“Do you think they’ll guess? Do I look okay?” In the hospital everyone was sick so I blended in. In the real world I felt like a frail, pale-faced freak.
She leaned over and clasped my chin with her hand, forcing me to look at her. “You’re beautiful. Always.”
Her voice was too earnest to respond with an eye roll. “Thanks.”
“It’s true. Anyway, the haircut’s adorable and with some makeup and strategic clothing choices, no one will suspect a thing.”
I tugged the clasp of my necklace to the back and made a wish for acceptance. “I might tell them—now that I’m home. What do you think?”
Mom was quiet for a long time. She stared out the windshield at the parking meter. “I don’t want you to regret anything, kitten. Once you tell, you can’t take it back. They may not handle it well. You need to be prepared for their reactions.”
“What do you think they’d do?” I asked.
“We know how Ally’ll be. The others … I don’t know. I love Lauren, but she’s not very tolerant or patient. And Hillary? I can never guess how that girl is going to react.”
I tried to picture telling Ryan and saw his come here look melt into stay away. “The hard part of treatment’s over, so it’ll get easier to hide, right?”
Mom hugged me. “I can’t tell you what to do. It’s got to be your choice. Whatever you decide will be right; do what you think is best.”
“I just want things back to normal.” Or I wanted a clear sign for how to proceed.
“They will be.” She smoothed a strand of my hair and started the car. “Soon it will be like this all never happened.”
Chapter 9
After trying and rejecting a dozen outfits, I settled on white shorts and a navy-and-white-striped long-sleeved shirt. Mom helped with makeup, stepping forward to daub on color, stepping back to examine the effect. The result was more makeup than I usually wore, but I looked less pale and sickly. Once ready, I fretted and called Gyver. “Will you come with me?”
“Your goal’s to pretend everything’s normal, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then my coming isn’t going to help. I don’t normally hang out with your cheer friends and The Jock.”
“I guess.” I frowned at the mirror.
“You’re going to be okay. They’re your friends. You miss them. Remember?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t sound enthusiastic.
“How about this? I’ll call a friend. We’ll grab a late lunch at Iggy’s before my band rehearses. That won’t be suspicious. But if you need me, I’ll be there.”
“Really?”
“Really. But you won’t need me. You’re going to be fine, Mi.”
I was fifteen minutes late because I sat in my car and flipped through the radio for a song sign. The distance between my friends and me stretched from the month behind me to the parking lot in front of me. I should’ve been running through the diner’s door, but the radio was being uncooperative and I was glued to my seat. One hand clenched my necklace, the other jabbed at the Scan button: an unintelligible rap, a commercial for laser eye surgery, a schmaltzy long-distance dedication. And then my sign: No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” on one of Mom’s easy-listening stations.
The lyrics taunted me, sucking the oxygen from my lungs and making my hand shake as it reached for the radio’s Off button. The A/C felt too cold, the car too small. I gritted my teeth and opened the door.
Everyone was already seated in a corner booth. It was déjà vu of our last meeting, only they were the same and I wasn’t.
The song was a sign, and my friends’ appearances reinforced it; they looked … healthy. After a month of seeing hospital-pale patients, it hurt to take in Hillary’s toasted-almond tan, Ally’s new blonder-blond highlights, and the sunburn balanced across the bridge of her nose. Even fair-skinned Lauren was freckled and pink-cheeked.
Then Ryan stood up and my breath caught. His hair was bleached to the color of sunlit sand. His blue eyes glowed from within the faint outline of his Oakley’s tan line. A jolt passed through his hand squeezing mine before it was ripped away by Hil’s fierce hug.
“Miss me?” Her grip revealed her feelings.
Before I could answer, Ally chimed in, “Mia! You’re never allowed to go away for that long again.”
Hil’s hug and musky perfume were replaced by Ally’s grapefruit lotion, then Lauren’s vanilla body splash. But all of these were erased when Ryan wrapped me in his arms—smelling of beach, sunshine, and … him. He swung my feet off the floor, twirled me once, then set me down. Casual, like he did so every day, he pressed his lips to my cheek and whispered the words I’d been thinking, “I forgot how good you smell.”
Chris nodded his greeting from the booth, where Lauren was climbing across his lap to reclaim her Diet Coke. He was cute, but cute compared to Ryan’s sexy. He smirked at Ryan’s display and my shocked face. “Hey, Mia. Someone’s either really horny or he missed you.”
I’m sure Hil smacked him, but I was dizzily being tugged away from Ryan so Ally could grab a second hug before pulling me down into the booth beside her.
“What’d you do to your hair?” Lauren asked.