by Lena Fox
Julie stopped at a red light and looked at me, her brown eyes wide and worried. “You’re my best friend,” she replied. “You can tell me anything. I want to help.”
Tears rushed from me harder and faster than the rain hitting the car. All the dams had broken inside me, and the truth flooded out. “I think, I think I have cancer. Again.”
Julie put the car into park, right there at the lights. She reached over and hugged me without saying a word. I clung to her, gulping through my sobs. “I’ve been so awful to everyone. I’m lying all the time. I don’t know what to do because I can’t face it.”
I kept trying to tell myself I was being brave by doing The List, challenging myself with the items on it as though they were dares. But I wasn’t. All I was doing was hiding, running, lying. I couldn’t face what was happening, and I was being a coward. The List wasn’t enough. Nothing would be enough.
I wanted to live. I wanted more, more chocolate-eating time with Julie, more friends, more of a real relationship with Blake—more of my life.
Julie squeezed me tighter. The lights turned green, then red again as we stayed like that—me crying my heart out, her holding me. There were no cars behind us to honk us out of that embrace, and I clutched onto her like she was a life-buoy. Nothing could make this okay, but crying, being held, being honest, was a start.
“I’m not ready. I don’t want to die.” The words were wracked by sobs. “I don’t want to!”
The universe didn’t care what I wanted.
Neither did the car that smashed into us.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Georgina
I saw the pick-up truck coming over Julie’s shoulder in the split second before it hit. It spun out over the wet road, coming too fast around the corner. I opened my mouth to scream, and then everything was wrenched apart. Glass sprayed through the air. Tires squealed. Metal crunched and groaned. Air-bags burst and slapped against us. I was thrown out of Julie’s embrace as she jolted back and forth. The side of the car sheared away. My head hit the doorframe behind me.
Pain. Crushing sounds.
Darkness.
I woke up to the flash of lights. Red, blue, and the bright white of a paramedic flashing a torch in my face. She nodded at my blinking eyes, talking with other people surrounding us. People moved everywhere, but everything was jarred and blurry to me. Time skipped as memory and the present jumbled into each other. I was in the car seat as they cut the seatbelt off me, then I was on a stretcher. A man—the pick-up driver?—sat in the gutter, crying. I was in the car again, glass flying, suspended in slow motion, then I was being asked questions I could barely hear.
The only thing I could clearly see was Julie. Three paramedics surrounded her. There was blood. Her body looked wrong.
I was loaded into the ambulance, screaming out for Julie as they closed the doors.
I didn’t know if I blacked out again, or if I was sedated. I woke in a hospital bed. I was stiff and sore, but alive.
My dad sat in the chair beside me. He stood and came straight to my side at the first sign of movement. The look on his face said everything.
My response was instant and primal. My face scrunched in on itself. Every part of the invisible armor I’d built had fractured in the crash, and now it shattered like the glass in the car.
“She didn’t make it,” I sobbed.
“I’m so sorry, honey.” He wrapped his arms gently around me, careful of my battered body. I wept into his shirt.
Every one of us dies. Was that what Blake had said? But not Julie. She wasn’t meant to die. How could she be dead? She was the girl who had one days, with a carefully planned future and the drive and intelligence to get there. She was the one without cancer. The one without a ticking clock hanging over her. Who thought eating chocolate for breakfast was the naughtiest thing in the world. She was my friend.
And now, Julie was gone, just like that.
Her family—I couldn’t imagine how they felt right now. Worse than I felt. How I imagined my dad would feel when he lost me.
Was that what life was? A series of painful losses? There was too much. I’d lost my mom. Blake lost his wife. Julie is gone. Dad lost Mom as well, and would lose me.
He almost just lost me.
I pulled away from his embrace so I could look at him. So I could look him in the eye and tell him the truth I had hidden for too long.
I could see how relieved he looked that I was still here with him. And now I was going to break his heart.
“Daddy, I found another lump.” I barely got the words out. They rattled through my gasping breaths. I ached all over as I reached my arms to him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
“A lump?” He froze in place, lifeless for a moment before he took my hands. Only the white circles around his eyes, put there by shock, gave away just what he was thinking and feeling. “I’m here for you. You are my little girl. We’ll get through this together. I would do anything for you.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you. I don’t think I can do it again. I don’t think I’m strong enough to go through treatment a second time.”
Dad swallowed hard. “Georgie, treatment is your best option.”
“It wasn’t for Mom.”
“Things were very different then. There was nothing like the medicines they have now.”
My lips trembled. “Daddy—you don’t know what it’s like.”
“Is it better than the alternative?” Dad’s bushy brows dropped over his eyes and he shook his head. “How long have you known?”
“I don’t know anything for sure yet—”
“Since you started missing classes? Why did you wait so long to tell me?”
I flinched. Dad was rarely angry at me, but I could tell he was now by the strain in his forehead, pushing veins to the surface. I stuttered. I didn’t want to keep lying to him, but I didn’t want him to know how I had ignored the problem so completely. So I lied again. “I’m still waiting for the results. I wanted to get them back first, in case it was nothing.”
