"She has cancer."
"Oh." Kate didn't know what to say except, "I'm sorry." Quiet pressed into the room. Instead of making eye contact with Tully, Kate studied the table. Never in her life had she seen so much junk food in one place. Pop-Tarts, Cap'n Crunch and Quisp boxes, Fritos, Funyuns, Twinkies, Zingers, and Screaming Yellow Zonkers. "Wow. I wish my mom would let me eat all this stuff." Kate immediately wished she'd kept her mouth shut. Now she sounded hopelessly uncool. To give herself something to do—and somewhere to look besides Tully's unreadable face—she put the casserole on the counter. "It's still hot," she said, stupidly, considering that she was wearing oven mitts that looked like killer whales.
Tully lit up a cigarette and leaned against the pink wall, eyeing her.
Kate glanced back at the door to the living room. "She doesn't care if you smoke?"
"She's too sick to care."
"Oh."
"You want a drag?"
"Uh . . . no. Thanks."
"Yeah. That's what I thought."
On the wall, the black Kit-Kat Klock swished its tail.
"Well, you probably have to get home for dinner," Tully said.
"Oh," Kate said again, sounding even more nerdy than she had before. "Right."
Tully led the way back through the living room, where her mother was now sprawled on the sofa. "'Bye, girl from across the street with the cool neighbor attitude."
Tully yanked the door open. Beyond it, the falling night was a blurry purple rectangle that seemed too vivid to be real. "Thanks for the food," she said. "I don't know how to cook, and Cloud is cooked, if you know what I mean."
"Cloud?"
"That's my mom's current name."
"Oh."
"It'd be cool if Ididknow how to cook. Or if we had a chef or something. With my mom having cancer and all." Tully looked at her.
Tell her you'll teach her.
Take a risk.
But she couldn't do it. The potential for humiliation was sky-high. "Well . . .'bye."
"Later."
Kate stepped past her and into the night.
She was halfway to the road when Tully called out to her, "Hey, wait up."
Kate slowly turned around.
"What's your name?"
She felt a flash of hope. "Kate. Kate Mularkey."
Tully laughed. "Mularkey? Like bullshit?"
It was hardly funny anymore, that joke about her last name. She sighed and turned back around.
"I didn't mean to laugh," Tully said, but she didn't stop.
