by Chad Morris
My mom scrolled more, and there was a picture of Sailor with a mustache drawn on the side of her index finger. She held that finger below her nose.
And then Devin. In one picture, he was wearing the mustache I’d given him. But in the next picture, he wore a big bushy black mustache he’d made out of paper. And he was winking.
I liked his winking.
And my mom scrolled some more.
There were pictures of like twenty kids from school, all wearing mustaches.
And then Mrs. Baer. She looked the silliest. I think a real smile crossed my face.
They believed me. They’d sent me messages. They were trying to make me smile.
My mom kept scrolling. There were Devin’s parents and Yasmin’s parents. The janitor. Mr. Reeve, my teacher from last year. The lunch ladies. Even the principal. And they were all wearing mustaches—for me.
And they all looked hilarious. Seriously, imagine your principal with a blue mustache.
“And,” my mom said while clicking to a different screen, “we thought it was a good idea.” There was a picture of my dad holding his phone up to his face. He had drawn a mustache on the screen. My mom had one she had cut out from some paper at the hospital. They must have done them while I was trying to relax. They looked pretty hilarious.
And then there were my grandma and grandpa. Both sets. All wearing mustaches. Yep. Grandparents with fake mustaches.
My aunts and uncles and cousins. Even some neighbors.
Then there were some of my nurses. My mom or dad must have told them about it while I wasn’t paying attention, which probably wasn’t hard when I was hallucinating.
“Yasmin’s mom helped her post it online too.” My mom switched tabs on the computer screen. There was a picture of Yasmin with a mustache again. Beneath it were the words: “My friend Maddie had brain surgery, and I thought we might be able to make her laugh and let her know we were thinking of her by posting pictures of ourselves in mustaches and tagging them #MustachesForMaddie. That way she doesn’t miss any of the silliness.”
I felt all full and squishy at the same time.
“A lot of us reposted it,” Mom said. “I put them all here.” She opened another file. I saw a lot of people I knew, but a lot I didn’t. There were people with their kids, all wearing mustaches. Some people even had their dolls wearing mustaches. Or their dogs. Seriously, dogs with mustaches. That made me laugh right out loud. One guy put a giant mustache on his car. Another guy made a mustache out of toothpaste. Gross, but awesome. There was even my dad’s editor and everyone at the publishing house, all with mustaches.
“There are over four hundred of them,” my mom said. “People love you.”
“Four hundred?” I asked, trying to wrap my mind around that many people.
“Over four hundred people trying to cheer up one little girl in the hospital.” She scrolled through picture after picture. My favorites were the one of a guy who had a real mustache he had grown two inches off his face on both sides and the one of my dad’s assistant with a curly mustache she’d made out of fuzzy pipe cleaners. Incredible. And the more I looked at the silly pictures, the less I thought about tasteless brownies, painful finger pricks, or heavy dinosaurs sitting on my head.
And I laughed.
Yep. It came out and I meant it. And it felt good. Well, it kind of hurt my head, but it felt good in my heart.
I looked through a lot of the pictures. Each one made feel a little better. People cared. And they cared enough to take hilarious pictures, maybe even embarrassing ones. It was all to make me smile.
I yawned.
Maybe the smiles had brought the yawns with them.
“I want to rest, Mom,” I said.
Mom nodded and hugged me.
With her still next to me in my hospital bed, I finally went to sleep.
Dad pulled out his phone. “Your brothers want to video chat again. Should we do that?” There was a hospital policy that wouldn’t let my brothers come see me. I guess there was too much sickness going around and little kids brought in more.
“Sure,” I said. I had actually really missed my brothers. Weird, I know, but true. And by the way they acted the first couple of times we chatted, I think they missed me, too. Of course, I was on some pretty heavy medications when we talked before so I didn’t remember much of what we said.
But I knew this was a distraction. Dr. Montoya was supposed to come visit, and she’d have the results of the test on my tumor. We were going to find out if it was cancerous.
Dad sat on the bed next to me and pushed a few buttons on his phone.
Aunt Kimmie answered the phone with a big smile. She was taking care of my brothers while Mom and Dad and me were in the hospital. “Maddie, I’m so happy to see you.” She was extra excited. She asked me a lot of questions and told me she loved me. She’s nice like that. “Should I get your brothers so you can talk to them?”
I nodded, but before she actually left, the twins popped their heads in front of Kimmie’s. They fought with one another for screen space, and the camera was way too close to their faces.
“Who are you talking to? Maddie?” They both smiled super huge. “Maddie!”
I almost cried. Yep, they were the same annoying brothers, and I still almost cried.
And then the questions began. Ethan tilted his head. “Why do you still look weird?”
Maybe I wasn’t so happy to see them.
Just kidding.
I didn’t like the idea that I looked weird, though. I didn’t look at myself much in the mirror because my hair was always crazy from spending so much time in bed and my face was swollen.
“She doesn’t look weird,” Mom said. “She’s just healing. She’ll be back to normal soon.”
