Read Online Maybe One Day by Melissa Kantor - Free Book Online Page B

but I didn’t know if the Grecos felt the same way about me. Like, even though Livvie had been calling my parents Ed and Cathy since the day she met them, I still called her parents Mr. and Mrs. Greco. Sometimes I worried that they thought I was a bad influence on Livvie because our family wasn’t religious, my parents let me go to R-rated movies, my dad was a freelance journalist, and my mom earned more money than he did. Meanwhile, the Grecos went to church every Sunday, Mr. Greco was a lawyer whowore suits and went into the city every day, and Mrs. Greco was a stay-at-home mom. Livvie said I was totally paranoid, but I wasn’t so sure.
    I didn’t want to explain to Mrs. Greco my whole theory about her thinking my parents were agnostic lefties with no family values, but I wanted her to know how much I loved Olivia. “I really hope you’ll rely on me in any way you can.”
    I had this fantasy that Mrs. Greco would hug me, ask me to call her Adriana and tell me that to her and Mr. Greco I was like family, but she just patted me gently on the cheek. “Of course,” she said. “We know we can count on you.”
    “Thanks, Mrs. Greco,” I said. The elevator doors opened and I got on. “That means a lot to me.” And even though I was the one who said it, I couldn’t decide if I was being sarcastic or not.
    I missed the train to Wamasset by less than ten minutes, so I had to kill almost an hour waiting for the next one. Penn Station’s got lousy stores, but whenever Livvie and I were stuck waiting for a train, we always managed to find something fun to do, even if it was checking out a shop full of lame touristy stuff or trying on tacky clothes we would never buy. Today, though, the time dragged while I wandered from Hot & Crusty to Duane Reade to New York Inc., finally settling in the waiting area, where I just sat and stared at the board listing the train departures. I couldn’t stop thinking about how sad Livvie hadbeen all afternoon. Not that she shouldn’t have been. I mean, if getting a diagnosis of leukemia doesn’t give you the right to be sad, what does? But the crazy thing was, she almost hadn’t seemed sad about having cancer. It was like not teaching the dance class had been the straw that broke her back.
    How was she going to last through weeks of treatment— months of treatment!—with nothing to look forward to besides Skyping her classes and receiving a daily inspirational message from the cheer squad? Thinking about her squeezing her eyes shut to stop herself from crying made me furious, and when I stood up after they announced the train to Wamasset, I was actually shaking my head, as if I were having an argument with the universe about the unfairness of it all.
    And the worst part was, there was nothing I could do. I chucked my empty coffee cup in the trash and headed down to the platform. Dr. Maxwell’s telling me Livvie needed her friends suddenly felt like a bad joke. What did she need her friends for—so we could bear witness to her misery?
    It wasn’t until the train was almost at my stop that I had my brainstorm. If Olivia could Skype her school classes, why couldn’t she Skype other classes? My hands were practically shaking with excitement as I dialed her number.
    “Hey,” she said. She sounded really tired.
    My idea burst out of me. “Let’s teach the class together.”
    “What?”
    I realized from how fuzzy her voice was that I must have woken her up, so I repeated myself, enunciating each word carefully. “Let’s. Teach. The. Class. Together! The dance class. You could Skype it and I could be, you know, the tech person or whatever. I’ll download Skype onto my phone. It’s no big deal—my dad uses it for interviews when he can’t meet someone in person.”
    There was a long pause.
    “You don’t have to do this,” Livvie said finally. “I know you don’t want to do this.”
    Was she serious?
    “Livvie, come on. It’s so nothing.” Given what Olivia was going