Maybe One Day (13 page)

“Where’s Olivia?” asked a voice, either the girl who’d asked before or someone else.

“Yeah, how come she’s not on your phone?” said Imani.

“Well, Olivia’s not feeling well. The medicine she’s been taking made her feel sick, and so she’s sleeping.” I didn’t know if she was sleeping, but it sounded better than saying she was recovering from getting a transfusion.

“Did she die?” Charlotte demanded, glaring at me.

“Did she
die
?” I echoed, my voice incredulous. “You think I would be here if she
died
?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized they were the absolutely wrong response. I tried to make my voice like Olivia’s—firm yet kind. “What I meant to say is no, she is not dead.” I looked around the room and smiled, then added, “Come on guys, how could she be dead? She was just here last week.”

They must have been satisfied by my insisting that Olivia was alive, because no one pointed out that it was possible to be alive one week and dead the next. I took advantage of their silence to ask them to go over to the barre so we could start class.

They warmed up, then moved into the center of the room to do some floor work. Everyone was being pretty giggly, and I kept having to repeat my instructions to them. Were they like this when Olivia led the class? I couldn’t remember,
and I decided to ignore their not paying perfect attention. It wasn’t like I could be mad at them, today of all days. Olivia was coming home tomorrow! Thinking about that, I wanted to giggle along with the girls. Dr. Maxwell had said that it was even possible Olivia might come to school for a while, assuming her counts continued to go up.
We try to keep teens’ lives as normal as possible
, she’d told Livvie.
We believe that mental health is tied to physical health
. Livvie would be going to the hospital for blood tests every few days, and maybe, just maybe, one of them would say she could have a normal life for a little while before she had to go back for her next round of chemo.

“Zoe? Do you want to see it again?”

Startled, I looked over at a girl I was pretty sure was named Aaliyah, who had been the first person to chaîné across the floor.

“What?”

“Do you want us to do it one more time?”

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “No. You don’t have to do it again. That was great!” I clapped wildly. The CD ended. The room was perfectly still.

“Let’s work on sauté,” I suggested.

“Again?” asked Charlotte. “We did that all last class.”

In my head I saw the hours and hours, the days and weeks and
years
Olivia and I had spent perfecting our sautés. And Charlotte was tired of doing them after a single class.

But it wasn’t like these girls were going to be professional
dancers. So what was the point of their perfecting anything, really?

“We don’t have to work on sauté,” I practically shouted. “Not if you don’t want to. I mean, what
would
you like to do?”

Charlotte stared at me. “Aren’t
you
supposed to know?” she pointed out. “You’re the teacher.”

“Right.” I laughed fakely. “Of course.”

But suddenly my mind was a total blank. The only word that would come into my brain was
sauté
; a decade of taking ballet and there wasn’t one stupid step I could think of besides the one they were tired of doing.

How could I not have choreographed something for them to work on? I’d promised Olivia that I’d start working on a routine for the recital, and I’d just let it slip my mind. What kind of a dance teacher was I?

But I wasn’t a dance teacher. I was a replacement dance teacher. A
temporary
replacement dance teacher. It wasn’t like I’d signed on to have all this responsibility.

Only I had. Livvie had warned me.
It could be a lot of work
. Those had been her exact words: it could be a lot of work. And I’d been like,
Work schmerk, no problem
. Except that it
was
a problem because I
hadn’t
done the work that I’d said I’d do, and now I had nothing.

We stared at each other, me at one side of the room, them at the other. I smiled nervously, but none of the girls smiled back.

Just have fun with them
. That was what Livvie had said.
Just have fun with them
. But dance wasn’t fun. Dance was work. Only they didn’t really want to work, and I couldn’t really see the point of
making
them work. So we weren’t working
and
we weren’t having fun.

The silence grew.

Okay, this is a disaster. This is a total fucking disaster
.

And right at that second, Mrs. Jones opened the door and stepped into the room.

