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Chapter One
Rosie
I sit at the edge of the bed, folding the damp towel and laying it across Mom’s forehead. I can feel the heat of her skin burning through the towel, and for a crazy second I think it’s going to instantly dry and I’ll have to get another one.
I’ve opened the window to let in some fresh spring air to cool her down, but the vomiting always makes her burn up, sweat sliding over her cheeks and her head.
Something breaks in my chest when I look down at my mother.
A year ago, Jackie Smithson was as curvy as me, with a beautiful head of gray hair falling all the way down to her hips. She looked like a hippy in her billowing dresses and her thick silver and jeweled rings. But now her fingers are too thin for the rings and her body is too wasted away for the dresses.
“Mom, do you want anything?” I murmur.
She glances up at me, her lips tight.
“You need to eat,” I tell her.
“Not enough… money,” she sighs.
Anger flares alive inside of me, vicious and twisting and hate-filled.
“Of course we have enough money for food,” I snap, even if her words slam into me with the authenticity of truth. “Whatever you want, I’ll bring it to you, okay? Anything to help you feel better.”
“You should be at college,” she murmurs, turning her face away from me.
I stroke my hand tenderly up her shoulder. “Mom, we’ve talked about this. I’m going back when you’re better.”
She sighs heavily. I know what she wants to say. I can almost hear the words shimmering in the air, dancing and taunting me.
She wants to say, I’m not going to get better.
But the last time she said something like that, I really freaked out.
“What about some lemonade?” I say. “I’ll run down to the store real quick.”
She turns back to me, tears glistening in her eyes. Jackie Smithson is a strong woman and she doesn’t sob easily. She’s raised me on her own all my life and I’ve never seen her back down, not once, even when the world tried to tell her she was too poor and too uneducated to deserve respect.
“Yeah,” she murmurs, “that’d be nice.”
I smile down at her. Her glistening green eyes haven’t been affected by the breast cancer. They’re just as bright and charismatic as they were a year ago, flooded with so much life I almost weep just gazing at her.
“Go on,” she says, giving me a too-soft shove with her hand. “Before we both start blubbering.”
“I won’t be long,” I tell her.
“Meet a nice man while you’re out there,” she teases. “And, if he’s nice enough, don’t come back. Go somewhere bright and happy where you don’t have to think about your depressing old mother.”
I sigh again, shaking my head. My mom is sixty-two years old. She had me when she was forty.
An unexpected gift, she always calls me, and I love her for it.
But I feel like something is wrenching my gut when she calls herself old. Age is a huge determining factor with cancer, and I don’t want to think about what happens if she loses her battle.
No, no, no…
Calling it a battle isn’t fair.
If she—if the worst happens, it’s not because she didn’t fight hard enough.
“Yeah, yeah,” I laugh, turning away to hide the heartache that must streak across my features. “And maybe they’ll be a flying unicorn out there, too.”
I walk across our small two bedroom apartment, the rental we’ve been in for four years now. Mom and I have moved homes a lot over the years, owing it to the fact that Mom never seems to have enough money.
She’s a painter who never developed any real-world working skills, and so she’s been forced to work a series of odd jobs just to make ends meet.
I wanted to change that with college.
Fine, it was community college.
Fine, it wasn’t Harvard or Yale or Princeton.
But I was still eager to make a change.
Maybe I still can.
Once she gets better.
As I pull on my shoes, I smile wryly at that phrase ricocheting around my mind.
Once she gets better has become like a spell in my mind, something I scream again and again in an effort to convince myself it’s real. It’s going to happen.
“She’s going to recover,” I murmur now, heading for the door.
I ignore the table that sits next to the door, the aqua-blue paint chipped. I ignore it first because the memory makes me want to cry all over again. I remember how thrilled Mom was when we found it at Goodwill, how determined she was to paint it in elaborate patterns.
That was the day before we got the news.
But just as knife-sharp, stabbing me right to my emotional core, is the unopened pile of bills and warnings that glare at me like accusations. I know that we haven’t got long before we get evicted.
