LUCKY ME
Mom and Dad pounced on me the second I stepped out of school.
“So how was it?” Mom asked.
“Okay,” I said. “Long.”
“But good?”
“I guess.”
“Norah, are you going to share any details?” Dad was smiling, but his eyes weren’t.
I shrugged. “I like my English teacher, I think. She said we’re doing Greek and Roman myths, so that’s cool. Also, I got put into eighth grade math and science, but Ms. Castro said she told you that already.”
Mom and Dad exchanged glances.
“No, that’s not exactly accurate,” Mom said. “We discussed advancing as a possibility. But we never officially agreed.”
“Although we did agree it would be your choice,” Dad told me.
“Once we had a chance to talk it over.” Mom turned to me, her eyes looking worried through her glasses. “Well, baby, what do you think? Do you want to skip ahead? Because we’re ready to call the principal if that seems like too much.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not,” I said quickly, remembering the last time my parents phoned Mr. Selway. Some hospital people wanted to come to school to explain stuff to the other kids: why I wouldn’t be at school for two whole years, what I was doing at Phipps all day, how to visit me, why I had no hair. But Mr. Selway told Mom and Dad he wouldn’t allow the hospital people to come, because all that information about me “might upset the students.”
“Yes, cancer is ‘upsetting’ for Norah, too!” Mom had yelled into her cell.
I remember hearing Dad beg Mom to “please calm down for Norah’s sake.” (“Calm down?” Mom had shouted at him. “Don’t tell me to calm down! My daughter has cancer!” “So does mine,” Dad had answered. And then there was a lot of fierce whispering, just like there used to be before they got divorced.)
I mean, I was mad that the hospital people weren’t allowed to come to my school. But it was weird how Mom had thrown a tantrum about it. And I remember thinking: If anyone should be throwing a tantrum, it should be ME.
Now we got into the car, which Dad had parked across the street.
“Well, aside from the class switches, how else was the day?” Mom was asking me. “Did people bombard you with questions?”
“Not really. I think they were afraid to, truthfully.”
“Did anyone say anything really dumb?” Dad asked.
“Well, one kid said he’d heard that broccoli cured cancer. And in music, this girl asked if I knew her aunt, who had leukemia too. Because, you know, all leukemia patients know each other.”
Dad laughed. “Yeah, well, you know, old Lou throws a great party. Big guest list.”
I laughed too. This was our running joke: Lou Kemia, a cigar-smoking crime boss, was the chief villain of my story. Although sometimes the villain was Luke Emia, a sci-fi warlord with a battalion of white blood cell storm troopers. Or Low-Key Mia, who sapped your energy and kept it in a jar in her evil lab. Or Lucky Me, who used chemo warfare. Dad and I kept changing the villains, depending on what was going on with my treatment.
Mom didn’t share our dumb sense of humor, but she chuckled anyway. I knew she was trying her best to do a lot of things for my sake—laugh at our jokes, not argue with Dad, not second-guess the doctors and nurses. She’d even taken a leave from teaching biology at a college out in California, and was staying with her friend Lisa, sleeping on a foldout sofa in Lisa’s basement. And here she was in Dad’s car, sitting where his girlfriend, Nicole, usually sat, probably noticing Nicole’s gum wrappers in the cup holder.
As for Dad, he’d also given up a lot for me these past two years. He was a sports journalist, so he could keep writing articles even when I was in the hospital, but he couldn’t travel to away games, obviously. Also, I knew that after he and Mom broke up, he was sad for a long time. But he’d finally starting feeling better again, and things were good with Nicole. So it had to be hard for him to have Mom around again every day, even if they were careful never to fight in front of me.
Mom also had this thing about unbunching towels so they wouldn’t mildew, covering toothbrushes so they wouldn’t collect bacteria, and rotating things in the fridge so they wouldn’t spoil. I guess she always was a bio-nerd, so probably Dad was used to this; but I was positive that ever since I’d gotten sick, she was way more germ-conscious. And I knew she was doing all this towel unbunching and toothbrush covering out of fear, and wanting to protect me—but the thing was, it wasn’t her house anymore.
Now it was where I lived with Dad, just outside New York City, about an hour from Phipps-Davison Hospital. When my parents split up three years ago, the plan was for me to switch back and forth between them, spending half the time out in California with Mom, the other half back in Greenwood with Dad. (Yes, I know it sounds crazy. But I was only nine at the time, and totally freaked about the divorce, so I begged them to divide my time like that.) And the sickest part: I spent that whole year wishing for only one thing—that my parents would get back together again. So in a crazy way, I felt like I caused my cancer. Not really. But sort of. A little.
Phipps-Davison is a famous cancer hospital, so Mom never questioned why I was being treated in New York, even though it meant her moving back here for now, sometimes eating meals with us in Dad’s kitchen. She was always a very picky eater, and now she was constantly sniffing around
