Send Me a Sign

Chapter 3

“Can we stop somewhere? I hate talking in the car; I never know where to look. I know you have to watch the road, but I feel like I’m having a conversation with the side of your face and you’re talking to the windshield.”

Gyver eased his car into the parking lot for East Lake’s “beach.” It closed at sundown, and the only other things on the pavement were litter: sunblock bottles, deflated floaties, snack wrappers.

He raised an eyebrow, waiting for me to begin. I took a sip from the water bottle in his cup holder. It was out of a need to do something, not thirst. I choked it down with an awkward coughing noise.

He snorted. “You okay?”

I didn’t want to tell him what was strangling me—saying the news aloud would make it real. I pulled my knees up and tucked them beneath my chin.

Gyver’s hair looked blue black in the glow of the parking lot’s lights. His face was a series of beautiful angles and shadows, but I could still see him as he’d been: the little boy who’d been bullied in elementary school for being named MacGyver after a cheesy eighties TV show about a guy who liked duct tape. I’d defended him then, and he’d been my best ally ever since. I needed him now.

“Remember about a week ago when you asked if Hil and I were cat fighting—because I had bruises?” I regretted my choice of openings; annoyance spilled across Gyver’s features.

“I was joking. What’s Hillary have to do with anything?” “Nothing, but your comment made me notice how much I’m bruising.” I held up my elbow as proof; showing him the purplish bull’s-eye that marked the spot I’d just banged on the door.

Gyver touched it with two cool fingers. “Are you okay, Mi?” “No.” I swallowed against the tightness in my throat, the fear that piled like stones in my stomach. “I’ve also been really tired and I had a fever. Mom and I went to the doctor and he took some blood. He called me back the next day for more. We went to Lakeside Hospital for tests yesterday—they took a sample of bone marrow from my hip. Today we met with the head of oncology.” I felt detached, as if narrating the details of someone else’s life.

“What is it? Just tell me.” His hand curled around my arm, hitting the bruise, making me wince.

“Leukemia,” I whispered, the word sharp and acidic in my mouth.

“Leukemia?” His eyebrows had disappeared under tousled hair, and his face and voice were pleading.

I forced myself to continue. “It’s called acute lymphoblastic leukemia. ALL for short. It’s blood cancer; my body’s making lots of bad white blood cells. They’re called blasts—and they’re crowding out all of my good cells.” I parroted the words the doctor used that afternoon. My voice was emotionless, but my arms were trembling. I squeezed my knees tighter and tipped my head against the cool glass of the window in a last-ditch effort to blink back tears. I hadn’t cried in the doctor’s office. Hadn’t on the drive home. Hadn’t while getting ready. But with Gyver, it seemed like the only thing left to do.

“What do the doctors say? Mi?” He sounded little-boy lost, like the first time we’d watched Bambi.

I stared at the car’s ceiling, speaking around the stutters in my breathing. “It’s aggressive. That’s the word they kept using.

‘An aggressive form of cancer,’ ‘its spread is aggressive,’ ‘we need to start aggressive treatment immediately.’ ” I shut my eyes and tears traced salt lines down my face.

“That’s why I went to the party tonight. I just needed to feel normal for a few more hours. Before my life becomes a mess of chemo and doctors and drugs.” The last barrier between me and detachment fell, and the doctor’s words hit with suffocating reality. “God . . . I have cancer.”