Maybe One Day (20 page)

HarperCollins Publishers

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part 2

Winter

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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21

One week later, Olivia went back into the hospital for her second round of chemo. I’d thought I was prepared for it, but as I watched them slip on her plastic bracelet, settle her into bed, and set her up with her IV, it felt like I was letting my best friend be kidnapped. The walls of the hallways were decorated with paper turkeys and Pilgrims, and even though I knew the people who had put them up had meant well, it still made me mad. What exactly did people on a pediatric oncology ward have to be thankful for?

Olivia wanted to talk about dance class, and since it seemed to be taking her mind off what was going on around her, I just let her float her insane theory that I was doing a fantastic job as her coteacher.

“While I’m in the hospital, you should keep trying to
choreograph something challenging with them for the recital. Those girls will work hard for you.” The nurse said everything looked good and told us to ring him if there were any problems. When he left, Livvie sighed and stretched out on her bed. Her mom had gone to get her a ginger ale, and her dad was at work, so it was just the two of us in her room.

“I don’t know,” I said, tucking my legs up under me. “When you’re not there, they don’t really take the class that seriously.”

“That’s so not true!” Olivia objected. “They worked really hard on Saturday. They all learned that sequence.”

“Yes, because
you were there
,” I said, reminding her of the obvious. “Skyping the class equals your being there.”

“Trust me,” said Olivia, ignoring what I said. “They love you.”

I snorted, but instead of responding to my doubt, Livvie folded her hands on her chest. Then she turned her head to look at me. “This is what I’ll look like dead.”

“Will you
stop
!” I slapped her arm. “Jesus.”

She stared at the ceiling, eyes wide. “I cannot believe I have to start all over again.”

“Dr. Maxwell said it’s going to be
much
easier this time,” I said quickly.

“
Might
. She said it
might
be easier this time.”

“You’re such a stickler for details.” But now that she’d said it, I remembered. Dr. Maxwell
had
said might.

Eyes on the ceiling, Livvie asked, “What are we doing for
your birthday?”

“For my birthday?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s still a month away.” The fact that my birthday was coming up had crossed my mind a couple of times recently, but given everything that was going on, I hadn’t been able to get especially psyched, not even about the fact that I’d finally get my license. Besides passing my road test, I didn’t have too many big-ticket items on my birthday list this year. Maybe because
All I want for my birthday is for my friend to be in remission
doesn’t exactly have a festive ring to it.

“I want you to plan something,” said Livvie. “Something great.

I stared at her. “You want me to plan something for my birthday?”

Still looking at the ceiling, she nodded.

“Like, a party?” I asked. For my sixteenth birthday, I’d had a bunch of people over. It was hardly the elaborate sweet sixteen that a lot of girls at Wamasset had, but it had been a fun night. Even though seventeen’s not a special birthday (outside of the whole driver’s license thing), if I played the my-best-friend-has-cancer card, my parents probably would have thrown me another party.

Livvie made a face. “I don’t think I’ll be able to be around a lot of people then.”

I did the math. In four weeks, when I turned seventeen, Livvie would be out of the hospital, but she would still be
immunosuppressed. “God, right,” I said. “Sorry.”

“But I want it to be something really special.” She sat up abruptly, the tube of her IV swinging. “Something fantastic. Something I can look forward to while I’m surrounded by this.” She gestured around the hospital room.

I thought for a minute, chewing on the inside of my cheek as I did. “Okay,” I said finally. “Let me get this straight. You want me to plan a spectacular celebration that doesn’t involve a lot of people, won’t tire you out, and that your mom won’t veto the
second
she hears about it.”

“Exactly,” said Livvie. When I didn’t respond right away, she added, “I’ll just take your silence as a sign that you’re already busy thinking of something.”

What was I going to say—no?

“Of course,” I assured her. “I’m on it.”