“How you all doing?” she asked, her voice gentle. She was wearing a dark gray skirt and jacket and a white silk blouse. Around her neck was a choker of large pearls, and she touched her thumb to them gently as she spoke.

“We’re okay,” I said immediately. I smiled at her. How pissed was Olivia going to be if I blew this dance class thing right when she was probably getting healthy enough to come in and teach it live? “It’s going great, actually. The girls just finished doing some chaînés.” The French word sounded official.

“That’s good.” She was smiling, but she wasn’t looking at me. “You doing okay, Aaliyah?”

Aaliyah said she was doing okay.

“Good. Good.” Mrs. Jones looked around the rom. The girls shuffled uneasily. “How about you, Charlotte? Everything all right?” When Charlotte didn’t answer immediately, Mrs. Jones turned to me and added, “Because I was just down in the
gym, and they have more high school girls down there than they need. I could send a few of the cheerleaders up here to work with you.”

She wanted to send one of the
cheerleaders
to help me teach an introductory ballet class? Why didn’t she just put a bullet through my brain?

“I think we’re okay,” I said evenly. But Mrs. Jones didn’t respond. It was clear I wasn’t the one she was waiting to hear from.

Finally, from the far side of the room, Charlotte said, “We’re okay, Mrs. Jones.”

Mrs. Jones waited another minute as if she was sure somebody would contradict what Charlotte had just told her. When no one did, she said, “That’s good. I’m glad you’re working hard. We’re all looking forward to the spring recital. It was so beautiful last year. And I know it’s going to be just as wonderful this year.” Then she said good-bye to us, and the girls and I said good-bye back.

When the door shut behind her, I could feel that collective sigh of relief. Apparently the effect of the boss—whether it was Martin Hicks, Dr. Maxwell, or Ruth Jones—was universal.

“Thanks, guys,” I said, genuinely touched that they hadn’t ratted me out for sucking so totally. “Next week Livvie will definitely be back, so, you know”—I laughed—“you won’t have to deal with me so much, okay?”

I expected the girls to laugh also, but they just looked at
the floor and shuffled uneasily. Once again, I’d said the wrong thing, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

14

Saturday afternoon, Olivia was running a fever.

“They won’t discharge me with a fever,” Olivia told me. She sounded better than she had the last few times we’d talked, but apparently she wasn’t.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “But I thought they want you out of the hospital. Isn’t that what Dr. Maxwell said? That it’s more likely you’ll get an infection in the hospital than at home?”

“I know. I just want to get
out
of here.”

Livvie’s frustration fed my own. “So they’re keeping you in the place where you got the infection until the infection goes away and they can send you someplace where you’ll actually be safe from infection. That is seriously fucked up.” I was sitting in my living room, and I hit the couch for emphasis. Outside,
it was pouring; sheets of rain slapped against the plate-glass window as if expressing my mood.

She didn’t say anything.

“Sorry,” I said, annoyed with myself. “I’m supposed to be cheering you up.” I took off my socks and rolled them into a ball, then threw them toward the basement stairs. I made my voice bright and cheery, like her mom’s. “It’s going to be
okay
, Livvie. Everything is going to be
great
.”

That finally got a laugh out of her. “Yeah, well, at least you’re not on my mom’s
list
. She’s
obsessed
with finding out who exposed me to this, and since you haven’t been here in a couple of days, you’re in the clear.”

“Well, that’s good news, I guess.” Was this what we were supposed to be happy about now?
The bad news is: Olivia’s been exposed to a dangerous infection. The good news is: totally not your fault
. I walked over to the window.

“Hey, how did dance go?” Livvie asked.

“Oh, yeah.” Our property was on a hill, and since the house sat at the top of the hill, our living room felt almost like a tree house. Right now, though, it was rainy and misty enough that you couldn’t see the trees; you just had to believe they were there. “Um, it was okay. You know. The girls really miss you.”

“Did you guys do any work for the recital?” She yawned. “We really need to get started on that.”

“Definitely,” I said. “But you should get some sleep. I’ll call you later.”

