As for Nicole, she tried to keep out of Mom’s way, which meant she had to keep away from Dad. Dad never mentioned this, but I could tell her absence made him unhappy. Except what could he do? Whether anyone liked it or not, Mom, Dad, and I were a threesome again, a unit, an unsplit atom of a family.
At least until Lou Kemia kicked us out of his party. And even though I was back at school, back to normal, back to having a life, who knew when that would be?
ALL BETTER NOW
High on the list of Weird Things About the First Day Back: never actually connecting with my old friend Silas. In every class we had together, he made it clear that he wanted to sit with Kylie, not with Harper and me, and at lunch, he sat with Kylie and Aria. Well, not with them—more like with a bunch of kids that included them. Although as far as I could tell, Kylie didn’t even notice he was at the table.
Why was he doing this? In my opinion, he was wasting his time trying to get the attention of someone who definitely wasn’t interested in him. Even worse, he was ignoring me.
So the next morning, as I ate my scrambled eggs while Dad pretended not to watch me, I decided to talk to Silas before homeroom. I wasn’t mad at him, I kept telling myself. And I wasn’t hurt, either. I was just confused. Because: Hello? Remember me? I mean, of course he did.
I asked Dad to drive me to school early, and he did, without asking too many questions. But what happened was, I was walking upstairs to Silas’s homeroom when I nearly smacked into Ms. Castro.
“Norah Levy!” she shouted. “How did it go yesterday?”
“Oh, just fine, thanks,” I said quickly.
“Wonderful! Math and science classes too?”
“Yep.” Stupidly, I was blushing again. This was because Griffin had sat with me in science, too, meaning we were not just tablemates, we were also lab partners.
Ms. Castro probably assumed I was red-faced from stair climbing. “Don’t forget, I have that elevator key if you change your mind,” she said.
“Thanks. But no, walking is good exercise.” As I said this, I remembered the big-toothed, athletic kids in her desk photos; walking up a school staircase was hardly exercise to the Castro family.
She smiled at me. “Well, remember what I told you: Don’t push yourself. And we’ll have a chat later in the week, okay?”
“Sure.” I exhaled, relieved to be done with her.
But she took a step down, paused, and turned to face me again. “Oh, so I hear you’ve met the new student, Griffin Kirkley!”
“You have? I mean, yes, I have.”
“Nice boy. Told you that you’d make a new friend, right?”
I nodded, avoiding her eyes. How did she know I’d been chatting with Griffin? Were there cameras in the classroom? Maybe the teachers were reporting all my actions to Guidance. Day One of Cancer Girl’s Return: She sharpened her pencil!
By the time I got to Silas’s homeroom, he was already inside. I said hi to Malik, who was in the hall, putting up posters. On one of them, he’d drawn a bunch of crazy angles and written, in big green letters: DON’T BE OBLIQUE, VOTE FOR MALIK. Another one had a picture of a giant wave and said MAKE A SPLASH, VOTE FOR MALIK THRASH. He sure was working hard on these posters, I thought, wondering if anyone besides me even noticed his artwork.
Then I waved through the glass of the homeroom door, hoping somebody would see me mouthing the word SILAS. Finally, Addison Ventura waved back and yelled something in Silas’s ear. I gave her a thumbs-up, and she made the heart sign on her chest, which had to be a cancer reference, because why else would Addison heart me? The last conversation we’d had was probably in third grade. Fourth grade at the absolute latest.
“Hey,” Silas said as he finally stepped into the hall. “Everything okay?”
I nodded. “Definitely. I just wanted to say hi. Because I hardly saw you yesterday!”
“Sorry. First day back is always crazy, so.” He did a little laugh-cough.
“Yeah, I guess. You want to eat lunch together later?”
He scratched his nose. “Oh. Sure.”
“Great,” I said.
We both stood there, not saying anything. Malik finished taping up his posters and walked off.
Then Silas blurted: “So, Norah—you’re all better now, and everything?”
I never knew how to answer this. Because the question really was: SO, ARE YOU GOING TO DIE? And usually I wanted to answer: YES, I AM. EVENTUALLY. AND SO ARE YOU, IDIOT.
But Silas was my friend, so I didn’t want to be snarky. “Well, I’m done with chemo,” I answered, “but I still have checkups at the hospital once a month, and they’re constantly checking my platelets—”
“Platelets?”
“It’s part of your blood. It helps with clotting.”
“Oh.”
“But I’m okay,” I added quickly. “They wouldn’t let me come back to school if I wasn’t.”
“Awesome. Well, anyway, I really need to get back. . . .” He waved his arm in the direction of homeroom, like they were solving climate change in there, or something.
“Okay. See you later, Silas. At lunch.”
“Yeah, bye,” he said, already turning away.
FRIENDSHIP BRACELET
Back when the doctors agreed that I could return to school, they made me talk with the pediatric social worker, a woman named Raina Novak who had a nose stud and a slight accent that she told me was Serbian. I liked her because she was a marathon runner, and showed up at the hospital in neon-colored spandex, like she was just about to go out for a run.
Also, she was always handing out stuff—gummy bears, stickers, jigsaw puzzles—to all the kids on the Pediatrics floor. I guess these were sort of “cancer gifts,” but I didn’t mind. Once, she even gave me an extremely cool set of markers. “From
