AllFreeNovel
Share Us
1
HEIDI
Taking several steadying breaths, I try to stitch together the splitting seams of my emotions as I wait for Zoe to answer her door. She flings it open a second later, her tornado of energy bursting through the air as she greets me with a brilliant smile, her pixie cut a wild halo of wispy edges around her head.
“Heidi! You ready to get wild for our girls’ night?”
Short, with dark hair, angular features, and beautiful olive-toned skin, Zoe’s the polar opposite of me in both looks and energy, but we’ve been inseparable ever since my mom and I moved to California before my first year of high school. And she can read me better than anyone.
Her excitement dies now as she sees the expression on my face. “What’s wrong?”
Gripping my wrist, Zoe hauls me through the door and into the five-bedroom San Francisco apartment she shares with four of the girls she works with. I follow her mutely, terrified to say the words out loud because then they might feel true.
“Are the other girls asleep?” I ask, not wanting to fall apart in the middle of Zoe’s kitchen if they might come waltzing in.
My best friend plunks me down at the dining table and sits across from me. Dark eye makeup completing her rebellious punk-rock look, the smokey cat-eye accentuates her light hazel eyes. Currently, they assess me with an intense level of concern. “Amber is. The other three went in to work early. I guess things are picking up at the club, so Howie’s offering overtime.”
I nod numbly, scarcely able to comprehend her answer when all I can think about is my mom.
“Seriously, Heidi, you’re freaking me out. What’s wrong?”
Swallowing hard, I take a moment to steel myself. “Mom got her lab results back.”
Zoe’s perfectly shaped brows press into a deep frown. “And?” she asks softly.
I shake my head, my eyes dropping to my hands, which lie folded in my lap. “It’s a Glioblastoma M-something-or-other—a brain tumor—which I guess is very aggressive and hard to beat.” A single tear trickles down my cheek, and I sniffle as the emotions start to leak out despite my best efforts to contain them.
“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. But... they can treat it, right?”
I shrug, wiping my cheeks before covering my eyes with my hands. “She starts chemo Monday. Not that the doctor sounds confident at all that it will help.”
Zoe falls silent, and that makes it so much worse because my outspoken friend is never short on words—or opinions. Dropping my hands, I meet her eyes through my tear-blurred vision. And I can see my deep sense of fear and loss reflected on her face.
“What can I do?” she asks, reaching across the table to grasp my hand.
I shake my head. “I don’t know that there’s anythingtodo.”
A sob rips from me, and in an instant, I’m falling apart completely, unable to hold it together any longer. At least I made it out of the house so my mom didn’t have to see this. She has enough to worry about without watching my meltdown.
Zoe comes around the table and pulls me up into a tight hug, letting me cry it out. And despite my best efforts to get it back together, I can’t seem to stop the tears from falling. I don’t want to lose my mom. She’s all the family I have in the world, and I don’t know what I would do without her.
It feels like all the stress and anxiety I’ve been shouldering since her appointment this afternoon has finally hit me full force, and I can barely breathe. But as Zoe keeps her arms circled snugly around my waist, the emotion slowly drains from me.
After several agonizing minutes, I find the strength to collect the jagged pieces of my heart and put them back together. Breathing raggedly, I straighten and dry my tears as I release Zoe from my death grip.
She gives me a sad smile, dropping her arms. “How’s your mom taking it?”
“Better than I am, I think. She just says she’s tired when I ask her. Though I know she’s in pain. But the only thing she’s complained about so far is that I’m quitting school.” I give a disbelieving chuckle, thinking about how obstinately Mom objected when I told her my decision.
Leave it to my mom to be worried about my education when her health is on the line.
“You are?” Zoe asks, her eyebrows arching.
“Well, yeah. I could barely afford it, even though I’m working at the store full-time. And of course Mom can’t afford health insurance, so how else are we going to pay for her treatment? She can barely maintain the hours she’s got, her headaches are so debilitating. I need to get a second job.”
“But you’re so close to graduating,” Zoe objects as she heads toward the white-painted kitchen cabinets.
“Yeah, well, I can finish my last two semesters once Mom’s cancer is in remission. I’m not about to tell my mom she can wait to get treatment until after I finish my degree.”
