren’t allowed to come to my school. But it was weird how Mom had thrown a tantrum about it. And I remember thinking: If anyone should be throwing a tantrum, it should be ME.
Now we got into the car, which Dad had parked across the street.
“Well, aside from the class switches, how else was the day?” Mom was asking me. “Did people bombard you with questions?”
“Not really. I think they were afraid to, truthfully.”
“Did anyone say anything really dumb?” Dad asked.
“Well, one kid said he’d heard that broccoli cured cancer. And in music, this girl asked if I knew her aunt, who had leukemia too. Because, you know, all leukemia patients know each other.”
Dad laughed. “Yeah, well, you know, old Lou throws a great party. Big guest list.”
I laughed too. This was our running joke: Lou Kemia, a cigar-smoking crime boss, was the chief villain of my story. Although sometimes the villain was Luke Emia, a sci-fi warlord with a battalion of white blood cell storm troopers. Or Low-Key Mia, who sapped your energy and kept it in a jar in her evil lab. Or Lucky Me, who used chemo warfare. Dad and I kept changing the villains, depending on what was going on with my treatment.
Mom didn’t share our dumb sense of humor, but she chuckled anyway. I knew she was trying her best to do a lot of things for my sake—laugh at our jokes, not argue with Dad, not second-guess the doctors and nurses. She’d even taken a leave from teaching biology at a college out in California, and was staying with her friend Lisa, sleeping on a foldout sofa in Lisa’s basement. And here she was in Dad’s car, sitting where his girlfriend, Nicole, usually sat, probably noticing Nicole’s gum wrappers in the cup holder.
As for Dad, he’d also given up a lot for me these past two years. He was a sports journalist, so he could keep writing articles even when I was in the hospital, but he couldn’t travel to away games, obviously. Also, I knew that after he and Mom broke up, he was sad for a long time. But he’d finally starting feeling better again, and things were good with Nicole. So it had to be hard for him to have Mom around again every day, even if they were careful never to fight in front of me.
Mom also had this thing about unbunching towels so they wouldn’t mildew, covering toothbrushes so they wouldn’t collect bacteria, and rotating things in the fridge so they wouldn’t spoil. I guess she always was a bio-nerd, so probably Dad was used to this; but I was positive that ever since I’d gotten sick, she was way more germ-conscious. And I knew she was doing all this towel unbunching and toothbrush covering out of fear, and wanting to protect me—but the thing was, it wasn’t her house anymore.
Now it was where I lived with Dad, just outside New York City, about an hour from Phipps-Davison Hospital. When my parents split up three years ago, the plan was for me to switch back and forth between them, spending half the time out in California with Mom, the other half back in Greenwood with Dad. (Yes, I know it sounds crazy. But I was only nine at the time, and totally freaked about the divorce, so I begged them to divide my time like that.) And the sickest part: I spent that whole year wishing for only one thing—that my parents would get back together again. So in a crazy way, I felt like I caused my cancer. Not really. But sort of. A little.
Phipps-Davison is a famous cancer hospital, so Mom never questioned why I was being treated in New York, even though it meant her moving back here for now, sometimes eating meals with us in Dad’s kitchen. She was always a very picky eater, and now she was constantly sniffing around the pantry closet, poking at Nicole’s spice rack, making almost-snarky comments about how Nicole was a “New York foodie,” whatever that meant.
As for Nicole, she tried to keep out of Mom’s way, which meant she had to keep away from Dad. Dad never mentioned this, but I could tell her absence made him unhappy. Except what could he do? Whether anyone liked it or not, Mom, Dad, and I were a threesome again, a unit, an unsplit atom of a family.
At least until Lou Kemia kicked us out of his party. And even though I was back at school, back to normal, back to having a life, who knew when that would be?
ALL BETTER NOW
High on the list of Weird Things About the First Day Back: never actually connecting with my old friend Silas. In every class we had together, he made it clear that he wanted to sit with Kylie, not with Harper and me, and at lunch, he sat with Kylie and Aria. Well, not with them—more like with a bunch of kids that included them. Although as far as I could tell, Kylie didn’t even notice he was at the table.
Why was he doing this? In my opinion, he was wasting his time trying to get the attention of someone who definitely wasn’t interested in him. Even worse, he was ignoring me.
So the next morning, as I ate my scrambled eggs while Dad pretended not to watch me, I decided to talk to Silas before homeroom. I wasn’t mad at him, I kept telling myself. And I wasn’t hurt, either. I was just confused. Because: Hello? Remember me? I mean, of course he did.
I asked Dad to drive me to school early, and he did, without asking too many questions. But what happened was, I was walking upstairs to Silas’s homeroom when I nearly smacked into Ms. Castro.
