"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
~Dr. Seuss
➳♀♁➳
"Sky, I can explain."
Oliver jumps from the chair, immediately dropping Cora's hand. I can't stop staring at her face. The admiration that was there the split second before she noticed me. The rejection that's there now, her eyes staring down at the hand Oliver's discarded. Her eyes meet mine, and there's a choice written across her face.
She purses her lips.
Fine.
"I see you're busy," I say bluntly, twisting on my heels and marching through the open door. I almost slam it shut, but Oliver follows too close behind.
Slam it in his asshole face, I think.
"Skylar, please wait—"
I don't. I march down the stairs, through the kitchen, and to the front door this time. No need to hide my exit anymore, and I really do feel like slamming a door.
"She asked me to come over, and I—"
"And you what?" I spin around. I can feel the hot rage bubbling in my stomach about to pour out through my lips. "Decided to play Mommy and Daddy and live happily ever after in her room? Meanwhile I haven't even seen her—"
I rip open the front door and in a millisecond, his arm flies over my shoulder and pushes it shut. I feel the warmth from his body heat against my back, my stomach flipping.
"Skylar," he whispers, voice low and husky. "I'm so sorry."
I flip around. "Are you now?"
His eyes almost roll. "Will you let me finish?" I cross my arms. "I didn't know you hadn't seen her. She asked me to come the day she got back." He runs a hand through his messy head of hair, and for the first time I realize how tired he looks.
His eyes are rimmed with dark sleeplessness, and for the first time since I'd met him, his shirt was plain black. No band name written across it.
I sigh. "I just want to be there for her, you know?"
"Yeah," he nods. "I do." He takes each of my hands in his and rubs his thumbs in small circles. I can feel a weight releasing from my shoulders. "I'm just trying to be her friend," he continues. "But that doesn't mean I'm trying to replace you."
That's not what I'm worried about, I think to myself. Sure, it stung that Cora had been seeing Oliver for an entire month without letting me in, but the worst part had been her expression. The compete infatuation on her face as she stared at Oliver.
I knew Cora. I knew her like I knew my own face in the mirror. The way she wrung her hands together when she was nervous. The was she pressed her lips together three times after applying chapstick.
The way she looked when she saw something she liked. The way she looked at Oliver —
She liked him. There was no doubt about that.
➳♀♁➳
Hospitals are musty.
My foot taps endlessly against the brown tile of the waiting room. My skin itched, as it always did when I sat in this place. One of the cleanest facilities in the world always made me feel like I was covered in a million ten-legged bugs.
Hospitals tend to try to distract you. They'll give a patient a stuffed bear to squeeze, and the parents free refills from the fancy coffee maker down the hall, but that didn't change their nature. Hospitals reminded me of all the bad things — of all the monsters hiding behind masks, waiting to strike. Everyone dies, and hospitals are usually a place you swing by on the way there. This hospital had a waiting room with four TV's, a ping-pong table, and a rock climbing wall that came up to my hip. No accidents could happen on a three foot tall climbing wall. No fun, either.
I huff, exhaling loudly.
James glances over, wrapping his fingers around mine and squeezing. I squeeze back.
He knew how uncomfortable I'd been lately, but he didn't know how alone. His hand felt like a lifeline. My brain screamed "run," but he reminded me to stay.
Stay for Molly.
Stay for mom when she was gone.
"Did you reapply to Michigan?" I ask, tossing down the magazine I'd been riffing through with my free hand. James had withdrawn his acceptance to stay with the family for another year. No one knew when the end would come, and he swore he wouldn't be all the way in Michigan when it did. But my parents were urging him to reapply for the following year. With his grades, he could probably still qualify for the scholarships he'd had before.
"No," he says after a while. "I mean I want to." He clears his throat. "Part of me wants to leave right now and bury my head in a distraction, but another part of me says Fuck Michigan."
I laugh, which surprises us both. I hadn't laughed in a while.
He cracks a smile. "You know? College is so important, but it feels like—" he drifts off.
"Nothing compared to this," I finish. His lips press into a firm line and he nods. A mother steps in front of us, dragging an unwilling child behind her. I move my legs to accomodate. "You know you can do anything you want to, right?"
He shrugs.
