Melissa Kantor - Maybe One Day

I was surprised that Olivia didn’t object, but when I looked at her face, she seemed tired, and I thought maybe she was relieved that everyone was leaving.

My mom came over and gave Olivia a long hug, then touched me lightly on the shoulder. “I’ll meet you outside.”

Calvin and Jake said good-bye. When Calvin was hugging Livvie, she gave me a little wink and a thumbs-up behind his back, and I actually laughed.

I got off the bed and stood over Olivia. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but she looked somehow frailer than she had when I’d first walked in, as if she’d gotten smaller over the past thirty minutes.

Not wanting her to read my thoughts, I bent down and hugged her. She squeezed me back. There was nothing frail about her hug, and the strength in her arms made me feel better.

“This is going to be okay,” I whispered into her shoulder. “You’re going to be okay.” She gave a tiny squeak, and I could tell from the way her body shook that she was crying. It was hard to believe that just a minute ago she’d given me the thumbs-up about Calvin Taylor’s hugging her.

Remembering how my getting upset earlier had made her get upset, I forced myself not to cry as I pulled away. “I’ll see you tomorrow, ’kay?”

“Thanks, Zoe,” she said. She wiped the tears off her cheeks, and no new ones fell. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Liv.”

The whole way home, my mom talked. She talked about how Mrs. Greco was going to arrange for Olivia to Skype her classes. She talked about how the doctors felt there was every reason to be optimistic. She talked about how Olivia was getting the best medical treatment there was. She told me she’d called my dad, who was on his way home. Every once in a while, she turned to me and patted me on the knee or stroked my hair.

“You okay, honey?” she asked about twenty times.

“I’m … yeah. I’m okay,” I said each time. I couldn’t find the words to describe the tight feeling that had disappeared for a little while when I was with Olivia but had come back again now that we were in the car. Months. She was going to be out of school for months. She had to go through round after round of chemotherapy. My mind danced from one detail to another, skittishly skimming the surface of the situation. I would picture Dr. Maxwell’s glasses, then the dark circles under Olivia’s eyes. I felt Olivia’s shoulders shaking as I hugged her. I lowered my window all the way, hoping the chilly night air would focus my thoughts, but it did nothing except make my face cold.

Since I’d gotten my permit, every time we got in the car I begged my mom to let me drive, but even if we hadn’t been driving in Manhattan (where out-of-state residents can’t drive until they’re eighteen), I was way too distracted to even contemplate operating a motor vehicle. I kept thinking about how on the way to school I’d been pissed because on B days after lunch I have history, then physics, and then math. And I’d thought, I hope Livvie’s in school, because if she’s not, this day is going to suck even worse than it will if she’s not in school, which is a lot.

If you’d asked me on my walk that morning to list ten things I was worried about, I would have started with a pop quiz in history, because I’d only kind of done the reading. If you’d asked me to come up with ten more things, chances are global warming might have made it onto the list. And if you’d asked me to list another ten, I might have added something about bioterrorism, because sometimes when it was late at night and I couldn’t sleep, I worried about how my parents and I would get out of New Jersey if there were a terrorist attack.

But no matter how many multiples of ten you’d added, I just don’t think I’m worried that Olivia has cancer would have made it onto one of my lists. Because there are some things you worry about. And then there are some things you don’t worry about.

You don’t worry about them because they’re too awful to contemplate worrying about.

We pulled up into the driveway. I followed my mom up the stairs to the front porch and waited while she fished for her keys. She opened the door and flipped on the light. From the kitchen came a whimper.

“Oh my God,” my mom whispered. “We forgot all about Flavia.”

She raced into the kitchen, and I followed her. Flavia was lying on the floor, his paw covering his face as if he were ashamed. A few feet away was a small puddle of pee.

It was my job to give Flavia his afternoon walk. I pictured him waiting for me to get home from school, imagined how confused he must have been when I raced into the house and then raced out again, taking my mom with me instead of him.

I went over and dropped to the floor. “I’m so sorry, Flavia,” I said, putting my arms around him. “I’m so sorry.” For a second he seemed to resist my hug, and then he gave a little sigh and rested his head on my lap as if to say, I understand. I forgive you.

“I just forgot. Livvie’s sick, and I just forgot.” Flavia blinked at me. The last time I’d walked him, I’d gone over to Olivia’s house after. She hadn’t been sick then. Except she had been. I pictured her bone marrow, full of terrifying child soldiers, the kind that were sometimes featured on the front page of the New York Times , with their dead eyes and their automatic weapons. They’d been hiding out inside her, their numbers growing for weeks. Months. Maybe years? We were driving in and out of Manhattan and dancing and planning our glamorous futures, and all that time, an enemy deep in Olivia’s DNA was plotting and waiting and getting ready to strike.

“She’s okay, Flavia,” I said. “She’s going to be okay. Really. She is. You don’t need to worry, Flavia. She’s going to be fine.” And then I wrapped my arms around his body and the tight feeling inside me burst and I cried and cried into his soft, warm fur.

I would have said that after Livvie’s diagnosis nothing could shock me, but the next morning, when I pushed open the door to Wamasset High School minutes before the first bell, still bleary-eyed from my night of tossing and turning, it turned out there was something for which I was completely unprepared.

No sooner had I entered the lobby than there was an ear-splitting scream, followed by the cry, “Oh my God , Zoe !”

It was as if I’d tripped some personalized burglar alarm. I stood, frozen, waiting to see where the voice had come from.

The lobby was wall-to-wall people, but the crowds parted as Stacy, Emma, and the Bailor twins flew toward me, hurled their bodies at mine, threw their arms around my shoulders, and—and here I am not exaggerating—began to sob.

“Zoe, it’s so awful!” Stacy dug her chin into my shoulder. Her ponytail slapped my face.

“It’s just so awful!” Emma echoed. She was clutching my arm and patting the side of my head.

Within seconds, the rest of the cheer squad had gathered around us, all of them damp-eyed, a few with tears running down their faces.

Stacy released me from the hug, then grabbed my hand. “Zoe, we just love you so much.”

The cheer squad loved me?

“It’s true,” Emma asserted, though I hadn’t spoken my doubts out loud. She dropped her head onto my shoulder. “Have you seen Jake this morning?”

“Listen,” Stacy continued, “last night we were talking about doing a fund-raiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. And I just know that I speak for everyone at Wamasset when I say that we will all participate as we work to find a cure for this deadly disease.”

“Are you … planning a speech or something?” I asked.