I didn’t call my parents to pick me up from the station, deciding maybe the birthday celebration idea that hadn’t come to me on the train would come to me in the brisk evening air. But even the streetlights popping on around me didn’t inspire a
eureka!
moment. The truth was, I wasn’t very good at planning birthday stuff in general; Livvie had always been much better at it than I was. Even my sixteenth birthday party had been her idea. But I had the feeling my telling her to come up with something fantastic wouldn’t exactly satisfy her need to look forward to some big birthday surprise.

When I got home, my mom and dad were sitting in the living room. I assumed they were going to ask how Olivia’s return to the hospital had gone, and they did, but it quickly became clear that wasn’t why they were waiting for me.

“We need to talk,” said my dad, and he patted the couch next to him. Livvie and I were always joking that my parents were trapped in a tragic 1970s vortex. They both drove Priuses, and they belonged to an organic food co-op, and they were obsessed with recycling. But the most obvious proof of their love for the 1970s was our living room. The couch my dad wanted me to sit next to him on was brown corduroy, and his feet rested on a multicolored shag rug. I sat down.

“Honey, did you know that you’re getting a C in history?” asked my mom. She slid a yellow slip of paper onto my lap. It was something called an academic notice, and it informed my parents that my average in history was more than ten points lower than it had been at this time last year.

“Really?” Actually, I had no idea how I was doing in history. Or in any of my classes, for that matter. At the bottom of my paper on the Thirty Years’ War, Ms. George had written,
This could have used a little more thought
. Then she’d given me a grade. B? Or had it been a B-minus? I hadn’t paid much attention. The truth was, I didn’t have any more thought in me. The only thing I thought about was Olivia.

“We know there’s a lot going on for you right now,” said my dad, his voice serious. “This is an unimaginably hard time.
And of course you’re going to be distracted. But you’re a junior in high school. You have to think about your future.”

“College,” my mom explained.

“Thanks, Mom. I get that when Dad says ‘future’ he means college. And that when he says ‘college’ he means Yale.” Actually, my dad didn’t say
Yale
. He said
New Haven
, as in
When I was a student in New Haven . . 
. Both my parents went to Yale, though they didn’t know each other there and my mom wasn’t nearly as obsessed with it as my dad was.

“Don’t get testy,” said my dad. “Your mom and I were very supportive when you were dancing. We never pressured you to make different choices from the ones you wanted to make. As long as you kept your grades up, we let you dance.”

“But now that I’m
not
dancing, who’s going to want me?” I refolded the letter and dropped it onto the glass coffee table in front of me. “That’s your point, right?”

He held up his hand. “I never said that. But you don’t want to make decisions now that are going to limit your options in the future.”

This was unbelievable! “Well, maybe I have been a little distracted lately. Perhaps you remember that my best friend has
cancer
,” I reminded them.

There was a brief silence. Then my mom said, “Olivia’s illness is a tragedy, Zoe. Don’t turn it into a petty excuse.”

My parents limited my hospital visits to three days a week.
Theoretically I was spending more time on my work, and I guess technically I
was
spending more time on my work, but I was also spending a lot of time trying to figure out what amazing thing Olivia and I were going to do for my birthday, which, like helping with the dance class, was proving to be a bigger pain in the ass than I’d anticipated.

Clearly we were going to have to go out. My birthday was on a Thursday. On Saturday I’d take my road test, and if I passed, I could drive us somewhere.

But where?

Two weeks later, with less than two weeks left before I turned seventeen, I was no closer to an idea than I had been when I’d promised Olivia I was on it. After a dance class that wasn’t as bad as the last one had been but wasn’t exactly productive, I even asked the girls what they thought Olivia would want to do, but the only thing they could all agree on was “go to Disney World!”

I promised to give their suggestion some serious consideration.

“There’s always Deco’s,” suggested Lashanna. Despite the calendar’s saying there should have been an autumnal chill in the air, Mia and Lashanna and I were sitting on the lawn outside eating sandwiches. It was so warm we weren’t even wearing coats.

