Upstairs, I turned on the computer on Gran-Dan’s desk in the den. It was old and super slow, but I waited patiently for it to connect with the Internet. Then I Googled “seven warning signs of cancer.” I had read about them once in a magazine but had forgotten them all, except for “obvious change in a wart or mole.” I have this little brown mole on one shoulder, and sometimes it seems like it’s growing bigger by the minute, but most of the time it seems like it’s the same size that it’s always been.
The list came up on the screen:
A change in bowel or bladder habits
A sore that does not heal
Unusual bleeding or discharge
Thickening or lump in the breast or elsewhere
Indigestion or difficulty in swallowing
Obvious change in a wart or mole
Nagging cough or hoarseness
None of the signs said anything about sleeping all the time. As far as I could tell, my mom didn’t have any of the seven signs. I had “a sore that does not heal” from when I scraped my knee last month in a bike accident, but I knew the only reason it wasn’t healing was that I kept picking the scab off.
I puffed out a long sigh of relief. From the list on the computer, it looked like my mom didn’t have cancer after all.
When I returned to the igloo, Carly said, “So?”
“So?”
“Is she okay?”
“Mom?” How could Carly have known what I was doing?
“No! Selkie! Our pet seal!”
“Oh, sure. She likes when it snows. The more it snows, the happier seals get.”
“What about the cookies?”
I had forgotten to ask.
“Well, it’s pretty close to supper,” Carly answered for me.
I took my place on my pile of pillows. I picked up my book but didn’t open it. Instead I just gazed at the Styrofoam walls of the igloo, safe, for now, from the storm.
That evening the rain stopped, and Carly and I sat outside on the steps of the big, screened back porch, waiting for the first fireflies. Fireflies were the best part of coming to New Jersey in the summer.
“Why don’t we have fireflies in Colorado?” Carly asked.
“I don’t know.” I thought for a minute. “It’s too dry, I guess.”
“I see one!” Carly cried.
I followed her pointing finger. I didn’t see anything. Then, in the dark mass of the hydrangea bushes at the edge of the lawn, one little light flickered.
“There’s another one!” Carly left the porch and skipped across the wet grass to where the second firefly had signaled.
Which firefly decided to light up first? I wondered. The bravest? The most impatient? The one who was most eager to shine? If our family was fireflies, Carly would light up first. These days Mom probably wouldn’t light up at all, but it wasn’t that long ago when she would have been lighting up right along with Carly.
“Cooper, come!” Carly called. Unable to wait, she dashed back to the porch, holding her carefully cupped hands out in front of her. “I caught one!”
Crouching beside me, she opened her hands just enough that I could see the little pulse of light on the back of the bug. On, off, on again. It was funny that Carly, who was frightened of most bugs, wasn’t afraid of fireflies.
She raced to the bushes to let the first firefly go and catch another. This one looked exactly like the last one, and I knew the third firefly would look the same. Still, I had to admit that it was magical to see that little light shining in her hand.
Now the bushes were all a-twinkle with fireflies, hundreds of them, thousands, like Christmas in August.
“Cooper, come!” Carly called again.
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
I slipped inside and went to Gran-Dan’s computer. I could hear Mom talking with Gran-Dan in the living room; then I heard Gran-Dan’s laughter. Feeling a bit foolish—Gran-Dan wouldn’t be laughing like that if something was really wrong—I typed in “sleeps too much.” A bunch of articles came up. I clicked on one and scanned the first couple of lines: the article said it was bad to sleep too much, even worse than sleeping not enough. I read a bit more: “Sleeping too much can lead to early death.”
That couldn’t be right. Nobody died just from sleeping. My mom was always telling me that I needed my sleep; I had never heard anyone say that there was anything wrong with sleeping. Well, except for Gran-Dan.
The article had to be wrong. My teacher last year in fifth grade kept telling us that we shouldn’t believe everything we read on the Internet.
