Send Me a Sign (34 page)

There was a note in the kitchen when I got home. I read it out loud as I pulled off my itchy wig. “‘Mia, I’ve got a house showing at 4:30. I’ll pick up dinner on the way home. Love, Dad.’” I grabbed a can of cat food.

“I guess it’s just you and me, Jinx.” But despite the humming can opener, she wasn’t twining between my legs.

“Jinx?” I carried the can over to her bowl. It was full with food from the morning. Maybe she’d gotten shut in my room. It’d happened before; I’d come home from practice to find her yowling. She’d also shredded a shirt out of boredom. I hoped I hadn’t left anything on my bed.

But my door was open. “Jinx? Jinxsy?” She was curled up on the spare pillow. When I nudged her, she raised a lethargic paw toward me.

“Hey, bud, aren’t you hungry?” She sneezed in my face. “Gross! Jinx!” Instead of stretching or leaping from the bed, she shut her eyes. I stopped wiping off cat snot and looked at her: nose and eyes streaming green mucus.

“Jinx?” I picked her up; she didn’t curl closer or fight to get down. She lay limp. I called Dad. No answer. Mom’s cell was off. Gyver didn’t pick up, but his car was back in his driveway.

“Hang on, Jinx.” I tucked my sweatshirt around her before walking out my door and across my driveway to the Russos’.

I pounded and pounded before he answered. I could see my mess of a reflection in the door’s window; tears had painted my cheeks three tints of splotchy sadness. Jinx hadn’t reacted to the cold or the noise of my banging.

Gyver had been mid-workout. His black T-shirt was adhered to his chest with sweat, but I launched myself at him anyway. Or tried to; he held me off with one hand. “What do you want?”

My breath seized in my lungs, caught on his physical and verbal rejection.

I pulled back a flap of sweatshirt sleeve to expose Jinx’s oozy face. “She’s sick. No one’s home. I don’t know what to do.”

Gyver looked from her pathetic furry face to my pathetic sobbing one and pulled me into his kitchen. He told me to “sit,” took Jinx in one arm, looked up the vet’s number, and picked up his phone. He spoke assuredly in the receiver, pausing to ask me, “Has she eaten?”

“Not today. Dad gave her dinner last night; I don’t know if she ate.”

“We’ll be right in.” Gyver hung up the phone, grabbed his
keys and a sweatshirt, and headed out. He didn’t look back, but paused on the porch to shut and lock the door behind me.

I opened the passenger door. Gyver handed me his sweatshirt. “Put this on. It’s too cold.”

“You’re wear—” I started to protest, but agreement was faster. I pulled on his sweatshirt. It pooled around me in piles of excess fabric. I shoved the sleeves up my arms, and Gyver handed me the bundle containing Jinx. She opened an eye and yowled.

“Do you want to go get a hat or your wig?” he asked, his hand paused on the ignition.

I shook my head. “We need to go. Please, please be okay, Jinx.”

Gyver fastened his seat belt and looked at mine. As soon as I’d buckled it, he pulled out of the driveway and tore through the streets to the animal clinic.

I attempted one conversation. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”

Gyver looked over—made eye contact for the first fractional second since he’d opened his door—then turned back to the road with a clenched jaw and white-knuckled grip. “I don’t know. God, she’s thin. How long’s she been sick?”

“She hasn’t. I didn’t …” Guilt kept me mute for the rest of the drive.

Chapter 44

The guilt grew to tremors as the vet examined Jinx and gave me options: put her down humanely or try and manage her pain with medications that would make her groggy and disoriented.

“Maybe you should wait until your parents are here before you make any decisions.”

“But she was fine yesterday,” I protested.

The vet’s eyes examined me as well: my stubbly, patchy head, circled eyes, tiny frame drowning in Gyver’s sweatshirt. His voice was full of pity. “Jinx is a very sick cat, Mia. She’s in the final stages of kidney failure. Maybe if you’d caught this sooner, but a lot of cats don’t have outward manifestations. We have no way of knowing, and unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do at this stage.”

