Maybe One Day (17 page)

“Bet you wish you were immunosuppressed right about now,” said Olivia, smiling at me.

“You know it,” I said. Stacy was annoying; there was no denying that. Still, she and the other cheerleaders had put this whole day together, which was kind of amazing. The fact that simply being cheerleaders gave them so much power
was insanely stupid, but at least they were using that power for good, not for evil. I looked around me. Probably half the school had turned out for this event. More, maybe.

And suddenly, I had a brainstorm.

“Hey, Stacy, can I talk to you for a sec?” I asked.

“Totally!” Stacy said. As she and I stepped away from the group, Olivia gave me a puzzled look, but I pretended not to see. “So, what’s up?” Stacy asked as soon we were standing by ourselves.

“I kind of need your help,” I said. And I sketched out my plan for Monday morning.

I’d been as disappointed as Olivia when her mom had said she could only stay at the car wash for an hour, but when the hour was up, even I had to admit that Livvie was clearly zonked. She wasn’t exactly leaning on me and Jake as we walked out of the parking lot, but she was definitely moving slowly, and she practically fell into the car when her dad opened the door for her.

“You overdid it,” her mom said, her hand pressed to Olivia’s forehead. “Oh, I was so afraid of this.”

“I’m okay, Mom. Really.” She leaned against the seat and closed her eyes. “I’m okay.”

But by the time we got back to her house, she didn’t seem okay. She was shivering, and her teeth were chattering. Her dad and her mom helped her into the house and up the stairs.
Then Mrs. Greco went out into the hall closet to get more blankets. Together, without saying a word, she and I covered Olivia with them.

I was scared. Olivia’s hand felt hot to the touch, and she was dozing in an unnatural way, like she wasn’t falling asleep so much as she was being pulled under.

“I knew this was a terrible idea,” Mrs. Greco said under her breath. “I just knew it.” Her eyes scanned the room, and when they landed on me, I tried to make myself as small as possible.

I could hear Mr. Greco on the phone. “Yes, I’m calling for Dr. Maxwell,” he said. Mrs. Greco went into the hallway as Mr. Greco gave whoever he was talking to his phone number.

“I think we should take her right to the ER,” I heard Mrs. Greco say. Her voice was sharp.

Mr. Greco sounded calm. “I want to wait and hear what the doctor says.”

“Who knows when she’ll call back? You
know
how long it can take them to call back.” Mrs. Greco sounded nearly frantic at the prospect of waiting.

“If it’s an emergency, she’ll call back.”

“She’s
unconscious
.”

“She’s
sleeping
. Dr. Maxwell said she might run fevers and that if she did, we should call. She did
not
tell us to bring Olivia to the emergency room. Her counts were up yesterday. She’s nowhere near as vulnerable as she was last time this happened.”

“You don’t know that. I want to take her to the hospital now.”

“If Dr. Maxwell doesn’t call back in thirty minutes, we’ll take her.” For the first time since we’d gotten back to their house, Mr. Greco raised his voice. “Your getting hysterical isn’t helping, Adriana! Now get ahold of yourself and go in there and help your daughter! I’ll get the ibuprofen.”

My parents bicker constantly, but I’d never heard the Grecos fight in public. Not that the hallway of their house was public, exactly, but still. I’d never heard them fight. Period.

Olivia moaned quietly. Or maybe it was a sigh. If I had to pick a side, I was on Mrs. Greco’s. I wanted Olivia to be with doctors. I wanted her to be where people knew exactly what was wrong with her. What
could
be wrong with her.

Mrs. Greco pushed into the room. I tried to make my eyes convey that I was totally in agreement with her, but she didn’t even look directly at me. “Zoe, I’m sorry, but I think it’s too chaotic with everyone here.” Since I was the only person there, it was clear that she meant for me to go home.

I didn’t want to go. I was scared to leave Olivia, scared of what would happen while I was gone. But what was I going to do? It wasn’t like I could say no to Olivia’s mother.

Mr. Greco came in with a bottle of Advil and a glass of water. He didn’t even seem to register that I was standing there, just walked around the bed to stand by his wife.

“How are we going to get her to take those? She’s asleep,”
snapped Mrs. Greco.

“We’re going to wake her up.” He looked down at the bed. “Olivia,” he said quietly.

