I gently close the book, hugging it to my chest. “You seem awfully obsessed with Edgar, given the fact that less than twenty-four hours ago you were on a date with a different guy.”
“That’s kind of why I need to find him.” Jules flops down on my bed. “I broke things off with Chris today.”
My eyes widen. “Really?”
“Chris is great. He’s smart, and funny, and cute. But Edgar told me that if you soak a body in pineapple juice for a week, all the skin will fall off it.”
“Wow, he soundsdreamy,” I say.
“Hegetsme. And he’s wicked hot. Well.Youknow.” She glances up. “How long till you can break up with him?”
“How long till the gossip spreads that we’re sister wives?”
I’m smiling, but I’m also thinking about how it’s going to feel when I watch Jules and Edgar walking down the hallways at school, holding hands. Whispering to each other. Existing in their own little world. As happy as I am for Jules, I have to admit that it’s going to be hard to see her get everything she’s wanted while I lose everything I had.
All of a sudden Jules’s phone buzzes. “It’s him,” she breathes. “Finally.” But as she reads the text, her face goes white. She passes me the phone.
I know we don’t really know WHAT we are, but you’re the closest thing I have to a friend here, and I need you.
My mom’s in the hospital . . . and I just don’t know what to do.
Jules leaps off the bed. “Come on,” she says. “We have to go.”
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Jules so rattled before; very little shakes her. But her eyes are dark with worry, and she has a death grip on my arm. I want to be there for my best friend, but I don’t know if it’s my place to show up uninvited in a hospital room. “I . . . don’t know if Edgar would want me there. . . .”
“You’re his fake girlfriend. You have to be.”
It’s not until I get in the car that I realize I’m still holding the book.
Hospitals creep me out. They smell like cleaning fluid and bleach, which you eerily know is just to cover the smell of puke and blood. The lights always flicker. People walk through the halls crying sometimes, and it’s like a scene straight out of a horror movie. I think the reason sick people recover is just so they can get the hell out of there.
Edgar texted Jules the floor where we’re supposed to meet him. When we get off the elevator, there’s a nurses’ station straight ahead. Jules gets us visitors’ passes, and we walk in silence down the hallway. Just before we reach Jessamyn’s room, Jules turns to me. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to him.”
“Then don’t say anything,” I tell her. “Justbehere so he has someone to talk to.”
We peer through the open doorway, and both of us abruptly stop.
Jessamyn is lying in the bed, asleep. She looks tiny, ethereal, like the fairies in Oliver’s book. Like she’s already halfway disappeared.
The thing about a mom is that she’s always there. She’s the one who rubs your back when you have the flu, who manages to notice you have no clean underwear and does your wash for you, who stocks the refrigerator with all the foods you love without you even having to ask. The thing about a mom is that you never imagine taking care of her, instead of the other way around.
My mom has worked two jobs most of my life, just to keep us afloat. When she’s not cleaning her clients’ houses, she’s . . . well . . . doing the same thing inourhouse. I can’t picture her taking a sick day, much less being in a hospital. To be sitting at her bedside, the way Edgar is at his mother’s now, would be like waking up one morning to find that the sky was green and the grass was blue.
I try to remember the last time I thanked my mom for everything she does for me, and I can’t. With a pang, I resolve to do it as soon as I get home. I guess we all assume that tomorrow we’ll say those words, or hug her just because. I bet Edgar thought that too.
His arms are folded on the mattress, and his head is pillowed against them. “Edgar,” Jules says, and he looks up.
He glances at his mom, making sure she’s still sleeping. Then, holding a finger to his lips, he steps into the hall and closes the door gently behind him, leading us into an empty lounge. On the television,SpongeBobis playing, muted, with subtitles.
Jules throws herself into his arms. “You came,” he says, relieved.
“What happened?” I ask.
“She fainted,” Edgar says. “Again. And I know you thought she was all better now, and that it was probably nothing.” To my shock, his eyes fill with tears. “But the thing is . . . itwasn’tnothing.”
The explanation tumbles out in a rush of syllables and grief:Glioblastoma. Neural subtype. Fatal.
I stare at him. I don’t think there are any words in the English language to express how I feel right now. Edgar’s mother wasdyingof a brain tumor, and Oliver and I were too selfish to bring him back here to spend time with her.