“Norah Levy!” she shouted. “How did it go yesterday?”
“Oh, just fine, thanks,” I said quickly.
“Wonderful! Math and science classes too?”
“Yep.” Stupidly, I was blushing again. This was because Griffin had sat with me in science, too, meaning we were not just tablemates, we were also lab partners.
Ms. Castro probably assumed I was red-faced from stair climbing. “Don’t forget, I have that elevator key if you change your mind,” she said.
“Thanks. But no, walking is good exercise.” As I said this, I remembered the big-toothed, athletic kids in her desk photos; walking up a school staircase was hardly exercise to the Castro family.
She smiled at me. “Well, remember what I told you: Don’t push yourself. And we’ll have a chat later in the week, okay?”
“Sure.” I exhaled, relieved to be done with her.
But she took a step down, paused, and turned to face me again. “Oh, so I hear you’ve m
et the new student, Griffin Kirkley!”
“You have? I mean, yes, I have.”
“Nice boy. Told you that you’d make a new friend, right?”
I nodded, avoiding her eyes. How did she know I’d been chatting with Griffin? Were there cameras in the classroom? Maybe the teachers were reporting all my actions to Guidance. Day One of Cancer Girl’s Return: She sharpened her pencil!
By the time I got to Silas’s homeroom, he was already inside. I said hi to Malik, who was in the hall, putting up posters. On one of them, he’d drawn a bunch of crazy angles and written, in big green letters: DON’T BE OBLIQUE, VOTE FOR MALIK. Another one had a picture of a giant wave and said MAKE A SPLASH, VOTE FOR MALIK THRASH. He sure was working hard on these posters, I thought, wondering if anyone besides me even noticed his artwork.
Then I waved through the glass of the homeroom door, hoping somebody would see me mouthing the word SILAS. Finally, Addison Ventura waved back and yelled something in Silas’s ear. I gave her a thumbs-up, and she made the heart sign on her chest, which had to be a cancer reference, because why else would Addison heart me? The last conversation we’d had was probably in third grade. Fourth grade at the absolute latest.
“Hey,” Silas said as he finally stepped into the hall. “Everything okay?”
I nodded. “Definitely. I just wanted to say hi. Because I hardly saw you yesterday!”
“Sorry. First day back is always crazy, so.” He did a little laugh-cough.
“Yeah, I guess. You want to eat lunch together later?”
He scratched his nose. “Oh. Sure.”
“Great,” I said.
We both stood there, not saying anything. Malik finished taping up his posters and walked off.
Then Silas blurted: “So, Norah—you’re all better now, and everything?”
I never knew how to answer this. Because the question really was: SO, ARE YOU GOING TO DIE? And usually I wanted to answer: YES, I AM. EVENTUALLY. AND SO ARE YOU, IDIOT.
But Silas was my friend, so I didn’t want to be snarky. “Well, I’m done with chemo,” I answered, “but I still have checkups at the hospital once a month, and they’re constantly checking my platelets—”
“Platelets?”
“It’s part of your blood. It helps with clotting.”
“Oh.”
“But I’m okay,” I added quickly. “They wouldn’t let me come back to school if I wasn’t.”
“Awesome. Well, anyway, I really need to get back. . . .” He waved his arm in the direction of homeroom, like they were solving climate change in there, or something.
“Okay. See you later, Silas. At lunch.”
“Yeah, bye,” he said, already turning away.
FRIENDSHIP BRACELET
Back when the doctors agreed that I could return to school, they made me talk with the pediatric social worker, a woman named Raina Novak who had a nose stud and a slight accent that she told me was Serbian. I liked her because she was a marathon runner, and showed up at the hospital in neon-colored spandex, like she was just about to go out for a run.
Also, she was always handing out stuff—gummy bears, stickers, jigsaw puzzles—to all the kids on the Pediatrics floor. I guess these were sort of “cancer gifts,” but I didn’t mind. Once, she even gave me an extremely cool set of markers. “From the Crafts department,” she said, putting her finger over her lips, which I interpreted as: I took them for YOU, Norah, but don’t tell any of the other patients. This is our little secret, okay? I wondered if Raina had “little secrets” with other patients, but even if she did, I always liked her: She seemed like one of the few hospital people you could imagine outside the hospital, listening to music in her earbuds while she went running in Central Park.
At first, when the doctors said I needed to talk to Raina, I was afraid that she’d just repeat what they said, tell me to wait another month to “regain my strength.” But she didn’t.
“Yes, you need to go back to school, Norah,” she declared. “It’s time.”
