Aria rang the doorbell to Abigail’s house while Simon kept un-tucking and re-tucking his plaid button-down shirt into his belted jeans.
When the door opened, an older woman with blonde hair and blue eyes matching Abigail’s appeared. “Hi! You must be Abbi’s friends. I’ve heard so much about you three!” She smiled bright, inviting us inside. “I’m her mom, Nancy. Come on in! We are just getting everything going with the games and things. It means the world to us that you came!”
We followed her into their huge living room where balloons covered the ceiling and a bunch of people who looked exactly like Abigail were sitting around, laughing, eating appetizers, and dancing around the room. The energy of the place was explosive. Over the fireplace was a huge banner that read, “Abbi’s CF Party!”
Abigail walked up to us, still doing that weird normal walking pace thing and still wearing normal clothes. She smiled big. “Hey! Thanks for coming. Follow me and you can put your coats in my bedroom, come on.”
We all eyed one another, but did as she said and followed her toward her room. Abigail’s bedroom walls were covered in the same positive quotes that she spouted off to us daily.
“You can toss your coats onto my bed. Then we can go—”
“Time out,” Simon cut in. “What’s a CF party exactly?”
Abigail’s eyes fell to Simon’s, and she shrugged, nonchalant. “A cancer-free party.”
“Why the heck would you have a—” Simon lowered his brows and shook his head back and forth. “Wait, what?”
“Abigail, you have cancer?” Aria blurted out, her eyes wide with confusion.
I was the only one who knew this already, but the shock that filled Simon’s and Aria’s faces made my stomach flip.
“Had. As of a few days ago, we just found out that it’s all—”
“WHAT THE FUCK?!” Simon shouted, his body tense, his fists tightened. “WHAT IN THE GODDAMN HELL DO YOU MEAN YOU HAD CANCER?!”
He was fuming, moments away from falling apart.
“What does it matter?” Abigail asked, raising a brow. “Why are you so upset? It’s gone.”
Simon huffed and puffed, scratching at the back of his neck. “Right. So that just makes it okay? So the way we find out that you had cancer is at a freaking cancer-free party with yellow and purple effing balloons?!”
“They’re my favorite colors,” Abigail explained, blinking rapidly. “I don’t understand why you’re so mad. I invited you to the party.”
He pounded his fist against his mouth and shouted, “How fucking considerate!” He hurried out of the room, kicking the few yellow and purple balloons that were floating around the ground.
After Simon stormed out of Abigail’s room, I followed him to make sure he was all right.
He wasn’t. He stood in the living room with her family, popping and kicking as many balloons as possible. I gave Abigail’s family a tight smile, grabbed Simon’s arm, and pulled him out of the house.
Simon stood on the front porch, pacing, shouting as if he were still fighting with Abigail. “How could you be so fucking selfish?!” he screamed. “A cancer-free party when no one knew you had cancer?!”
“Si,” I said, placing my hand on his shoulder. He hastily turned to face me.
“Can you believe that?! Who would do that to someone?!” His nostrils flared as he went back to his quick pacing.
“She’s okay, though. The cancer’s gone.”
“But what if she wasn’t?!” he cried, slamming his body down to sit on the top step of the porch. The palms of his hands brushed against his brow before he stared forward. “What if she wasn’t okay? You don’t understand. One day my sister was there, and then she wasn’t. Would it have been like that with Abigail? Would we have just walked into school, expecting to hear her quote some random old guy at our table but then she would’ve never shown up? And then would the principal get on the loud speaker and tell us that one of our classmates met an untimely death due to her battle with cancer? Gah! That girl pisses me off so damn much!”