Читать книгу Maybe One Day - Melissa Kantor - Страница 16

I’d been expecting to find Olivia asleep or maybe vomiting into a basin, but when I got to the hospital after school, she was sitting up in bed dressed in a pair of jeans and a plaid button-down shirt we’d gotten together at this old-school army-navy store last year. It was good to see her in regular clothes rather than a hospital gown. Her hair was in a thick braid down her back, a style she hadn’t worn in a long time. Her mom was sitting in the pleather chair next to the bed.

“You look really pretty,” I said to Olivia. She did, too. Young, but pretty.

She gave me a thin smile. “They started this new antinausea medication, so I’m supposedly feeling better already.”

“Well, that’s supposedly good news,” I said. “Hi, Mrs. Greco.”

“Hello, Zoe.” Mrs. Greco looked way more tired than she had the day before, and I wondered if she’d had as bad a night’s sleep as I had. “Would you Purell your hands, please?” She smiled at me, but it was a smile I’d never seen on Olivia’s mom’s face before. There was a brittle edge there, like any second it could crack and something sad and scared and ugly would poke through.

I went over to the Purell dispenser, hearing Livvie and her mom talking in whispers behind me. When I turned around, Mrs. Greco was still smiling that creepy smile. “Okay, girls,” she said. “I’ll give you some time. But half an hour. That’s it.” She fussed briefly with Olivia’s bed, and I noticed that someone had brought Olivia’s comforter from home. “Well, that’s better,” said Mrs. Greco, having fixed whatever was bothering her. “Okay. I’ll see you both in a bit.”

As soon as her mom left, Olivia sighed and dropped her head back against the pillow. “She is driving me crazy.”

“She’s freaked out,” I said, making my way over to stand by the bed.

“I wish she’d stop smiling for a minute,” said Olivia. “It’s freaking me out.”

“Yeah, that smile is fucking bizarre,” I agreed.

Livvie leaned toward me and took my hands in hers, then split her face into a terrifying grimace. “How are you feeling, honey? Are you tired? Would you like to eat something? Is it too cold in here? Is it too warm in here? Do you want to walk down the hall? Do you want your book? Can I get you anything? Anything at all?” With each question, she made her smile wider and more frightening. Then she flopped back and let go of my hand. “That’s why I finally let her braid my hair. I figured at least I wouldn’t have to look at her smiling while she did it.”

“It does look nice,” I said.

“I look like a third grader,” Olivia corrected me.

“A very pretty third grader,” I assured her.

She rolled her eyes at me.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I had to call Mrs. Jones at the rec center and tell her I was sick. They’re going to find someone else to teach the ballet class.”

“Oh.” I sat down in the chair her mom had vacated. “Well, I mean, that’s good, right? That they won’t have to cancel it or anything.”

“Yeah, I guess.” But her voice was sad.

I leaned toward her. “Livs?”

She toyed with the edge of her shirt, not meeting my eyes. “I like teaching the class, okay? And I’m just … I’m just feeling sorry for myself. Forget about it, okay? I mean”—she waved her hand around the room—“it’s not like I can teach the class from here. So let’s … let’s talk about something else. Tell me about your day.”

“Livvie …,” I started, and I reached for her hand.

But she shook her head and shut her eyes tightly, not facing me. “Tell me about your day,” she repeated. “Please.”

“Sure,” I said, not sure what else I could do. “Of course.”

Thirty-one minutes later, Mrs. Greco followed me out the door of Olivia’s room and down the hall. “Thanks for coming today, Zoe,” she said. “It means a lot to Olivia.”

I hoped it had, but I wasn’t so sure. Nothing, not even my Calvin-Taylor-really-is-a-vampire story, had seemed to cheer her up.

“I’ve spoken to Mr. Handleman,” she went on, “and it looks like—when she’s well enough—Olivia is going to be able to Skype her classes. But if there’s work that can’t be delivered via computer, I told him you or Jake could be the point person. I hope you don’t mind.” We were standing in front of the elevator, and Mrs. Greco pushed the down button.

“Of course not. I’m glad to help.” My parents always said Olivia was a part of our family, but I didn’t know if the Grecos felt the same way about me. Like, even though Livvie had been calling my parents Ed and Cathy since the day she met them, I still called her parents Mr. and Mrs. Greco. Sometimes I worried that they thought I was a bad influence on Livvie because our family wasn’t religious, my parents let me go to R-rated movies, my dad was a freelance journalist, and my mom earned more money than he did. Meanwhile, the Grecos went to church every Sunday, Mr. Greco was a lawyer who wore suits and went into the city every day, and Mrs. Greco was a stay-at-home mom. Livvie said I was totally paranoid, but I wasn’t so sure.