I hadn’t noticed. When was the last time I’d made time for Jinx? Done more than complain about her shedding? She used
to sit on my lap while I did homework, but I hadn’t done any in a while. I saw her when she slept on the pillow next to mine, but Jinx had become impatient with my nighttime mania and started sleeping downstairs.

She’d been suffering and I hadn’t noticed. The thought made me gag. My legs faltered. Gyver pointed to a chair and blocked my view of the exam table where Jinx shivered and vomited.

“Why don’t I give you a few minutes to make your decision?” the vet said while mopping up the mess. “I’ll go try your parents again. Come find me when you’re ready.” He gingerly picked up Jinx and set her on a clean blanket on the table.

It was impossible not to make the connection between my dying cat and me. She was sick. She was in pain. And there was no way I could help her. She stared at me through barely open eyes. Did I have enough courage to be merciful?

“Do you want to wait for your parents? Your dad might be home soon,” Gyver said.

I didn’t answer, but went to stand beside her at the table. I was too busy memorizing the whirl of hair on her nose and the contrast between her eraser-pink tongue and midnight fur.

“We could bring her home now, and you could come back later with your parents. Or you could try the drugs,” he suggested.

Jinx yawned, crying out again from the motion. Her eyes, rimmed with gummy discharge, were full of trust and agony. One of her paws batted against my arm. I touched it softly and she flinched.

“I can’t.” I turned my head away and muffled the rest of the words in the shoulder of the sweatshirt. “We have to do this now. I can’t make her suffer anymore.”

“I’ll get the vet.” He paused to trace a finger around the edge of Jinx’s ear. She tried to purr, a reflex reaction, but the sound was stuttery. Gyver rushed out of the room, and I kissed her nose and wiped my eyes on her fur.

The vet entered, followed by a stone-faced version of my best friend. He crossed the room and stood with his back toward me, engrossed in the pet medication flyers tacked to a bulletin board, his arms tight around his chest, gripping handfuls of shirt.

The doctor began to explain how Jinx wouldn’t feel a thing. “It’s like falling asleep. You can even hold her while I administer it.” Tears flooded my cheeks, and I tightened my grip on the nearly motionless bundle on the table, clutching at the last moments I’d have with her.

“This is an emotional decision. I spoke with your father while I was out of the room. He and your mother can’t get here before we close tonight. I’ll understand if you want to go home and come back with one of them tomorrow. Or I can recommend a twenty-four-hour vet.” I shook my head. “I don’t want you to have any regrets, Mia. If you’d prefer, you can wait in the lobby.”

“No!” The word was knotted in a sob and shaken from my chest. Gyver turned and it was spelled in the set of his jaw and the shroud of his eyes: his heart was equally broken. “She has to know I’m here.”

And Gyver was there too. At my side in four strides, arm around me and supporting me as I stood at the exam table. I was trembling, but he was steady. I gave Jinx a last kiss, whispered in her ear, and Gyver did too. Then I gave her a last, last kiss. With the dregs of my courage I turned to the doctor. “Ready.”

If Gyver’s hands hadn’t been under mine, I would’ve sagged to the floor. I would’ve run from the room.

When it was over, he had to nearly carry me to the lobby. He filled out the paperwork while I sobbed in the corner, pulling the hood up over my face. Turning to lean my forehead against the wall when an eight-year-old and his mom came skipping in with their calico kitten.

By the time he said, “We’re done. Let’s go home,” my eyes were swollen to slits. He put an arm around my shoulders and led me to the car.

I pulled my feet onto the seat. With my face lowered onto my knees and the hood obscuring everything, I’d built my own fortress of grief. If I could keep my arms around my knees, keep holding myself together, I might make it home in one piece.

“We’re here.” Gyver turned off the engine. His hand stretching to fold back the fabric around my face. “I’m sorry about Jinx. I’ll get you a new kitten.”

“Don’t,” I moaned.

“It doesn’t have to be right away. When you’re ready. I’ll let you name this one.” He tried to smile, but it faltered and faded.

“I don’t want a new cat.” I buried my head in my knees again. “She didn’t look like she was in pain, did she?”