“Mmm? I’m okay.” She didn’t open her eyes, just rolled her head back and forth on the pillow.

“Olivia,” he repeated, sharply this time. Then he slipped his arm under her back and sat her up. “Olivia, I need you to wake up now.” Under the command, his voice sounded scared to me. His being scared made me scared.

“Zoe, I think you should go,” said Mrs. Greco.

I thought I should stay, but I couldn’t say that. I couldn’t say anything.

Except good-bye.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

18

The last place I would have expected to be six hours later was sitting with Mia and Bethany in the backseat of Lashanna’s sister’s car, driving to the blowout party Mack Wilson was throwing to celebrate our victory over Lancaster, a rivalry that in all my years as a Wamasset student I’d never understood or cared about.

Yet there I was.

What I really wanted was to be with Olivia, but when I called at eight, after waiting as long as I could stand it, her mom just said they were watching and waiting and that Dr. Maxwell “knew the situation.” I asked if she could call me if anything happened, and she said she would. Almost the second I hung up my phone, it rang, and I was sure it was Mrs. Greco telling me Olivia had to go to the hospital. But it wasn’t. It was Mia. She said there was a huge party at Mack Wilson’s house and Lashanna’s sister was giving them a ride and did I want to go. I said I didn’t, that Olivia was sick and I was going to stay
home and wait to hear from her mom how she was doing. Mia said she understood, but five minutes later she called me back.

“I just heard Jake Greco’s going to the party.”

That didn’t surprise me. Jake and his friends went to a
lot
of parties. You did not have to write the
Wamasset Herald
’s gossip column to know that Jake and his friends pretty much
were
Wamasset parties.

“And you’re telling me this because . . .” I was lying on my floor staring up at my ceiling. Part of me wished I could just crawl under the bed and stay there until Mrs. Greco called me back with an update on Olivia.

“Because if her brother’s going, that means Olivia must be okay.”

It was kind of irritating how Mia was being all pushy about this. “She’s hardly okay, Mia. She has cancer.”

“Oh,
really
? I had no idea,” said Mia. “And will your sitting at home and worrying about her be curing her cancer?”

“Ha-ha.”

“Look, not to sound like a cheerleader, but at the car wash today, Lashanna and I were talking about how everybody was all worried about Olivia, but nobody was taking care of you. We were worried about you, okay? So sue us.”

It was weird to imagine Mia and Lashanna talking about me. Worrying about me. It made me feel a little bit defensive and a little bit good. “I don’t know what to say,” I admitted.

“Just repeat after me,” said Mia. “‘I will come to the party.’”

Jake was going to the party. Would Jake go to a party if his sister were dying?

Once again, I heard my dad’s voice.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint
.

“Yeah,” I said hesitantly. “Okay.”

“Awesome,” said Mia. “We’ll pick you up in about an hour.”

For a while after I hung up the phone, I stayed on my floor. Eventually I got to my feet and looked at myself in my full-length mirror. I was still wearing the yoga pants and the cropped T-shirt I’d put on to teach dance class that morning. It seemed impossible that so much had happened—the car wash, Livvie’s fever—and I was still in the same stupid outfit I’d put on at eight. I stripped it off almost angrily and went to shower.

Normally my parents went out on Saturday nights, but my dad had a big deadline Monday, so they’d been planning on staying home even before Olivia started running a fever. When I went downstairs, they were sitting at the dining room table with my dad’s laptop open in front of them. My mom was holding a glass of wine and reading something over my dad’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” my mom said, eyes on the computer screen. “That’s much clearer. I mean, to a layperson. To me. As a stand-in for a generic layperson.” They both laughed, and my dad said, “Great,” then shuffled through a pile of papers on the chair next to him.

“Hey,” I said. They both turned to look at me, and I felt suddenly self-conscious. I gave a little wave.

My mom did a double take. “Honey, you look beautiful.”

“Really?” I looked down at what I was wearing. “You think?”

“Let’s see,” said my dad, pushing his reading glasses up onto his head. “Oh, yes. Beautiful.”

Earlier, as I’d stood in front of my closet debating what to wear, I’d gotten sad. Olivia and I always got dressed together—either in person or on the phone—to go out. Trying to get ready for a party without her was worse than sitting home and waiting to hear if she was okay. Wrapped in a towel, I’d gone over to the phone and called her house.