I didn’t want to explain to Mrs. Greco my whole theory about her thinking my parents were agnostic lefties with no family values, but I wanted her to know how much I loved Olivia. “I really hope you’ll rely on me in any way you can.”

I had this fantasy that Mrs. Greco would hug me, ask me to call her Adriana, and tell me that to her and Mr. Greco I was like family, but she just patted me gently on the cheek. “Of course,” she said. “We know we can count on you.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Greco,” I said. The elevator doors opened and I got on. “That means a lot to me.” And even though I was the one who said it, I couldn’t decide if I was being sarcastic or not.

I missed the train to Wamasset by less than ten minutes, so I had to kill almost an hour waiting for the next one. Penn Station’s got lousy stores, but whenever Livvie and I were stuck waiting for a train, we always managed to find something fun to do, even if it was checking out a shop full of lame touristy stuff or trying on tacky clothes we would never buy. Today, though, the time dragged while I wandered from Hot & Crusty to Duane Reade to New York Inc., finally settling in the waiting area, where I just sat and stared at the board listing the train departures. I couldn’t stop thinking about how sad Livvie had been all afternoon. Not that she shouldn’t have been. I mean, if getting a diagnosis of leukemia doesn’t give you the right to be sad, what does? But the crazy thing was, she almost hadn’t seemed sad about having cancer. It was like not teaching the dance class had been the straw that broke her back.

How was she going to last through weeks of treatment—months of treatment!—with nothing to look forward to besides Skyping her classes and receiving a daily inspirational message from the cheer squad? Thinking about her squeezing her eyes shut to stop herself from crying made me furious, and when I stood up after they announced the train to Wamasset, I was actually shaking my head, as if I were having an argument with the universe about the unfairness of it all.

And the worst part was, there was nothing I could do. I chucked my empty coffee cup in the trash and headed down to the platform. Dr. Maxwell’s telling me Livvie needed her friends suddenly felt like a bad joke. What did she need her friends for—so we could bear witness to her misery?

It wasn’t until the train was almost at my stop that I had my brainstorm. If Olivia could Skype her school classes, why couldn’t she Skype other classes? My hands were practically shaking with excitement as I dialed her number.

“Hey,” she said. She sounded really tired.

My idea burst out of me. “Let’s teach the class together.”

“What?”

I realized from how fuzzy her voice was that I must have woken her up, so I repeated myself, enunciating each word carefully. “Let’s. Teach. The. Class. Together! The dance class. We can use our phones. Or I’ll bring my dad’s laptop or something.”

There was a long pause.

“You don’t have to do this,” Livvie said finally. “I know you don’t want to do this.”

Was she serious?

“Livvie, come on. It’s so nothing.” Given what Olivia was going through, the idea that teaching her dance class with her was some big sacrifice had to be a joke.

I heard a voice in the background, and Livvie said, “I’m okay, Mom. Really.”

“Do you have to go?” I asked her. “We can talk about this tomorrow.”

“It could be a big job, Zoe,” said Olivia, ignoring my offer. “I might … I might be pretty sick sometimes, and … I mean, you might have to do it by yourself.” It sounded like she might be crying a little.

I made my voice mock angry. “Oh, so you think I can’t run a ballet class for beginners? Thanks a lot, bi-yatch!”

Olivia laughed. Like, really laughed. “The recital’s a lot of work—” she began.

“I’m not taking no for an answer,” I interrupted her. “So just, you know, stick that in your pipe and smoke it.”

There was another long pause. I stayed quiet, watching dusk turn the sky over New Jersey a deep purple.

“Zoe, are you sure?”

“Oh my God!” I cried, slapping my hand against the seat next to me. “Will you stop already? I’m doing it and that’s final.”

And suddenly Olivia didn’t sound tired or sick at all. “The girls are so great,” she said, speaking quickly. “I mean, they’ve just had the worst lives, but they’re still really into dancing. This one girl, Imani, she’s lived with four different foster families in the past year. Can you imagine that? Four families!”

I laughed. “Zoe, you don’t have to convince me. It was my idea, remember?”

“Oh. Yeah,” she said. Then she added, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if I’d staged this whole cancer thing just to get you to teach the dance class with me?”

“Hilarious,” I said. The computerized voice announced, “The next stop is Wamasset. Wamasset is the next stop.”

I heard her mom in the background, and this time Olivia said, “I gotta go.”

“Of course,” I said right away. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Zoe.” Olivia sounded slightly out of breath.

“Love ya,” I said, and then she said, “Love ya,” and we hung up. I walked to the door of the car. Even though I hadn’t wanted to make a big deal out of it, I felt good. Really good. Waiting was the worst. Waiting to visit Olivia. Waiting for her to get out of the hospital. To get better. To come back to school.

Doing something—even teaching a dance class—beat the hell out of waiting.