"Mr. Thirty-Four ACT," I prod. "You have endless opportunities, and I know how excited you were to pursue engineering at University of Michigan." He looks down at our hands. "Don't let this stop you. Don't let this bury your dreams."
James smiles, but it's sad. The upward slant of his lips contradicts the tears gathering in his eyes.
"I could say the same to you," he says suddenly, knocking my shoulder playfully. "I haven't seen you applying anywhere yet."
I roll my eyes. "Okay, mom. I'm only a junior — I have time."
He tisks. "We often think we have more time than we do."
Biting my lip, I say, "You know what I mean."
In truth, I just don't want to think about it. I used to love the idea of leaving, moving several states away and making everyone miss me. Now I didn't want to go. I wanted everything normal, the same.
"Oliver wants to be a firefighter."
I almost choke at this. I glance sideways at James. "A what?"
He laughs. "I had a similar reaction, but I actually think he'd be good at it."
"You don't have to go to college for that, right?" I ask.
James tilts his head, rubbing a hand against the stubble on his chin. "No, I don't think so."
I picture Oliver as a firefighter, dressed in a red and black uniform, sliding down poles, running into burning buildings.
"Not the safest career choice," James continues, "but an admirable one. He's never wanted to go to college anyway."
I stare at my hands, twisting them into nervous shapes.
"Do you know if he wants to do it around here?" I mean for it to sound nonchalant and unattached, but I can see by his expression I'm a horrible actress.
"Yeah, Sky," he says with a knowing smirk. "He's staying."
My heart soars.
Yours won't be the only, a voice in my head whispers. As if I could forget Oliver's growing admirers.
The sun must've pushed passed a cloud, because the entire room fills with soft rays of light. They glide across the floor, like warm helpers. I imagine them as little bits of magic, sweeping through rooms and healing sick children. As if a small ray of light could bring the life back into a heart.
But I'd learned by now that light doesn't always keep the darkness out.
"James and Skylar?"
Our heads turn in the direction of the voice, a short nurse I recognize. She smiles as we approach, and asks how our days have been. I mutter something nondescript and James launches into a full monologue.
He probably knows her. James was always good about visiting Molly the first time around. He'd been positive that time too, at least in public. He hadn't run away, anyway. I was the only Lane who did that.
➳♀♁➳
Outside of Room 303 stands my mother. She'd changed a lot in the past month, though who could blame her? Where there used to be sleek black hair that shined at every angle, there now hung limp waves. Fear and exhaustion pocketed under her eyes, and frown lines etched caverns in her cheeks. She was still beautiful, there was no doubt about that, but it seemed that the life had been stripped out.
"Hi, mum," I say softly. She looks up as James and I approach, and the nurse waves hello before retreating down the hall.
James hugs my mothers thin frame and asks, "Where's Dad?"
She'd gotten so skinny. It made her already defined cheek bones look even sharper. "He's getting some food from the cafeteria." She wrinkled her nose, the ghost of a smile on her lips. "Maybe you want to help him, James?"
He nods, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder before heading down the hall.
I take his place, sidling up next to my mother. She stands a good six inches taller than me, something I'd always been jealous of. My mother was regal, the most gorgeous woman I knew.
"How's Mol?" I ask.
My mom purses her lips. "They're in the middle of speech therapy," she says. "I didn't want to cry in front of her."
The speech therapy always made my mom sad. The tumors in Molly's brain were eroding the parts that allowed her to speak. Every day it became harder and harder for her to formulate sentences. Our once bubbly and talkative Molly now had to fight to produce words.
I take my moms hand, warming it with my own.
"How's Cora?" she asks, probably to change the subject.
Cora's close friends and family were the only people who knew what really happened. The Creevy's weren't pressing charges or sharing the story, for fear it would ruin Mr. Creevy's chances in the upcoming election. It made my blood boil to think about it, how he cared more about political gain than his own daughter. The story was that she had mono. Really bad, long-lasting mono. The lie wasn't going to stick much longer.
My parents found out when I broke down crying at the hospital the day after. When they'd told us about Molly, I cried about every other horrible thing in my life. I knew they weren't going to share the story without permission, and it made me feel better knowing they knew.
"I don't know," I say in response.
My mother's brows twitch. "What do you mean?"
I sigh. "I didn't even get to talk with her." Then, hesitating, "She was too busy holding hands with Oliver."