Gyver shook his head. “No, she looked peaceful.”

I peered out the windshield, focusing on the clouds above his garage. “That’s what I want—when it’s my time. I want to go to sleep and have everyone I love holding my hand.”

Gyver’s eyes went flat—like Jinx’s had at her final moments. He pressed his lips together, shook his head, and got out of the car. I mirrored his movements; using my puffy eyes to decipher his face and stiff body language. It wasn’t a difficult read: the walls had been reconstructed between us. His mask of detachment was firmly in place, and I was lost in my grief all alone.

“Can I come over? I don’t want to go in.” Jinx’s toys and bowls flash-bulbed in my mind.

He didn’t bother with an excuse. “No.”

“But … I thought you’d forgiven me.”

He shut his eyes and shook his head. “It’s not a matter of forgiving; I’m choosing not to hang out with you. I can’t do this to myself, Mi. I can’t.”

“Am I that awful?”

“You were someone incredible. You were my best friend. And now?” He shoved his hands in his pockets and closed his eyes again. “The way you’ve handled your cancer … Who are you?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m just trying to survive.” Hillary’s acid voice had nothing on mine. “If I’m not the perfect person while dying from cancer, that’s okay with me.”

“If I’ve noticed? I was there every day this summer! Did you forget? I was the only one there. I’ve seen how awful and painful this is, and how terrified you are. But when this is over—because
you
will
beat this—who are you going to be? Regardless of whether or not you have cancer, you’re not someone I want to know anymore. My Mia Moore wouldn’t just give up.”

“Well, lucky for you, you won’t have to know me much longer.”

His eyes sparked with fury, then glazed with tears. He walked into his house without looking back. It felt like Jinx had been the last link between us, and now that was severed.

I sat on the front porch and curled into myself, trying to breathe.

I was still there when Mom drove up. “Oh, kitten, I’m so sorry …,” she began.

At the sound of my nickname, I began to wail.

If I couldn’t hold Jinx, I wanted to be held, so I called Ryan.

“Where were you? I called your phone and your parents and the hospital.” His voice was a tangle of panic, anger, and relief.

I gulped a breath and tried to answer.

“Do you know how freaked I was when you were gone at the end of the day? I thought you were …”

“Will you come over?” I sounded five years old.

“I need some space.” His panic and relief had faded, leaving frustration-coated anger. “Now that I know you’re okay, I need to, I don’t know, breathe and calm down.”

“Later?” I asked.

“Let me take a drive, clear my head, then I’ll come.”

But he didn’t. He called later, but I was already two hours into a sleeping pill. Apologies, explanations, and kisses waited until the morning. Exchanged with forced smiles. My chest ached, my pulse pounded in my temples, and the hallway focused and unfocused as I blinked past tears.

“We’re okay, right?” Ryan asked, raising our intertwined hands and brushing his lips across my knuckles.

I swallowed and coughed before I could answer. “We’re fine.”

We had to be.

Chapter 45

I sat in the kitchen and stared out the window. Tapping my nails on the counter while I pretended to listen to Mom’s pre-dance blather. Gyver came out of his house carrying a trash bag; I bolted out the door and cornered him on the driveway.

“Gyver!” I paused and caught my breath. “Wait. Please?”

He replaced the trash can lid and turned toward me with an impassive face.

“Can we talk?”

“Talk.” He gave me a palms-up, go-ahead gesture.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I miss you.” So much so I’d found myself sobbing at three a.m. when I discovered Mom washed his sweatshirt and it no longer smelled like him. It had been three awful days since Jinx died. Three days of Gyver acting like I didn’t exist.

“I miss you too, but it doesn’t change things.” He raked his hair into chaos and hooked his thumb in his pocket.

“Will you forgive me?” I ached to reach for him, so I clasped my hands behind my back.

“It’s not forgiveness. It’s self-preservation. God, Mi—don’t you get it?” He hesitated, then walked over to his car. He reached in the driver’s door and fumbled in the console before pulling out a battered envelope. “I’ve been carrying this for weeks. It’s a mix for you.”