Her dad answered. “How’s Olivia?” I asked, and then I blurted out, “Do you think it would help if I came over?”

Mr. Greco has a really deep voice, and the phone practically rumbled in my hand. “The doctor’s going to call us back in half an hour. There’s nothing for you to do right now.”

“Oh. You have my cell, right?”

“Yes, Zoe,” he said. “I’m sure we do.” Then he hung up.

I don’t think he’d meant to be mean, but
I’m sure we do
felt a helluva lot like
I don’t care if we don’t
. After that, I’d pretty much grabbed the first articles of clothing I’d found in my closet, thrown them on, and headed downstairs.

“It’s really nice,” said my mom, nodding her approval of my black skirt and pale pink tank top with the sheer, white, long-sleeved
shirt over it.

The only thing I was wearing that Olivia hadn’t helped me buy was my underwear.

“Are you going out or something?” my dad asked.

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I got invited to this party.” I gave a little laugh.

“‘This party’?” my mom echoed.

“Just this party. With a few girls. You know, from the soccer team.”

My parents eyed me. To their credit, neither of them pointed out that it had been their idea for me to play soccer in the first place.

“I see,” said my dad. “And will there be parents at ‘this party’? The one with a few girls? From the soccer team?”

“God, Dad, of course.”

“Well”—my mom stood up, came over, and gave me a hug—“have a good time.”

As it turned out, there were not parents at this party. In fact, there were very
much
not parents at this party.

It was a cold night, and there were only a few people standing out on the lawn, but every person hanging outside was holding a cup of beer (if not two) in each hand. Inside, the enormous modern white house was packed with kids, and everywhere people were drinking.

This party had
my parents are out of town
written all over it.

The second I crossed the threshold, bumping into a drunk girl who cried, “Oh, shit!” as she spilled her beer down her shirt, I knew that coming had been an enormous mistake. I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t have a good time. I so did not belong here. As Lashanna, Mia, and Bethany headed toward the sunken living room, I lingered by the front door, thinking I would just call my mom to pick me up.

“You okay?” asked Mia, turning and looking at me over her shoulder.

I shrugged. “I don’t know, I’m—”

“
Zoe!
How’s my girl?” Jake appeared out of nowhere, Emma trailing behind. He threw his arm around me in a drunken embrace, nearly clocking me in the face with a bottle he was holding, then sloppily kissed the top of my head. “Come here,” he ordered. “Come hang with us.”

“Yeah,” Emma echoed, plucking nervously at the bodice of her tight red minidress. “Come hang with us.”

It was easier to agree than to object, and before I could say anything to Mia, Jake had led me through the crowd and into a small room off the main hallway, where a bunch of guys were playing a video game on the biggest TV I’d ever seen. He sat down on an empty sofa and pulled me down next to him. Since there wasn’t any room for her on the couch, Emma balanced on the arm beside Jake, who immediately turned his back to her.

“How are you? Are you doing okay?” Jake asked.

I shrugged. “Yeah. I’m okay. I guess I’m okay.”

He handed me the bottle he’d been holding. “Try this. It’s really good.”

I took it from him and sipped tentatively. I’d drunk my share of wine and beer and even champagne, and my conclusion had been that I really didn’t like the taste of alcohol. But clearly I’d never tasted anything like this before—it was sweet and sour and cold and delicious. It made me think of the word
ambrosia
. “What is it?” I asked. Without waiting for an answer, I took a deep swig.

“Cherry-infused vodka,” Jake said, grinning. “It’s good, right?”

“Yeah.” I took another healthy swig.

Jake put his arm around me. “This thing with Olivia is just so fucked up.” I glanced over at Emma. We made eye contact, and from her glare, it was clear that she wasn’t happy about how Jake and I were sitting.

“It’s fine,” I assured her. “Seriously. He’s like my big brother.”

Jake glanced up at Emma. “Oh, baby, are you freaking out? Don’t freak out. Me and Zoe are just talking.” While he explained the situation to Emma, I took a long, deep swallow of the cherry-flavored drink. It was so sweet. But it was also sour. Sweet and sour. That was like me and Olivia: sweet and sour.