“I think she looks weird,” Emery agreed. They both nodded in consensus, which to them meant it was absolute truth. But that wasn’t the end of the stuff they had to say:
“Can you have as much ice cream as you want?”
“Max went in your room and used your markers. I put them away again, but I thought you should know.”
“Have you seen all of the mustaches online?”
“We have mustaches too. I’ll go get them.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
I didn’t get in another word before they both disappeared. Then Max poked his head into the picture. I’ve always loved his red hair, but I loved seeing it even more right then. “Hey, Maddie, I miss you.”
Melt my heart like butter on a baked potato. “I miss you, too.” This time a tear really did escape.
“Are you sad?” he asked.
“No. Just happy to see you.”
He thought for a while and then smiled. Christopher poked his head in too. And I cried again. He asked me all sorts of questions to make sure I was okay.
“When you come home we can play Wizard Club,” Max said.
“Okay,” I said.
“But I don’t want to be a dwarf. I want to be a kid wizard who turns into a dragon.”
Weird, but I loved it. “Okay.”
“But since I’m the littlest, I’ll turn into a puppy dragon.” Really cute idea.
I could hear the twins coming back as their chipmunk voices got louder. They took the phone.
“These are the mustaches we made for you.”
“We taped them to your door, but then we took them off to show you.”
“I made this one.” Ethan held a large black cowboy-style mustache up to the screen and then taped it to his face.
“I made this one and this one and this one.” Emery was showing different colored mustaches too fast for me to really see them. But I had already seen pictures of them online. “When I wear them, I feel like the bad guy in that book with the bandit.”
Book? Wait. What was today? “Just a second, guys.”
I turned to my dad. “Didn’t your book come out a couple days ago?”
He gave a tired smile. “Yesterday.”
“But you were here with me in the hospital the whole time. You were supposed to go on tour.”
His smile didn’t leave. “Yep. I had to postpone it.” Mom put her hand on Dad’s back and massaged it.
“But, Dad—” I was crying. Again.
He waved me off. “There was nowhere else in the world I would have rather been. I was doing something much more important.”
More important.
“But it’s your dream,” I said through tears. I felt terrible. He had been working toward this for so long. He had stayed up late so many nights.
“You’re a more important dream,” he said. “And I’m glad I’m right here.”
A more important dream.
I still felt a little bad, but a lot super special.
“He’s had a lot of friends trying to spread the word for him,” Mom said. “They heard about you and knew he was taking care of you here, and they’ve tried to help out. There are even a few famous authors who heard about Dad and jumped in to let people know.”
“Good,” I said.
“Um . . . hello?” I looked back down at the phone. Max was waving. “I’m still here.”
“Sorry,” I said.
He got closer to the screen. “I want to tell you a secret so nobody else can listen.” I nodded. “Yesterday, I snuck into the bathroom and licked all of the toothbrushes. And your toothbrush tasted the best.”
I could hear a bunch of “eeews” and groans from offscreen. The other boys must have heard. I just started laughing.
Mom leaned into the shot. “Max, can you hand the phone to Aunt Kimmie?”
He did and Mom said, “Kimmie, I’m going to need you to buy new toothbrushes for all of the kids.”
A knock hit the door.
“Come in,” Dad said while Mom told Kimmie she’d have to call back.
Dr. Montoya stepped into the room. My insides went from super happy to a super nervous mess.
I looked at her closely. I could never tell if she was coming with good news or bad news. Her face didn’t show much emotion.
“Hello,” she said, looking around the room and then focusing on me. “How are you doing today, Maddie?”
“Fine,” I said. Was she asking me how I was doing because I wasn’t going to be doing well after she told me the news? Was it cancer?
She asked me a few more questions and then said, “We got your results back from the lab.” She took a deep breath.
I hated that breath.
“It’s not cancerous.”
I think I exhaled bigger than I ever had before. My mom and dad did too.
“That doesn’t mean we are out of danger,” Dr. Montoya quickly added. I guess she didn’t want me to celebrate too much. “We still have to watch it closely. If it grows back, it is still right next to the brain and the optic nerves.”
I nodded, but inside I was doing summersaults. No cancer.
“So in a couple of days, I think you should be able to go home,” Dr. Montoya said.
Home.
She said home.
No. No. No! Not now. Not today. I could feel it coming, even though I would have done anything to stop it. I made it to the toilet just before I threw up.
Gross.
Icky. Nasty. Bad taste. So gross.
But it was worse than that. Now Mom wouldn’t let me go to school. I closed the door.
Flush.
Everything swirled down the toilet, including my hopes.
And then I had to write in my notebook that I’d puked. It’s my terrible I’m-going-to-destroy-later notebook.
I had been in the hospital two weeks before I could come home. And now I had been home for another week resting and taking lots of pills. Seriously, a lot. I had to take pills every few hours and then write down what I’d taken in a notebook. My mom watched to make sure I didn’t forget anything.
And it wasn’t just that. I had to write down what I ate and drank, when I went to the bathroom, and even if I threw up. Again. Gross. I was definitely going to destroy that notebook later. Who wants a record of how much they sat on the toilet?