“Mmmm. And remember, my fever might go down. I still might be able to come home tomorrow.”

But Livvie’s fever didn’t go down. It went up. It went up and up and up until it hit 105. On the phone, her mom tried to explain clearly what was happening, but you could tell she was totally frantic.

“She has no immune system,” said Mrs. Greco. “Her body has no way of fighting this.”

A wave of terror washed over me. Ever since Olivia had been diagnosed, I’d been hearing the same thing.
Infection is the big danger now
.
We need to make sure she doesn’t get an infection. The biggest threat to her health right now isn’t the leukemia; it’s an infection
. All these days and weeks I’d been Purelling my hands when Mrs. Greco asked me to, but part of me had rolled my eyes at her obsession.

And now Olivia was sick. Someone hadn’t washed her hands carefully or had carried a germ in on a purse or backpack or overcoat. A cart rolling along the hospital floors had picked up a virus and deposited it in Olivia’s room. Just last week we’d been doing our math homework (or sort of doing our math homework), and Livvie’s pencil had dropped on the floor. Without thinking anything of it, I’d picked it up and handed it to her.

Was she going to die because of something on that pencil?

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked. My voice was
desperate.

“There’s nothing—” Mrs. Greco’s voice broke. “There’s nothing any of us can do.”

And then she hung up.

My parents stayed with me. They’d had dinner plans with friends, but they canceled them. My dad cooked, but I couldn’t eat anything. I couldn’t even stay at the table with them while they ate. Was I supposed to just sit there quietly, my brain spinning out horrible fantasies of what was happening to Olivia while my parents enjoyed a tasty dinner at our kitchen table, cozy and safe and warm as the rain lashed the outside world? As soon as I sat down in my chair, I knew there was no way I’d make it through the meal.

It was an unbroken rule in my house that you could not, under any circumstances, watch television while you ate. Even when I was
sick
—really sick, like with the flu or strep, not faking sick to get out of school for the day—I had to do something other than watch TV while I ate (talk to someone, read, stare at the walls of my room). Tonight, for the first time ever, my parents brought their plates into the den and sat with me on the couch while I channel surfed, anxiously looking for something—anything—that might distract me. They didn’t even complain when I settled on
Law and Order
, a franchise my dad had called both
absurd
and
the nadir of Western civilization
on more than one occasion.

My parents went to bed just after midnight, and they made me wash my face and get in my bed when they went to sleep, but I lay awake all night, my brain buzzing with terror. When my dad came downstairs at about seven thirty, he was startled to find me sitting at the kitchen table, where I’d been since sunrise.

“Did you get any sleep at all?” he asked, rubbing his unruly hair.

I shook my head. By now I was in such a panic I couldn’t form words.

Our landline rang.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. “It’s awful news. I know it.”

My dad turned completely white. He crossed the kitchen and grabbed the phone from the wall. “Hello?” His voice was harsh. “No, no, that’s fine, Carlo. You didn’t wake us.” My stomach clenched. Carlo. Why was Mr. Greco calling my house? In all the years Olivia and I had been friends, Mr. Greco had never called my house.

My dad stared nodding. “That’s wonderful,” he said. “Yes, we were all very worried here. I appreciate your calling right away. We’re very grateful to you.” He smiled. “I know Zoe will be so happy to hear that. Yes, of course. Good-bye, Carlo.” He hung up and turned to me. “Olivia’s fever broke at about three thirty in the morning. She’s sleeping comfortably now. They’re talking about sending her home tomorrow.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but all that happened
was a huge sob escaped. I curled over the table, holding my stomach and crying. My dad came to sit next to me, and he put his arm around me and held me. “Oh, honey,” he murmured. “Oh, honey.”

“What happened?” asked my mom. I hadn’t even heard her come down. “What is it?” I didn’t look up as my dad told her what Olivia’s dad had said. “Oh, thank God,” she said, coming around the table and embracing me from the other side.

“Why are we always talking about God in this family?” I cried. “We don’t even believe in God.”