Which was what I’d been hoping she would say. And yet as soon as she said this, my stomach twisted. “Are you sure? Because the doctors told us—”
“You don’t want to go?” She searched my face.
“No, I do! It’s just the doctors said an extra month of rest—”
“Right,” she said crisply. “Rest is good. But it’s more important to start school on day one, with all the other kids.”
“Okay, great.” It’s what my parents had been arguing, so I was used to hearing it. And really, it did make sense to me, even if it also made my insides weird.
“Although I have to be honest,” Raina continued, “It won’t be easy.”
“Oh, but school is easy for me! I’m a good student. And compared to cancer . . .” I didn’t even bother to finish that sentence. I just shrugged.
Raina smiled. “What I mean is that what we call ‘re-entry’—returning to the healthy world—can be tricky. Some kids find they’re a little behind academically. But in your case, Norah, I think the challenge may be more social.”
“What do you mean?”
She offered me a small bag of fancy jelly beans, which I took. “You’ve been out of school for how long?”
“Twenty-two months.”
She tore off the end of her own bag of jelly beans and popped one in her mouth. “Almost two years. That’s a very long time when it comes to friendships.”
“But my friends are amazing! You’ve met Harper, right? She’s the one who gave me this.”
I held out my wrist to show her my purple friendship bracelet. A present from Harper the day I first went into the hospital.
Raina admired my bracelet. “Yes, so pretty. And Harper seems like a lovely girl. Although I haven’t noticed other friends here lately.” She checked my face.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, my friend Nessa used to visit a lot, but she moved to Texas last spring. And some other kids came at the beginning, but . . .” I ripped open my jelly beans and ate one. Buttered popcorn. Yum.
“That’s what happens,” Raina said, chewing. “When kids get sick, friends pay lots of attention at first. They’re curious, they’re scared—and a kid with cancer is big news. But sometimes, after a while, the news gets old and the visits stop. That’s why it’s wonderful to have a friend like Harper.”
“Oh, but also Silas! He’s a good friend too. My oldest friend.”
“Silas? I don’t think I’ve ever met him.” Raina frowned thoughtfully.
“Well, we used to ride bikes together and make up stories about evil elves. Back when we were little, I mean. And now he texts me and stuff.”
“Texting is nice.” She nodded. “How come he doesn’t visit?”
“I don’t know. Hospitals make him nervous, maybe.”
“But you’re the sick one. What does he have to be nervous about?”
I chewed a few jelly beans at once so that I wouldn’t have to answer. But I got a funny fruit/licorice combination. Why was Raina saying all this? Was she trying to make me feel bad?
She seemed to realize that she’d hurt my feelings, so she patted my hand again. “Norah,” she said, “I just want you to go back to school with realistic expectations. Don’t expect your friendships to be just like they were two years ago. You’ve been through something very big here, yes, but your friends have been through their own situations, which are big to them. And you haven’t been a part of that world.”
“But Harper tells me everything! It’s not like I don’t know what’s going on with people!”
“Yes, but it’s not the same as being in that world. Also . . .” She took a slow breath. “Some of your friends and classmates may be a bit freaked-out by certain aspects.”
“Like what?” Although as soon as I asked this, I knew the answer. By my head, which at that point was still bald. By my face, which still lacked eyebrows, making me look like an emoji. And by my skin, which was sort of grayish, the color of a white sock when it gets washed wit
h a bunch of dark clothes. Probably also by my tiny, skinny body, which looked like the body of a malnourished eight-year-old: no boobs, no shape. The fault of the chemo drugs, Dr. Yorke had explained, promising that I’d “catch up eventually.”
Raina nodded, as if she realized I’d answered my own question. “Some kids may want to ask a lot of questions, and you’re going to have to decide beforehand how you want to deal. It’s fine to say something like ‘I’d rather not talk about it’ or ‘It’s personal.’ What I always tell kids: Just because someone asks a question doesn’t mean you owe them an answer. And you don’t need to entertain anybody with your cancer story. Even grown-ups.” She paused. “Although not sharing can be tricky too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that you need to balance things. You could refuse to discuss the topic; I mean, it would be completely understandable. But maybe you want to consider how people would feel about that.”
I stared at the carpet pattern, which I’d always thought looked like some kind of alien terrarium: cacti from outer space. The way other people felt about my sickness: Why was that my problem? I didn’t get why we were even discussing it.
But Raina wasn’t finished. “All I’m saying, Norah, is that when the time seems right, maybe you could explain things to people in your own way. Your decision, your words. Just throwing it out there.” She shook out the last few jelly beans and popped them into her mouth. “Although my guess is you won’t get too many questions. Cancer scares the bejeezus out of people.”