Maybe One Day (11 page)

Why not?
asked an ugly, scary voice in my brain.
Why don’t they die of cancer?

“Because,” I said out loud, the sound of my voice startling in the quiet room. “They don’t.”

I got to my feet. Moving silenced the voice in my head. I slid open the middle drawer of her wooden wardrobe, where she kept her shirts. But staring at the top one, I found myself stymied all over again. Did she still like the red T-shirt with the three-quarter sleeves? I hadn’t seen her wear it in a while, but she’d never specifically mentioned
not
liking it. Maybe it was just out of the rotation? I bit my lip, looking at her drawer of carefully folded T-shirts: long-sleeved ones on one side of the drawer, short-sleeved ones on the other. How had I never noticed how carefully Olivia folded her clothes? We’d always joked that she was neat and I was messy, but I’d never appreciated just how neat she was. Each shirt was stacked on top of the one below it as precisely as if they were on display at Banana Republic or the Gap, two stores that Olivia and I both hated.

Standing in her room, surrounded by her stuff but unable to know what she would want to wear, the voice in my brain informed me,
This is what it would be like if Olivia were dead
.

“Well, she’s
not
dead!” I said out loud.

I reached for my phone. I needed to talk to her, even if she just told me to chill out or said she didn’t care what she wore.

I dialed her number, but it wasn’t Olivia who answered. “Hi, Zoe.”

“Hi, Mrs. Greco.”

Her voice whisper quiet. “Olivia’s just having a little nap.”

“Oh,” I said. My heart dropped. I couldn’t ask Mrs. Greco to wake her daughter just because I was freaking out. “I was just going to ask her about some clothes. I’m putting a suitcase together for her.”

“Yes, she told me about that,” said Mrs. Greco. “She hates all the clothes I brought her. I guess I haven’t been paying attention to what she wears.”

Apparently neither have I
, I thought, glancing down at the red T-shirt.

“Do you want her to call you when she wakes up? Assuming she’s feeling up to it?”

“No, no,” I said quickly, “I can figure it out on my own. I just wasn’t sure about this one particular shirt.”

“Okay,” said her mom. “I know she’s looking forward to your visit later. And not just because of the clothes.”

That was nice. Mrs. Greco’s saying that made me feel better.

“Thanks,” I said. “I am too.”

I ended up just picking things I’d seen Olivia wear in the last few weeks of summer—a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt, a pair of white capri pants, a skirt with a pattern of faces that we’d bought because we couldn’t decide if it was awesome or awful but that turned out to be clearly awesome—adding a couple of hoodies and some leggings and yoga pants because of the air-conditioning in the hospital. Then I zipped the suitcase, rolled it along the hallway, and bounced it down the stairs. When I opened the front door of the house, I expected to see Jake and Tommy still playing hoops, but instead I saw Calvin Taylor dribbling while Tommy watched from the sidelines. Calvin might have been the QB of the football team, but he was a damn good basketball player. His arm moved in a smooth arc as he seemingly effortlessly took the shot from far down the driveway. Just as I pulled the door closed behind me, the ball swooshed into the net. Tommy applauded. Neither of them saw me come out.

“Now you,” said Calvin, bouncing Tommy the ball.

“I’m not going to be as good as you,” Tommy told him.

Calvin didn’t deny it. “Well, considering I’ve got about three feet and ten years on you, that seems fair, don’t you think?”

“But I’m a prodigy,” Tommy explained, grinning. The twins’ smiles always slayed me. It was like the rest of their bodies hadn’t caught up to their enormous new front teeth. “My goal is to be the only third grader who can dunk.”

“Is that so?” Calvin asked, laughing. He dashed over, picked Tommy up, and raced him back to the hoop. “Quick! Quick!” he cried. “Do it. Dunk!” Sitting on Calvin’s shoulders, Tommy was higher than the hoop, and he easily dropped the ball into it. “And the crowd goes wild,” yelled Calvin. “Aaaah!” He ran around the driveway, Tommy on his shoulders, both of them cheering.