“Even nothing isn’t nothing!” Dad growled, but then he snatched me so quickly into a bear hug I lost my breath. “You think waiting on results to see if you have cancer is nothing? I’m your father, Georgie. It’s my job to be there for you when things are hard. I’m meant to protect you, not the other way around.”
His beard scratched against my cheek, his arms squeezed me into his soft stomach, and I could feel my chest shaking with grief and guilt. I was like a five-year-old, sobbing into my daddy’s chest because my mommy was never coming home again.
When I had stilled enough to accept some tissues to blow my nose, Dad stepped back. “Listen to me, Georgie. The only reason there are no photos of your mother during her last days up around the house was for you. I thought it would be better for you, for how you remembered her. But I think that was a mistake.” Dad opened his wallet and pulled out a folded photo. It showed Mom in a hospital bed. Bald, and frail, with a tiny me cuddled up next to her. We were both smiling. “For me, she was always the woman I loved, right up to the end.”
He carefully folded the photo and tenderly put it away, as though it were the most precious thing in the world. “That saying about making lemonade if life gives you lemons is bullshit. The lemons themselves are valuable, beautiful. Life is everything we have, and the bad is just as valuable as the good. It’s harder. It’s painful. But it’s ours. It’s proof we’re still here, that we can feel things, which is a miracle in this infinite and unfeeling universe. We should do whatever we can to hold onto that for as long as possible. I will always love you, understand? Always.”
I nodded.
“When will we know?” Dad asked.
“In a few days,” I answered. “You will be the first person I call.”
He nodded back. “I talked to the doctors about your injuries from the accident.”
The accident. Julie. My face scrunched closed around burning tears. The smash
seemed like it was a million miles away, separated from me by fear and disease. The pounding head and dull ache through my whole body could have been as much from emotional exhaustion as from the crash. I felt awful that that was all I’d suffered, when Julie had been irreparably broken. That wasn’t fair. I should have been the one to die. I would have swapped our places in a heartbeat. I didn’t want to die, I wasn’t ready, but I knew what was fair, and this wasn’t it.
Dad put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re under observation for a concussion, and have some cuts and bruises. They think you’ll be able to walk out of here in a day or two, which is a miracle as well. I’m so sorry about Julie, but I have to be happy I still have my girl. Do you need anything right now? Any painkillers? Do you want to see the counselor? Is there anyone you want me to call?”
“No.” Blake. “I’m okay.” I am ripped open right down the middle. “How about you? You want Louisa with you? She can be here for you if you want.” I want Julie with me again.
Dad made a quick range of facial expressions that ended with a shrug and shake of the head. “I don’t think I’ll be seeing her again. I don’t think she was right for us.”
For us. Louisa may have been a bit pushy, but Dad had seemed genuinely happy around her. Then I’d reacted badly to her, and suddenly, she was no longer in the picture. I had blown Dad’s chance at happiness yet again.
He was barely forty. He had married my mom at twenty, and I had followed less than a year later. He was still young enough to start a whole new family, and that comforted me.
I was smart enough not to say that to him right then. Still, I hoped he might work things out with Louisa, or find someone else soon. He could continue living every moment, good and bad, for as long as he had. And maybe I should, too.
A doctor came in then to check me over, and Dad went to make some phone calls and talk to Julie’s family. Once I was alone again, I lay back in the bed and made plans. Plans for the future. For whatever I had left.
Tomorrow, I had three things to do on an all new list.
Get a morning-after pill.
Apologize to Blake and end things finally.
And get tested for cancer.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Georgina
Dad had almost closed his restaurant for the day to stay with me, but I’d sent him off to work. That suited all my plans, so I could cover my lies and mistakes.
I had the incredible luck that the pharmacist at the hospital was the same woman who had filled my scripts when I was getting treated five years ago. She was the sweetest woman who used to kneel down next to my lounge-chair while I was on my chemo drip and carefully talk me and Dad through the mountains of pills she was handing over.
I had walked down in my hospital gown, and explained to her why I was in—both the accident, and the tests that were booked for later that afternoon. I knew she’d seen the tears welling in my eyes when I told her about both, and it was also incredible luck that I didn’t break down again completely.
The loss of Julie still hit me harder than the impact of the pick-up truck had. I didn’t have the capacity to deal, to understand it all. I kept thinking she was waiting for me back at home. That she was in class, or at work—just out of sight. I couldn’t seem to comprehend that she was gone. And every time I tried to understand it, pain melted all rational thought into tears.
The pharmacist filled my request for the morning-after pill without a single question, and even offered me a prescription for the anti-anxiety tablets I used to get, which I accepted with gratitude. I had a feeling I was going to need them.
That was the first thing on my new list done. It was time for the next.
I knew I should just suck it up and deal with Blake in person, but I couldn’t stop thinking about his face and the look on it when we fought outside the police station. And now I would have to be harsh with him—too harsh. I had to make sure it was over. How I felt right now, having lost Julie—I couldn’t make Blake feel that way. I had to become just out of sight for him. I couldn’t be gone.