Now her brows dip. She'd always been much too expressive. "And what does that have to do with anything?"
"She likes him, mom," I say, biting my lip.
She actually rolls her eyes. "So what? You barely liked him a month ago, and now you're going to let your jealousy get in the way of a six-year-long friendship?"
I blink.
"She needs you, Skylar. She needs you more than you think you need Oliver."
I almost want to laugh at how normal this moment seems. My mom scolding me about friends and boys, giving good advice that I don't want to hear. I nearly whine just to complete it.
"I thought you liked Oliver," I say.
She rolls her eyes again. I was always horrible at the mother-daughter heart-to-hearts. "I do, because I know how much he cares about you," a ray of sun drifts across her face, turning her dark irises to liquid obsidian, "but my love for Cora will always surpass it. And right now, she should be your priority." She sighs. "Not a boy."
She was right, and it wasn't hard to admit. I'd been selfish. Who cared if my best friend liked my not-even-boyfriend? She'd been through something horrible and deserved support.
"I know," I say. "You're right."
She lifts a hand to my cheek, smiling. "Well hell must've frozen over — what did you say?"
I laugh. "Mom, stop —"
"I'm —" she pretends to faint, "—right?"
What a weirdo.
"Let's go in," I say, sobering. "I haven't seen my baby sister yet."
➳♀♁➳
Every time I see Molly, it's like seeing her in a new light. Sometimes the cancer overtakes her, making black bruises and ripping out hair. Sometimes she looks healthy as ever, eyes bright and smile wide.
Today she looks almost normal. I smile as I step into the room, murmuring a, "Hey, Mol," while stepping up to the bed. Last week she got a bad cold, her immune system too weak to fight it, so she was on strict orders not to walk around. Today, she looks refreshed, and nearly explodes from under the covers to greet me.
"Sk-Skylaw," she stammers, and the speech therapist gives me a sideways glance.
"Almost done, Molly," she says in a smooth voice. "Just repeat after me a few more times, okay?"
Molly nods, but her eyes stay hooked on me. "W-watch this, Sk-Skylaw," she says proudly.
The therapist says a few words slowly, stringing them into nonsense sentences. Molly follows along happily, stuttering through the words until the doctor says, "Good job!"
They told us that everything deserves congratulations, even when it takes Molly a full minute to get a word out. Love and hope — encouragement — are going to save her.
The speech therapist finally steps back from the bed saying, "Alright, Molly, I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
"O-okay," Molly says, and then it's like I'm the only other person in the room. Molly reaches her hand out greedily and I smile, taking it. She pulls me into the bed with her, and I tug us both under the covers. We're in our cave, now.
"Y-you can be t-the prin—cess t-this time, Sk-Sky," Molly says.
So we play Princess and Dragon, where Molly roars and makes adorably scary faces and I pretend I need a prince to save me. It's almost like I have my sister back.
After a while, James and my dad come back with burgers that look just edible enough to be cafeteria food. Molly and I come out from under the covers and eat together in bed.
"Wh-where's Olive?" Molly asks in between bites.
Oliver came to the hospital at least once a week, usually driving me home if I got too sad to take myself. Molly loved him, because he was always the prince.
"He's at home today," I respond. "But he promises to visit tomorrow."
Her eyes light up. "I c-can show h-h-h—" Molly gets stuck in her stuttering, and I give an encouraging smile until she can get through it. "I can s-show him how m-much b-better I can t-talk now."
"You certainly can," I say back. "I'm sure he'll be almost as impressed as I am."
Molly smiles a smile that stretches from ear to ear.
Later, my little sister's eyes droop shut. She gets tired so much more quickly, and today was a big day for her.
"She looks like she's getting better," I say to my mom after Molly's fallen asleep in my lap. I stroke the thin hair she has left, pulling it away from her plump cheeks.
My mom offers a weak smile. The doctor's told us she had a month, tops, and I knew it hurt my mom to hope.
Light from the falling sun drifts across the floor through gossamer curtains. It sweeps across Molly's face, enveloping it in a soft glow. James puts down his computer and slides into the chair next to the bed. He takes Molly's small hand in his large one.
"Dear God," my mother whispers softly, "please take care of my baby."
The sun slips below the horizon but Molly still glows.
She reminds me of an angel.