The fantasy was awesome, which may explain why I lied to her. “Nah. I was kind of over dance.”
“Got it.” We turned down the hallway toward the cafeteria. It was more crowded here, with some people shoving to get in and others shoving to get out.
“You know,” said Mia, turning to me, “freshman year I was überintimidated by the two of you.”
I practically choked on my gum. “You were?”
“I was!” Mia imitated my tone exactly, then laughed. “Is that so surprising? You’re both tall and gorgeous. And you disappeared into Manhattan after school every day.” We stepped into the river of kids headed to the cafeteria. “I saw you once at The Nutcracker when my mom and I took my niece. I mean, I didn’t see you see you. Like, I couldn’t pick you out. But your names were in the program.”
I shook my head, as much at the idea of Mia’s being at the ballet as at the thought of her searching for us in a sea of dancers. “That’s so weird. I mean that we were on your radar like that.”
Mia raised an incredulous eyebrow at me. “It’s not weird, Zoe. You and Olivia were famous. I figured you were way too cool to hang out with regular people like me.”
“Really? You thought we were cool?” I squeaked, so uncool that both Mia and I laughed. She held open the door to the cafeteria and I followed her in. As we joined a table, I composed a text in my head to Livvie, telling her about how cool and terrifying the population of Wamasset had once found us.
I was irritated that Livvie didn’t respond to my text, which was, frankly, hilarious. Wasn’t she just sitting in the waiting room of Dr. Weiss, our pediatrician? Or sitting at Driscoll’s Pharmacy waiting for her mom to fill a prescription? Or sitting and waiting for me to call her? I didn’t stay home sick from school all that often, but when I did, that was my routine. The bell rang, ending math, our last period of the day, and Mr. Schumacher nodded in my direction. “You’ll give Olivia the homework.”
“Sure,” I said, then muttered under my breath, “if she ever texts me back.”
I went to my locker and slowly made my way outside. It was sunny but way cooler than it had been that morning, and I shivered, wishing I’d worn a jacket. The football team was heading out to the field all the way on the other side of the campus. I considered asking Jake if he knew where Olivia was, but the team was so far away I couldn’t even figure out which of the uniformed guys he was.
Just as I decided it wasn’t worth bothering, since Jake wasn’t going to have any idea anyway, my phone rang. Livvie! Finally. I dug my phone out of my bag.
But it wasn’t Livvie. It was some 212 number I didn’t recognize. This was getting so annoying.
“Hello?”
“Zoe?”
It was Livvie. But why was she calling me from an unfamiliar number?
“Livs!” I was so glad to hear from her I wasn’t even mad that she hadn’t called me back earlier. “Where have you been all day? Whose phone are you calling from?”
“My phone’s out of juice. Zoe, I have to tell you something.” Olivia’s voice sounded thin, as if she were calling from far away on a line with a bad connection. It didn’t help that it was super noisy in front of the school, where all two thousand members of the student body seemed to have chosen to gather before heading off to their afternoon activities. I pressed my free hand to my ear, trying to hear better.
“Where are you?” I moved away from the crowded concrete circle by the front entrance and onto the lawn.
“Zoe, I’m … I’m at the hospital.”
“The hospital?” For some reason, I thought of the twins. Could one of them have been in an accident? The possibility made my heart drop. Tommy and Luke could be super annoying, but they were also adorable. Last year, when they were in second grade and neither of them had their front teeth, Tommy would pronounce Zoe “Thoe.”
“I’m sick, Zoe,” said Livvie.
“Wait, you’re sick?” I was still thinking about the twins. “Hang on a second … what?”
“I’m at UH,” said Olivia.
University Hospital was only a few blocks from the Fischer Center, where NYBC was located. We’d driven by it every day on our way to and from dance classes and performances, its glass towers telling us we were just minutes from our destination or that we’d begun the journey home.
“But you were just at the doctor’s office.” I knew, even as I said it, that it was a stupid thing to say. It wasn’t like there was no way to travel from the doctor’s office to the hospital.
Olivia’s voice was freakishly precise. “The doctor found a bruise on the back of my leg,” she said.
“I saw that!” I shouted, remembering the bruise from when I’d slept over Saturday night. It was dark purple and spidery, and I’d almost asked her about it, but then we’d started talking about something else and I’d forgotten.
Livvie continued. “Well, she saw it and she asked how I’d gotten it, and I said I didn’t know, and then she found this other one on my arm—on the back—”
“I didn’t see that one,” I admitted. Why was I interrupting her? I pressed my lips together to get my mouth to stop asking questions.
“It’s there,” Olivia told me, as if I’d doubted her. “I saw it in the mirror. Anyway, then the doctor started asking about the bruises, and how long I’ve had the fever, and then my mom said that I’d been really tired lately and she asked if maybe I could be anemic. And Dr. Weiss said she wanted us to go to the Med Center.”
The Med Center was a cross between a doctor’s office and an emergency room. They had X-ray machines and doctors and stuff, but I didn’t think you would go there if you were having a heart attack. “Yeah,” I said, “I know where that is. Remember when my dad stepped on a nail last summer? My mom and I took him.”
Looking back at that conversation, I can’t help wondering: Did I know? Did I know what was coming, and did I think that as long as I wouldn’t let Livvie say the words, they wouldn’t be true?
“They took blood,” she went on. “And they found abnormal cells.”
“Abnormal cells,” I echoed.
“Abnormal cells,” she repeated. “And they said they wanted us to go to UH so they could do a bone marrow aspiration. That’s when they take some bone marrow out of your pelvic bone with a needle.”
“A needle? Oh God, Liv.” I clutched my arm in sympathy, even though I knew that wasn’t where your pelvic bone was.
“My dad came,” Livvie said. Her voice caught for a second, but she didn’t cry. “He came to meet us, and the doctor said that they’d found blasts in my bone marrow.”
“What does that mean?” I whispered.
“They admitted me,” she went on, ignoring my question, “and they put in this thing called a central line. It’s so the medication gets right into your body.”
“The medication?” My voice was a whisper.
“I have leukemia, Zoe.”
I gasped.
“But that’s … that’s impossible.” It was impossible. I knew it was impossible. How could Olivia have leukemia? “There’s a … I mean, there has to be some mistake. How could you be getting medicine already?” Somehow that was the most implausible part of what she’d told me. I’d slept at her house Saturday night. She’d been