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On the other hand . . .
“What about Jill?”
“She’ll be fine,” said Mom, though her tone was less than convincing.
“Mom . . . ?”
Mom was a thin, pretty woman whose black hair had started going gray around the time of the first diagnosis. Now it was more gray than black, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Jill looked a little like Mom and would probably grow up to look a lot like her. Jack looked like her too, right down to the dark circles under the eyes that looked out at him every morning from the bathroom mirror.
“Mom,” Jack said tentatively, “Jill is going to be all right, isn’t she?”
“She’s in school. If it gets bad, they’ll bus the kids home.”
“Shouldn’t someone go get her?”
Mom looked at the open bedroom door. “Your dad and Uncle Roger are in town, buying the pipes for the new irrigation system. They’ll see how bad it is, and if they have to, they’ll get her.” She smiled, and Jack thought that it was every bit as false as the smile he’d given her a minute ago. “Jill will be fine. Don’t stress yourself out about it. You know it’s not good for you.”
“Okay,” he said, resisting the urge to shake his head. He loved his mom, but she really didn’t understand him at all.
“You should get some rest,” she said. “After you finish your muffin, why not take a little nap?”
Jeez-us, he thought. She was always saying stuff like that. Take a nap, get some rest. I’m going to be dead for a long time. Let me be awake as much as I can for now.
“Sure,” he said. “Maybe in a bit.”
Mom smiled brightly, as if they had sealed a deal. She kissed him on the head and went out of his room, closing the door three-quarters of the way. She never closed it all the way, so Jack got up and did that for himself.
Jack nibbled another micro-bite of the muffin, sighed, and set it down. He broke it up on the plate so it looked like he’d really savaged it. Then he drank the vitamin water, set the glass down, and stretched out on his stomach to watch the news.
Rain drummed on the roof like nervous fingertips, and the wind was whistling through the trees. The storm was coming for sure. No way it was going to veer.
Jack lay there in the blue glow of the TV and the brown shadows of his thoughts. He’d been dying for so long that he could barely remember what living felt like. Only Jill’s smile sometimes brought those memories back. Running together down the long lanes of cultivated crops. Waging war with broken ears of corn, and trying to juggle fist-size pumpkins. Jill was never any good at juggling, and she laughed so hard when Jack managed to get three pumpkins going that he started laughing too and dropped the gourds right on his head.
He sighed, and it almost hitched into a sob.
He wanted to laugh again. Not careful laughs, like now, but real gut-busters like he used to. He wanted to run. God, how he wanted to run. That was something he hadn’t been able to do for over a year now. Not since the last surgery. And never again. Best he could manage was a hobbling half run like Gran used to when the Millers’ dog got into her herb garden.
Jack closed his eyes and thought about the storm. About a flood.
He really wanted Jill to come home. He loved his sister, and maybe today he’d open up and tell her what really went on in his head. Would she like that? Would she want to know?
Those were tricky questions, and he didn’t have answers to them.
Nor did he have an answer to why he wanted Jill home and wanted the flood at the same time. That was stupid. That was selfish.
“I’m dying,” he whispered to the shadows.
Dying people were supposed to get what they wanted, weren’t they? Trips to Disney, a letter from a celebrity. All that Make-A-Wish stuff. He wanted to see his sister and then let the storm take him away. Without hurting her, of course. Or Mom, or Dad, or Uncle Roger.
He sighed again.
Wishes were stupid. They never came true.
4
Jack was drowsing when he heard his mother cry out.
A single, strident “No!”
