Gyver looked insulted. “When have I ever cared whether a band is considered cool? It’s always about finding the perfect song for the moment.”
“So then what’s your issue with Coldplay?”
He shrugged. “It’s not really an issue, just that a guy should never put Coldplay songs on a playlist for a girl. They’re the ultimate surrender band.”
“Surrender band?”
“As in, I surrender, I’m totally hopelessly in love. Not for friends.” Gyver flushed and unhooked my iPod from his laptop.
“Is that an everyone rule, or just a you rule?”
“Probably just me.” He passed me the iPod. “How about some Brothers K?” He pulled the book from his bag and returned his laptop. Since I was too nauseated to focus, he’d started reading our AP summer books aloud. Audiobooks couldn’t compete with his deep, soothing voice. And they wouldn’t summarize what I missed when I fell asleep.
I nodded and scooted over, making room beside me and waiting for his voice to take us out of the hospital to nineteenth-century Russia.
“Aren’t your friends even worried?” Gyver asked as he scrolled through e-mails on my laptop. He pulled up a photo of the girls sitting on the beach. There was a fourth chair between Ally and Hil, empty except for a plastic tiara. They all pouted at it.
“They don’t know they should be.” I pushed away my dinner tray. I had less than no appetite. Even the sight of food made me want to puke.
“How can they not suspect? You haven’t answered half of these and you never turn on your phone.”
“They probably don’t think anything, because they’re busy living their lives. I told them there’s lousy reception and I respond when I feel up to it.”
When I let myself think about it, the desire to claw my way out of this hospital room and back to my old life—the fourth beach chair, the parties, the lazy afternoons of laughter and chatter—was suffocatingly strong. But I wouldn’t fit like this: broken and sickly. And if I forced myself upon them, I’d ruin all their fun too.
Gyver sat on the edge of my bed and picked up my hand. I was so used to holding his hand now—when I got shots, when they drew blood, when something hurt. We’d held hands constantly when we were little. When had it turned taboo? Why hadn’t I missed it?
“You’re not alone—you have to remember that. So many people care about you. Love you, even.” Squeeze. “I’m here. Our moms are downstairs in the cafeteria. Your friends would come if you let them. You don’t have to do this on your own.”
But I did. When the thing you’re fighting is your own body, you don’t get tag-team allies. There’s no “sitting out this round” or “taking a breather.” I was at war with myself, and that’s lonely.
“That woman!” Mom huffed as she stormed into my hospital room.
“Who? What happened?” I put my laptop on the side table and turned toward her.
“Nancy Russo crossed the line this time. She asked me who your counselor was.”
“Same as Gyver’s. Ms. Piper is the only guidance counselor at East Lake,” I answered.
“No, like therapist.” Mom spat out the word. “Like you need a therapist! You’re popular and well adjusted. You’re a cheerleader! If Nancy spent half as much time worrying about her own son, maybe Gyver wouldn’t have turned out like that.”
I gave myself half a second to be grateful Gyver had already left before asking, “Like what?”
“Introverted.” Mom pronounced it like it was the worst possible swear word. In her mind it probably was. “And then she had the gall to suggest family counseling. Like I’m some crack mother she’s arrested who can’t take care of her own daughter. Family counseling!”
“You know she didn’t mean it like that.”
She tutted at me and went back to being offended. Their friendship was a one-sided competition and I knew from experience that my defending Mrs. Russo only made Mom feel more threatened.
I picked up my laptop and resumed the e-mail I was writing to the girls. I’d figured out it was easier to ask what they were doing than make up lies about all the old-people things I was supposed to be enduring.
The Calendar Girls didn’t doubt me once—which made me feel worse.
I thought about telling them sometimes. When I opened a particularly sweet e-mail from Ally, or one of Hil’s voice mails saying, “If you don’t escape the elderly soon, I’m launching a rescue party,” or when Lauren e-mailed me the rules she invented for drunk shuffleboard, or Chris and Ryan texted pictures from the shore.
Mom reassured me I was “doing the right thing,” but I started looking for signs and made deals with myself. If I don’t need a transfusion today, I’ll tell them. If I throw up less than three times today, I’ll tell them. If I stay awake until noon. If Nurse Snoopy’s wearing her ladybug scrubs. If my numbers are … If the next person through the door is … If there’s green Jell-O with lunch. I never got my “if.”
I woke to laughter—a sound so foreign in my hospital room that I thought I must be dreaming. But no, Gyver and Dad were grinning and deep in conversation.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Music,” answered Gyver.