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Marah was shaking so hard she clasped her hands together to try to still them. How was it she hadn’t known this was possible, that your whole life could tilt sideways in a split second? “You’ll be fine. Right?”
“The doctors say I’m young and healthy, so I should be fine. ”
Should be.
“I’m going to the very best doctors,” Mom said. “I’ll beat this thing. ”
Marah released her breath. “Okay, then,” she said at last, feeling that terrible tightness in her chest ease up. Her mom never lied.
But she had. She’d lied and she’d died, and without her, Marah’s life had lost its shape. In the years afterward, she’d tried to get to know a woman who’d disappeared, but all she could remember was cancerville Mom—the pale, frail, birdlike woman with no hair and no eyebrows and thin white arms.
The horrible “celebration of Mom’s life” had been unbearable. Marah had known what was expected of her that night. Everyone had told her. Dad had said tiredly, It blows, I know, but this is what she wanted; Grandma had said you can help me in the kitchen—it will be easier that way. Only Tully had been honest and real. All she’d said was, Good God, I’d rather poke my eye out than do this. Marah, can you hand me a serving fork?
October of 2006. Marah closed her eyes and remembered. It was when everything had started to go so wrong. The night of the funeral. She’d been sitting at the top of the stairs at home, staring down at a room full of people …
dressed in black. Every few minutes the doorbell rang and another woman carrying a foil-covered casserole dish came inside (because, really, nothing made you hungrier than burying someone you loved). The music was a version of death, too—jazzy stuff that made sixteen-year-old Marah think of old men with skinny ties and women with beehive hairdos.
She knew she should go down there, mingle, offer drinks and take plates, but she couldn’t stand all those pictures of her mom. Besides, when she did accidentally glance at someone—a soccer mom, a dance mom, Mrs. Baakie from the grocery store—all she got was that poor-Marah look that ripped out a piece of her heart and reminded her that this loss was Forever. It had been two days—two days—and already the vibrant, laughing woman in the photos was fading from memory. All Marah could picture in her mind was the colorless, dying version of her mother.
The doorbell rang again.
Her friends came through the front door like warriors ready to save the princess, shoulder to shoulder, their makeup smeared by tears, their eyes wide with sorrow.
Marah had never needed them more. She stood up, feeling unsteady on her feet. Ashley and Coral and Lindsey rushed up the stairs and hugged her, all of them at once. They held her so tightly her feet practically came up off the floor, and the tears she’d been holding back burst out.
“We don’t know what to say,” Coral said when Marah finally stepped back.
“Your mom was way cool,” Ashley said earnestly, and Lindsey nodded.
Marah wiped her eyes. “I wish I’d told her that. ”
“She totally, like, knows,” Ash said. “My mom says to tell you that. ”
“Remember when she brought cupcakes to Ms. Robbins’s classroom? She’d decorated them just like that book we were reading. What was it?” Lindsey frowned, trying to remember.
“Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. She put whiskers on the cupcakes,” Coral said. “It was, like, so amazing. ”
They nodded together; tears filled their eyes.
Marah remembered, too: You came into my class! OH, MY GOD. And what are you wearing?
“The Pavilion is showing a midnighter of Nightmare Before Christmas. I think we should go,” Lindsey said. “We could chill at Jason’s until it starts. ”
Marah almost said, My mom would never let me. At the thought, her eyes glazed with tears. She could feel her emotions spinning out of control. She felt as unsteady as a collapsing building. Thank God her friends were here. “Let’s go,” she said, leading them down the stairs and through the living room. As she reached for the front door, she would have sworn she heard her mother’s voice. Come back here, young lady. You four are not going to a midnight show. Nothing good happens on this island after eleven.
Marah stopped. Her friends gathered around her.
“Don’t you have to, like, tell your dad we’re going?” Lindsey asked.
Marah turned, looked back at the crowd of black-clad mourners in the living room. It looked a little like one of her parents’ Halloween parties.
“No,” she said softly. Her dad hadn’t come looking for her once tonight, and Tully cried every time she looked at her. “No one will even notice I’m gone. ”
That was a mom’s job, keeping track of her children. And Mom was gone.
* * *
The next morning, her dad decided they needed a vacation. Why her father thought sand and surf would help, Marah had no idea. She tried to talk him out of it, but she had no vote in the things that mattered. So she went on stupid vacation #1 AM (After Mom—the way life was calculated now, before and after) and didn’t even try to make the best of it.