I shut down the computer and went outside. Carly was still in the yard, by the thicket of hydrangeas, busy catching and releasing one firefly after another.
“Do you think it’s better to be a star or to be a firefly?” Carly asked.
It was one of the stranger questions I had ever heard.
“Why?”
“I want to write a story about fireflies, and it’s either going to be called The Star That Wanted to Be a Firefly or The Firefly That Wanted to Be a Star. Which do you think sounds better?”
“I think a firefly is more likely to want to be a star than a star is to want to be a firefly.” That is, if a star could want to be anything at all. “I mean, we can see stars, but they can’t see us.”
“Okay,” Carly said. “I’ll write The Firefly That Wanted to Be a Star.”
“How is it going to end?”
“She ends up being happy that she’s a firefly.”
I caught a firefly on my first try. The fireflies didn’t seem to mind being caught. On and off they blinked their little lights, whether they were free in the bushes or trapped within my fingers. Maybe they were too dumb to know the difference. Or maybe the difference didn’t matter to them. Carly was right: they seemed pretty content being fireflies.
“Kids!” Gran-Dan called from the porch, his voice impatient. “Come in now. Time for baths and bed.”
I opened my hands. And my firefly flitted away.
3
School began in late August: second grade for Carly, sixth grade—middle school!—for me. Usually every year my mom would complain that it was ridiculous for school to begin in August, that when she was growing up in New Jersey, school didn’t start until after Labor Day. This year she didn’t say anything. I thought she seemed even more sad and tired since our trip to New Jersey, but I tried not to think about it.
When we went shopping for school supplies, my mom hardly paid attention to what we bought. I was the one who had to help Carly read from her school supply list. “Five spiral-bound notebooks, wide-ruled,” I told her.
Off she flew down the aisle, returning a minute later with an armful of notebooks. “I got one in each color—red, blue, green, yellow, purple. I like purple the best, but it would be confusing to have all purple, don’t you think? I’ll use purple for language arts, because I like language arts the best.”
“What’s next on the list?” I asked, since Mom didn’t say anything. “One box of markers, wide-tipped, and one box of markers, narrow-tipped,” I read.
Carly ran off to the marker display to retrieve them.
“Don’t we have hundreds of markers at home?” Mom asked. She had never complained about buying new markers before.
“Most of them are dried-up,” I said. Besides, everyone likes to have brand-new markers for the first day of school.
Mom turned away. When she took us shopping for school supplies last year, we came home with all kinds of things not on the list: miniature staplers, boxes of pastel chalks, index cards in every color of the rainbow.
“One box of twenty-four colored pencils,” I told Carly after she put the markers in the cart.
“I love colored pencils!” Carly said.
Even though it was dumb to be so happy about a box of twenty-four colored pencils, I loved colored pencils, too.
Finally Carly’s list was completed, and it was my turn. My list had some different items on it for middle school: t
wo big three-ring binders, one for my morning classes and one for my afternoon classes; and three combination locks, one for my regular locker, one for my band locker, and one for my P.E. locker.
“Do you know how to work them?” Carly asked.
“I can figure it out,” I said. I’d practice once we got home.
The total came to $98.17. Mom paid with her credit card. She didn’t say anything about its being almost a hundred dollars, even though I knew she didn’t earn very much, working at home as a graphic designer while trying to find time for her own collage making and quilting. Plus, she had to be earning less money lately: certainly she wasn’t earning money while she was lying in bed sleeping.
“Second grade is going to be the best school year ever!” Carly said.
I grinned; it wasn’t like Carly had much to compare it to. But she was probably right. Every year would be the best year for someone like Carly. And, who knew? Maybe sixth grade would be the best school year ever for me, too.
On the first day of school, Carly was so excited about second grade that she could hardly sit still during breakfast. I couldn’t imagine liking school that much. Mom got up early enough to tie bright red ribbons on Carly’s pigtails and then walked her the few blocks to Deer Creek Elementary. Western Hills Middle School started half an hour later than the elementary school and was farther away. On most days, I would take a public bus to and from school, but Mom told me she’d drive me there today, when she got home from walking Carly.