As they finished their victory lap, Tommy called, “Hi, Zoe!”

“Hey!” I waved to them. “Where are your brothers?”

“Jake’s getting Luke at Aunt Margaret’s house and then he and Calvin are taking us to the movies.” He lowered his voice and informed me confidentially, “We’re going to see a PG-13.”

“In your
dreams
, little man,” Calvin said. He lifted Tommy off his shoulders and put him on the blacktop next to him. Tommy gave me a knowing wink and went over to the grass on the other side of the driveway to retrieve the ball.

Calvin was breathing heavily from his lap with Tommy on his shoulders. He put his hands on his hips and cocked his head at me. “You running away from home?” he asked, nodding at the suitcase.

“Yeah.” I shrugged and looked off to the end of the block. “You know how it is. Big dreams. Little town.”

“Sure,” he said. “I get it.”

“Actually, these are just some clothes for Olivia,” I explained.

“You packed her a suitcase?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

“Yeah,” I said, surprised that he was surprised. “Does that seem weird to you?”

“I don’t know.” He wiped his sweaty forehead with his upper arm. “I can’t imagine any of my friends going through my clothes.”

I shrugged. “Maybe it’s a girl thing.” As soon as I said it, I was annoyed with myself. I hate gender stereotypes like girls love princesses and boys like guns. All the guys I was with at NYBC had had to deal with being called fag and homo just because they liked dance. I mean, a lot of them
were
gay (or at least well on their way to being gay), and words like
fag
and
homo
are totally unacceptable whether or not people are gay, but my point is that tying particular behaviors and interests to a particular gender seems to be the major reason guys who like dance get called names.

“Or maybe it’s a Zoe-Olivia thing,” he said.

“Maybe,” I agreed.

After our bickering earlier in the week and then my angry apology Saturday morning, this felt almost like a truce. Together we watched Tommy set up, shoot, and miss the basket by a mile.

“Good try,” said Calvin. “Don’t lean back so much.”

Tommy headed to retrieve the ball, and I glanced over at Calvin. To my surprise, he was looking at me. There was something intense about how he was doing it—not anything
gross, like he was checking me out, but more like he was watching for something or wondering about something, and he could only learn the answer if he studied me long enough.

I felt self-conscious about how I was staring at him or he was staring at me or we were staring at each other. “You’re really good.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I was mortified.

“What?” He smiled, but there was a confused look on his face.

“I meant I . . . I mean, I meant to say you’re really good with
kids
.” I looked away, watching Tommy because it was something to watch besides Calvin. “I’m not very . . . natural with them. It’s a little awkward.”

“I’m sure you’re fine.”

“Trust me. I’m not one of those people who say they’re bad at things they’re good at.” Tommy sank his shot and Calvin gave a long, low whistle. “Nice job, T-dog!” Tommy did a brief victory dance.

“Are there a lot of those people?” asked Calvin.

“What people?” I was confused.

“People who say they’re bad at things they’re good at.” He considered the possibility. “I thought people usually say they’re good at things when they’re not.”

“Wait, what?” I pushed my hair off my forehead. My bangs were growing out, and lately they were always getting in my eyes. “I’m sorry, I totally lost what we’re talking about.”

Calvin threw back his head and laughed just as Jake pulled into the driveway, honking, with Luke hanging out of the back window and waving.

“Come on!” Luke yelled. “We’re going to be late.”

“You need a ride?” asked Calvin as Tommy tossed the basketball onto the lawn.

“No,” I said. “I feel like walking. Thanks, though.”

“Anytime.”

Calvin and Tommy headed for the car, and Jake waved to me. “You don’t want a ride?” Jake asked.

I shook my head. It was less than a mile from my house to Livvie’s, and I walked it all the time. “I’m fine,” I told him. “Have fun at the movies.”