Deco’s was a fancy restaurant in downtown Wamasset where a lot of people went on special occasions, but it was small and crowded. Mrs. Greco would never agree to Olivia’s sitting there in the middle of flu season.

“What about going into the city?” said Mia. She wiped some mustard off her lip with a napkin.

“Yeah, but then someone else would have to drive us.” Right there, in my opinion, was the difference between the city and the New Jersey suburbs: You might be a cool driver at seventeen in NJ, but you weren’t cool enough to sit behind the wheel on the other side of the bridge until you were eighteen. “Olivia’s mom makes her totally batshit, and my parents wouldn’t understand why they couldn’t just come to the restaurant with us.”

“Could Olivia’s dad drive you?” Bethany asked.

“Possibly.” Mr. Greco was definitely the most likely candidate to support an extravaganza. And I meant that literally. Even if I could (miraculously) think of some
amazing
celebration, how was I going to pay for it? And even if I could figure out how to pay for it, how was I going to get Mrs. Greco to let Olivia go? Now that Olivia’s chemo was over and it was just a matter of waiting for her counts to come up so she could come home from the hospital, Livvie’s mom was already talking about “when this is over” and “as soon as Olivia’s had her last round of chemo.” This was not a woman who was going to be eager to let her daughter do
anything
risky. I crumpled up the
wrapping from my sandwich and stuffed it into my bag.

“If he said it was okay for us to do something,” I said, speaking the idea as I had it, “Olivia’s mom would have to go along with it.” I remembered how he’d gotten her mom to back off the surgical mask thing on the day of the car wash.

“How very 1955,” observed Mia. She shoved her bag under her head and lay down, closing her eyes against the sun.

I toyed with the strap of my backpack. “Maybe I should go call him now,” I mused out loud.

“What if you guys went out for dinner someplace swanky, only you went
really
early so it wouldn’t be crowded,” Lashanna suggested as I got to my feet.

“Early bird special,” Mia said. “Way to celebrate.”

Lashanna flipped Mia the bird.

“Yeah, I’m going to go call him,” I announced. I said bye and headed inside. I was nervous about calling Mr. Greco, and I didn’t want to do it with Lashanna and Mia watching. It wasn’t like he wasn’t perfectly polite, but he always made me feel that I was wasting his time.

Olivia said that was because he thought in billable hours.

The lobby was deserted. Most people who weren’t in the cafeteria or in class were outside on the lawn. I googled the number of Mr. Greco’s firm and dialed it, but as I put my phone to my ear, I saw two guys walking down the hallway toward me. I was about to duck into the alcove where the school’s only pay phone was located, but then I saw that one of the guys was
Calvin.

I froze, my cell pressed to my ear.

Ever since the party, I’d been successfully avoiding him. We passed each other in the hallways sometimes, but there were always tons of people around, and he never said anything to me and I never said anything to him. The few times we’d both been in the Grecos’ house at the same time, I’d always managed to slip out the door without having to talk to him.

It was extremely helpful that Olivia’s house had two staircases.

But there was no staircase in the Wamasset lobby. Calvin saw me, hesitated, then said something to the guy he was walking with. Whoever it was turned down the science corridor.

Alone, Calvin walked down the hallway toward me.

“Thompson, Miller, Greco and Stein.” The woman’s voice was chipper and professional.

I hung up without saying a word.

“Hi,” he said when he was just a few feet away. He was wearing an old white oxford that was partially untucked. I forced my eyes away from where the shirt met his jeans.

“Hi,” I said.

Silence.

“So I just hung up on Mr. Greco’s office.” My voice was pitched about an octave higher than normal.

Calvin didn’t say anything, and I continued, speaking very
quickly. “I’m calling him because Olivia wants to do something special for my birthday, and I can’t figure out what to do. I thought maybe we’d go out for dinner, but it would have to be really early to avoid the crowds. Mia was like, ‘Early bird special, way to celebrate.’”

Nothing.

I traced my thumb over the screen of my phone. “I don’t even know if Livvie wants to go out for dinner. Maybe—”