“Are you nervous about middle school?” she asked as she backed out of the driveway.
“Not really.” I’m pretty good at finding my way around new places, and I had already mastered my three combination locks.
“Changing classes, having a locker, meeting new kids from other elementary schools?”
“It’ll be okay.”
But because I was grateful that she was taking an interest in something, I added, “Everyone says that Food Fun is a cool class.”
She didn’t say anything else until we pulled into the circle in front of Western Hills, where parents were dropping off their kids.
“I love you, Cooper,” she said. She didn’t usually say it, because she knew gushy things embarrassed me.
“I love you, too, Mom,” I mumbled as I got out of the car. Then I relented and shot her a quick, encouraging grin.
On the blacktop outside school, I found my two best friends, Spencer and Ben. Spencer is short and chubby, negative about everything in a funny way. Ben is tall and athletic, almost embarrassed about how good he is at sports, schoolwork, and video games. I’m not sure how I fit into the trio. I’m not a comedian like Spencer, or perfect like Ben. I guess I’m the artistic one, who likes to paint and draw and make up stories, even though I never write them down. And I’m good with my hands, good at making things and building things and fixing things. The three of us have been friends since we were Carly’s age.
“What do you have first period?” Ben asked.
I looked at my schedule. “Math.”
“I have math, too—maybe we’re in the same class.”
“But you’re in accelerated math, right?”
Ben’s face fell. “Oh. Yeah. What do you have, Spence?”
“P.E. With Poached Egg.”
I must have looked confused, because Spencer explained: “Coach Gregg.”
Ben and I both laughed.
“I heard Poached Egg makes you do push-ups if you’re late getting dressed,” Spencer continued. With three older brothers, Spencer always heard lots of things. “I can’t do push-ups. Not even one. So I’m going to have to get changed super fast. I think I’ll wear my P.E. clothes under my regular clothes. Or maybe I’ll get my mother to put Velcro on my clothes so I can just rip them off.”
Ben and I laughed again.
The bell rang. The three of us joined the surging throng of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders streaming in through the main doors of the middle school.
Spencer and I had lockers close together; Ben’s was down the hall by the gym. I got my lock opened right away. Four lockers down from me, Spencer was struggling.
“Fourteen. Thirty-seven. Eleven. Ta-da! Nope. Okay, try it again. Fourteen. Thirty-seven. Eleven. Ta-da! Nope. Open, you stupid lock! Open!”
I came over and gave it a try. The lock sprang open on my first attempt.
“How did you do that?” Spencer marveled.
I shrugged.
“My lock hates me,” Spencer said. He stashed his afternoon binder in his locker and followed me down the hall. Then he peeled off to go to the gym while I took the stairs to the second floor for my first-period math class.
The math teacher, Miss Bellamy, seemed all right, though a bit too cheery for the first class of the morning. Her goal, she said, was to make everybody in the class love math! Because she loved math! And she loved teaching math! And she wanted all of her students, whatever their level of mathematical ability, to love math, too!
Good luck, I thought.
My second-period language arts teacher was the opposite. Mrs. Alpert didn’t come right out and say that she wanted all her students to hate language arts, but she made it seem as if she would do everything in her power to make sure that we did. The worst crime we could ever commit, I gathered, was not to put our names in the upper left corner of the page. The second worst crime was to make a mistake in spelling there, their, and they’re. If Mrs. Alpert had her way, that particular crime would be punishable by death.
From language arts I went to Food Fun, where I had both Spencer and Ben in my class. We would have one semester of Food Fun and then one semester of computer tech. The Food Fun teacher, Mr. Costa, was a large, young, jolly man with a booming voice. He loved to cook—and to eat—the way Miss Bellamy loved to solve math problems.