The car drove down the block. I waved to them as they passed, thinking what nice guys Calvin and Jake were for entertaining the twins all afternoon. Calvin especially, since you could argue that Jake’s being their big brother obligated him to look after them.

Pretty quickly I couldn’t hear the car anymore. It was a warm afternoon; the only sound was birds calling to one another or singing or whatever it is that birds do and the occasional slam of a door or maybe a lawn mower going in the distance. The walk from Olivia’s to my house was so familiar I could do it on autopilot, and as I made the turn onto my street, I realized I’d gone the whole way without once thinking of Olivia’s being sick. I stopped, startled by the realization. I
wondered what I
had
been thinking about, but when I tried to retrieve my thoughts of the last fifteen minutes, the file came up blank.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

12

It’s insane how fast the unthinkable becomes the new normal.

By the middle of October, my new routine was as predictable as my old one had been. I went to class. I ate lunch. Sometimes I’d see Jake in the hallway or as I was walking into school, and we’d hug and he’d ask me how I was doing. If he was with Emma, she’d hug me and ask how I was doing also. Sometimes I’d just pass a group of cheerleaders without Jake, and
all
of them would have to hug me and ask how I was doing. Once, when Mia and I were coming back from Starbucks and we ran into Jake and Emma and Stacy Shaw and the Bailor twins in the parking lot, she witnessed this phenomenon and said there weren’t enough minutes in a free period for her to do coffee runs with me anymore.

I went over to Mia’s a couple of times, and the soccer team
had a party and they invited me, but all those things were just a way to pass the time. My life—my
real
life—was, just as it had been until sophomore year, with Olivia. Every day after school and every Saturday afternoon and every Sunday morning I’d get on the train or into my mom’s or my dad’s car and head into the city to Olivia’s hospital room. We’d do homework together or not do homework together or talk trash about people or—when mouth sores from the chemo made it hard for her to talk—communicate via a sign language we invented that made us crack up but that drove everyone else in the room totally batshit. On Saturday mornings, we taught dance class together—or she taught the class while I said vague, encouraging things from the sidelines.

Instead of dancing together, we were waiting for Olivia to get better together. Everything had changed, but nothing had changed. It was still me and Olivia in our own world.

One afternoon, just as I was walking out of history—my last class of the day—and doing a mental check of what I had to get from my locker before I left the building to go home and meet my dad so he could drive me into Manhattan, Mrs. Greco called. Because it was her hospital room’s landline, which Livvie called me from if her hands were shaky (which sometimes happened from the chemo), I’d assumed it was Livvie, so when I picked up, I said, “Yo!” in this way we have.

“Zoe?” said Mrs. Greco.

“Oh, Mrs. Greco. I’m sorry. That’s just this dumb thing Livvie and I do. Yes, it’s Zoe.”

“No, that’s fine,” said Mrs. Greco. “I understand you two have your . . . things.” Mrs. Greco was one of the people who was not especially fond of our private sign language. “I’m calling because Olivia is too tired to have visitors today. Her counts are so low—she’s just wiped.”

Even though the chemo was over, Olivia’s red and white blood cells still had to come back, like flowers growing in a postapocalyptic landscape. While that was happening, she didn’t have much energy. The day before, she’d dozed off twice while I was there. “I don’t mind being there even if she’s asleep,” I said.

Mrs. Greco didn’t come right out and say no.

“We’re hoping a transfusion’s going to give her some pep,” she told me. “It’s scheduled for later this afternoon.”

“She’s like a vampire,” I joked.

I don’t know if the idea was objectively funny or not, but I really think Livvie would have laughed.

Her mom did not. “I suppose so,” she said.

“Anyway,” I said, “I’m sure she’ll feel better after she gets the transfusion.”

“Of course she will,” said Mrs. Greco firmly. “And then she’ll be up for visitors again.”

“Yeah. Maybe tomorrow.”

“She’ll call you,” Mrs. Greco said.