We had printed off my favorite pictures of people in mustaches and taped them to my mirror, but that didn’t really help today.
I had tried to convince my mom I was good enough to go back to school—just for an hour. The best hour. I had been up and moving, and I’d taken all my pills, and I’d even got dressed nice, but apparently I had been up and moving too much. I didn’t feel like dinosaurs sat on my head anymore, just baby rhinos. But baby rhinos still hurt. And if I moved too much or too fast, I got sick. Now, with my head swirly and tired, I wanted to cry, but I think I had used up most of my tears.
Romeo would have a different Juliet in the assembly today.
I was going to have to stay home.
“It’s Maddie,” Mrs. Baer said and quick-stepped across the room to give me a hug.
Everyone turned in their desks. Lexi and Yasmin ran over and gave me hugs too. Sailor followed. And then Devin and Cesar. They didn’t hug me, but they did come over.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Devin said.
“Me too,” Cesar said.
By now a lot of other kids were standing or had walked toward me. They said lots of things.
“Hey, Maddie.”
“I’m glad the surgery worked.”
“It’s been forever.”
“Did you see the picture of me with a mustache?”
They all seemed happy to see me. Except Cassie. She didn’t stand up. She had pulled out her phone and was busy looking at the screen and texting something. Lexi had told me that Cassie performed as Juliet, but she still wasn’t happy to see me.
My mom was standing behind me holding two trays of cookies with mustaches on them. That gave everyone else an extra reason to be happy to see me.
It had taken almost another week after the play before I finally felt well enough to come back to school, even though I showed up late and was only planning to stay until lunch.
After hugs and questions and mustache cookies, we studied English. That was okay. I was glad to be there and doing something just okay. It’s silly what you miss when you’re away.
Cassie looked over and glared at me.
Several times.
I guess maybe she was upset that I wasn’t gone longer, or sicker, or even dead. Or that her lie had made her look bad. Or that I was getting so much attention and she wasn’t.
Finally it was time for recess, but I wasn’t going out for long. Maybe a walk and then I’d come back in.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” Lexi said again as we walked down the hall. I think she had said it like four times already.
“Me too,” Yasmin said. We all hugged again, and I thanked them for all the mustaches.
“We still play your game sometimes,” Lexi said.
“And when we don’t, a lot of the same group still hangs out,” Yasmin said. We had left the building and were crossing the blacktop toward the field where we’d first played Poison Dragon Death Claw. A bunch of the fifth graders were waiting for us. I had been part of helping a lot of different people become friends. In fact, I had played a huge part. I’d gotten it started.
I stood just a squoosh bit taller.
“So is your brain all messed up?” I turned around and saw Cassie following us, Hannah by her side.
Wow. Why was she like this? Why would she lie about me having a tumor, be upset and want me to die, and then ask me if my brain was all messed up?
“Kind of,” I answered. I saw her sneer increase a little, then falter. Maybe not all of her wanted me to be hurt. “But messed up in a good way. The surgery gave me super
powers. I can see through walls, tell the future, and lift things with my mind.” Her sneer dropped.
It felt strange. I was different. None of me really cared what Cassie thought about me anymore. I didn’t want to impress her. I didn’t feel nervous.
“Whatever,” Cassie said.
“Don’t be mean,” Lexi said. It wasn’t loud, but she still said it. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who had learned to stand up to Cassie.
“I’ll leave you losers to hang out together,” Cassie said and started to turn away.
“Hey,” I said.
Cassie turned around.
“They aren’t losers,” I said. “They are two of the best friends anyone could ever have.” I did. I said it. It was like the queen had glared at me, threatened to banish me, but I still told her she was wrong.
“Whatever,” Cassie repeated and walked away. Hannah looked at us for a moment and then followed.
But Hannah was the only one. Cassie used to have lots of people following her every recess, now she only had Hannah.
“Why don’t any of the other girls hang out with her?” I asked.
“Everyone figured out that she was lying about you making the whole tumor thing up,” Lexi said. “That was pretty mean. Little by little, no one wanted to hang out with her anymore.”
“Can you really lift stuff with your mind?” Yasmin asked.
“Yep,” I said. “Look.” I pointed toward a tree. “I’m holding up the branches of that tree right now.”
“Now you’re just making stuff up,” Lexi said with a smile.
“Careful,” I said, “or I’ll levitate a bunch of giant water balloons and drop them on you.”
“That would be awesome,” Yasmin said. “Only it would be better if you dropped them on Cassie.”
I smiled big. I liked that idea. If only there was a bunch of water balloons around waiting to be levitated. And if only I actually had mental superpowers.
The fifth graders came over and talked to me for a while to say they were glad I was better. Then they went back to playing my game. I wasn’t quite up for that yet.
By the time Lexi, Yasmin, and I did one lap around the field, I was tired. We had talked about a lot of stuff and I didn’t have all the energy I used to. But just before we reached the school, I saw Cassie with Hannah again. It was like we had switched places. Now I was surrounded with friends, and Cassie wandered with only one.