“By the end of September, all of you will be able to cook a tasty, nutritious meal for your families—and to wash the dishes afterward. By October, you’ll be able to cook a company dinner for your relatives, and Aunt Agatha will be asking you for your recipes.”
That sounded good to me. Meals at our house had been getting progressively worse since Mom had been sick, or whatever she was. These days we ordered a lot of pizza and take-out Chinese food. I didn’t think I could ever get tired of pizza, but I was tired of it now.
“In November, we’ll take a turn providing dinner for the hungry and homeless at a local church. In December, we’ll put on a cooking show for the Western Hills Middle School community—‘Costa Live.’ And if any of you want to challenge me to a cook-off, I’ll be ready. Have I missed any of the highlights? Oh, and we’ll do a bake sale fund-raiser for the Western Hills music programs. Questions?”
Spencer raised his hand. “Will we do any cooking for us?”
Mr. Costa grinned. “Don’t worry, we’ll eat everything we cook here. Tell your parents you won’t need lunch money this fall.”
Fourth period I had P.E.; fifth period was lunch; sixth period was band. Seventh period was science, with a substitute teacher, as the regular science teacher was on maternity leave; eighth period was social studies with Mr. Stuart, who wasn’t funny but was soft-spoken and kind. Except for my crabby, strict L.A. teacher, all my teachers seemed friendly, especially Mr. Stuart and Mr. Costa, or Mr. Pasta, as Spencer had already nicknamed him.
After the final bell rang, Spencer still couldn’t get his lock opened, so I did it for him again.
“Maybe there’s a curse on it,” Spencer suggested.
“Maybe there’s a curse on you,” I joked.
Two girls with lockers nearby were also struggling with their locks. “Cooper can do it,” Spencer volunteered. “He’s a combination lock genius.”
The girls turned pleading eyes toward me. Embarrassed, but flattered, too, I walked over to them. “I can try,” I said.
The first girl’s lock opened for me as easily as Spencer’s had, but the second girl’s lock refused to open, even after three attempts.
“Are you
sure you have the right combination?” I asked her.
“Yes! Twenty, eleven, sixteen.” She fumbled in the bottom of her backpack for the piece of paper with her combination on it. “See? Oh, wait, it’s twenty, seven, sixteen.”
I twisted the dial, with the correct combination this time, and the lock sprang open.
“I told you he was a combination lock genius,” Spencer said.
I couldn’t resist giving a little bow.
Ben appeared behind me, and all three of us walked to the bus together. One of the combination lock girls arrived at the bus stop a few minutes later. I saw her look at me, then whisper something to her girlfriend.
As soon as I got home, Carly started pelting me with stories. Her class was going to study Alaska. And Hawaii. And go on a class trip to the natural history museum. And have a Hawaiian luau. And put on a play, Hansel and Gretel.
“How was your day, honey?” Mom asked, when Carly paused to catch her breath.
“Okay.”
“Just okay?”
“No, it was good.”
I wanted to tell her about the combination locks, but maybe that would sound stupid. I wasn’t in second grade.
“I baked some cookies,” she said. “It isn’t the first day of school without home-baked cookies.”
“Gingersnaps?” Carly asked.
Mom smiled and went to get a plate full of them. Gingersnaps were the best cookies she baked. I gobbled down two of them, still warm from the oven, soft and spicy, covered with crinkly sugar.
“We’re going to keep journals!” Carly said. “We can write whatever we want in them. I’ve already written three pages in mine.”
“That’s wonderful, sweetie,” Mom said.
I ate two more cookies and washed them down with a glass of cold milk. Between the combination locks and the gingersnaps, I felt hopeful about the new school year, about my mom, about everything.
But then, half an hour later, I walked by her bedroom and the door was closed. I knew she was sleeping. Ben’s mother wasn’t sleeping, Spencer’s mother wasn’t sleeping, nobody else’s mother was asleep at four in the afternoon on a sunny August day. Something was wrong with my mother, and even a combination lock genius couldn’t make it right.
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