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I quickly gather my things and slip into the hallway, managing to answer the call just before it goes to voicemail. “Hello?” I ask, balancing the phone between my cheek and shoulder as I wrestle a book into my backpack.
“Mav,” Dad says, urgently, no preamble. “I’m at the hospital with your mom. Can you pick up Lilly from school? They dismiss in about forty-five minutes.”
“What’s wrong with Mom?”
“I’ll fill you in later. I need you to get Lilly.”
“I’m going.” I zip up my backpack, hike it over my shoulder, and head toward the front of the building. “I’m walking to my car right now.”
“Okay. When we get home—”
“Dad.” I cut him off a little harshly. I’m desperate. I have to know. “Just tell me. I won’t tell Lilly. Tell me now.”
And he does, his sentences coming out in fragments, shaky breaths interspersed throughout. An hour after I left Mom this morning—sitting at the table with her coffee, just like always—she called Dad. She was nauseous and dizzy and complained of seeing spots.
She was fine,I want to yell at him.She was fine!
But she wasn’t. She hasn’t been. And we’ve all known it.
Dad rushed home to grab her, and they went to the ER. Her last scans showed no sign of growth in her main tumor, but today, it’s a different story.
The tumor has grown. And it has spread.
“How,” I practically spit into the phone as I shove out the door. “How was there no sign of this last month?”
The weather turned this week. It’s beautiful outside, sunny and warm. Spring break starts in two days. It doesn’t match the turmoil inside of me, not at all.
“It happens with cancer sometimes,” Dad says, monotone. It’s almost like the voice he uses to discuss his work as a chemist: detached, objective. Only because I know him do I hear the undercurrent of devastation. “The tumor changes in really subtle ways that don’t become apparent until it’s too late.”
Too late. Too late.He’s saying it’s too late to save my mom. “That’s fucking bullshit,” I practically spit as I storm down the sidewalk, sidestepping strangers who look at me with wide eyes. “We ought to sue for malpractice.”
“Maverick. Please.” Dad’s voice has an edge now. “I need you to hold it together. You can’t pick up Lilly like this. Don’t let on to her that anything is wrong.”
At the thought of Lilly, my anger deflates a little. He’s right. She doesn’t need to know how fucked up everything is just yet. I wish I could shield her from it forever. “Alright, alright. I got it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll text you and let you know when to expect us home.”
I start to respond, but I’m cut off by theblipof the call ending.
Chapter Eleven
Azalea
“Youbettergogetdressed if you’re coming out,” Callie tells me, straightening her skirt as she admires herself in the full-length mirror. “I need to do something with my hair and then I’ll be ready.”
I’m sitting on her bed with a textbook in my lap. “I’m not going out, Cal,” I tell her, punctuating my statement with an intentionally loud turn of the page. Callie begging me to go out with her and me resisting is a pillar of our friendship; however, I’m starting to get irritated. This is the fourth time I’ve told her no tonight. “I want to get started on this.”
“Spring break started, like, six hours ago. You can’t do that tomorrow? Or—hear me out, I know this is a crazy idea—when school starts again?” I narrow my eyes at her. She makes a face back at me, then crosses to her vanity and picks up the curling wand she plugged in a few minutes ago. “You haven’t gone out with me since that night you got drunk on the Jell-O shots.”
“The night you ditched me?”
“Hey,” she snaps, turning to face me. “I made sure Mav was with you first.”
“I know.” I don’t actually mind how the night went; I know she wouldn’t have left me alone or with a stranger. “But I really do want to do this assignment so that I’m less stressed at the end of break, and I don’t want a hangover like I had last time.”