I called him, and he answered right away.
He started to apologize for the fight, but I spoke over him.
“I wanted to let you know I went and got tested. I got my results, and I’m all clear,” I told him. “I’m fine. The lump is benign.”
I hated continuing to lie to Blake, but I needed to leave so he felt no further responsibility for me.
“Wait, what? When?” Blake said.
“I got in quick, and they pushed my results through fast because of my medical history.”
“That’s amazing news.” The hope in his voice almost broke my will.
“There’s something else we need to talk about …”
That was when I hit him hard. I had rehearsed my speech so many times, I ran through the whole thing in a minute, not giving him a second to interrupt. I told him I had used him, that he was nothing to me but a body. That I was messed up and not thinking straight. That all I cared about was finishing The List, not him. I apologized for all of that, and it was some of the truest words I’d spoken for a long time.
Then, I twisted the knife. “Now I know I’m okay, I have to move on. The List, and us, are over, and I never want to see you again. Seeing you is nothing but a reminder of the darkest time in my life.”
“Georgie,” His voice was pleading. “Wait, Georg—”
I hung up on him. Then blocked his number.
I knew I had hurt him, but it had hurt me as well. Saying those things sent pain so deep into my chest that it felt like I had eaten glass and the pieces were grinding together in there, cutting me and making me bleed.
I wanted to take it back, but I couldn’t. I had lied. I didn’t want Blake out of my life—I wanted me out of his. I was the cancer in his life in more ways than one.
I remembered how fun and happy he’d been when we’d first met. So full of life. I had leached that from him. I had brought him so much pain, and would only bring more. I had used him terribly, and the chances of me living that down were slim. Even if I did live, there would be other reasons I wasn’t right for Blake. I might never have kids—I would run the risk of passing down my broken genes to them, and I couldn’t stand that idea. I might have a double mastectomy and even if I had reconstructive surgery, I would never have the same body as I did before, never be able to breastfeed my babies, never be whole again.
I wanted to look at all these lemons with appreciation, see their value and beauty, but I wasn’t quite there yet. Maybe I wasn’t whole already, and hadn’t been for a long time. I wondered if I ever would be whole, or if I’d die before I got there.
I changed into some leggings and a dress-length T-shirt Dad had brought in for me from home. Then I left my wing of the hospital and made the trek down to the breast cancer center to do the third thing on my list.
The waiting room was full of huge, fake sunflowers, but their happy yellow faces couldn’t warm the chill that settled into my bones.
“Georgina Stone,” I told the receptionist. Stone. That was what I could become. I might not be whole, my invisible armor might be shattered, but I could become stone. Hard and unbreakable.
The receptionist checked her computer and nodded. “Change rooms are just down the hall. Grab a gown and put it on with the opening to the front. Someone will call you in about five minutes.”
I moved on. I knew the drill.
Once I’d changed, I sat in the more private interior waiting room, filled with women in their gowns, front openings out, readjusting the ties to make sure we were covered despite knowing those gowns would be right off again in no time. Sometimes, I didn’t know why they even bothered making us put them on.
Most of the women were over fifty, at least. Some were hiding their bald heads under hats and wigs. They all turned to me as I walked in. I was used to the ‘what are you doing here?’ looks by now though.
I wasn’t used to finding someone else my age in the room, or two people.
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The only seat left was to the side of two pretty, dark-skinned girls. One wore a robe, and the other didn’t, but other than that, they were identical. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
I didn’t want to stare, but it was like looking back into my own past. I could see the nervous fear all over the one wearing the gown. This was clearly her first time. She was so incredibly scared it made me realize just how calm I was. I was becoming stone already.
They caught me in the act of gawking.
“We’re identical twins,” said the nervous one.
“Yeah, I think she noticed already,” said the other. “Hey, you’re in my print layout class, aren’t you?”
So that’s where I knew her from. I felt bad I didn’t know her name. “I’m Georgina. I’ve missed a bunch of classes lately.”
“Yeah, I noticed. I’m Priya,” she said. “And this is Kaley.”
Kaley just jittered her legs some more. “Have you missed class because … because …”
“What my terrified sister is trying to ask is if you’ve missed class because you have cancer,” Priya said. “Which I think really isn’t our business, but I felt like I had to help her out finishing her sentence, since I’m here to support her today.”
I could feel the weight of both of their gazes taking in the empty space beside me. “I’m just getting tested.”
Kaley’s dark eyes lit up, glossy with tears. “You’re not scared? I am so freaking out right now. I’ve been freaking out since I found the lump. Do you have a lump, too? My GP said it will probably be fine, but still, AAAALL the freaking out is happening. But we’re too young for it to be cancer, right?”
“Sure,” I said. What a lie.
Priya elbowed Kaley softly. “Chill out. You'd think we haven't faced scarier things than cancer before.”
“Like what?” I asked, too fast. I knew lots of things could be scarier than cancer. Like knowing someone you loved could be taken from you any second.
