the chemicals make her feel as bad as Nan did, which was so awful that Mum cries whenever she thinks about it.
We spend the rest of the weekend scattered around the flat, with Mum sobbing into a tissue and Ava telling her off about it,Dad busy trying to fix the gear shifter on his bike (and breaking it beyond repair), and me trying to take up as little space as possible.
If the guidance counselor were to ask me now, I’d say I feel guilty again. Guilty for being so healthy, while my sister has a plastic tube sticking out of her chest. If I could go halves with her and settle on a shared bad bout of chicken pox, or a broken leg each, I would. But nobody asked me. I am not a part of this equation. So I keep quiet and try not to make anybody’s nerves more jangled than they already are.
On Sunday night, we both lie awake long past midnight. I can hear Ava’s breathing, and she can hear mine.
“It’s going to be fine, T,” she says into the darkness, sensing what I’m thinking. I know I should be comforting her, but in the topsy-turvy world we’ve entered, she’s good at trying to comfort me. “People get this all the time. I’ve just got to get through the chemo and I could be clear by December. You heard what Doctor Christodoulou said about me being fit. He’s an expert. He’s treated loads of people way worse than me. We just need to look after Mum and Dad, because they’re really not taking this well.”
No kidding. She seems disappointed by their reaction, but I have to say I can totally see where they’re coming from on this one.
When Monday comes, Mum lets me stay at home while she and Dad take Ava in for her first session. Ava has to sit there for a few hours while the drugs run through her system, then she can come home. I wanted to go, too, but they all said no. So, Ihave several hours of daytime TV ahead of me. Not scintillating, but at least I get to miss our French oral exam — which was definitely beyond my powers of concentration today.
Daisy texts me afterward to say how bad it was. She follows it with a line of question marks and exclamation marks. I’m not sure if these refer to the exam, though, or our phone conversation yesterday, when I told her about Model City. Daisy thinks I’m crazy to follow my sister anywhere , but especially into the arms of a model agency. We both agreed that modeling is for anorexic people with no brain cells. Well, Daisy said it and I agreed. A teeny bit of me was hoping she’d be impressed that they liked my Polaroids all the same, but she completely wasn’t. She kept focusing on the “being crazy” part.
I’m engrossed in a program about reintroducing the elm tree to the British countryside when my phone goes again. I assume it will be Mum, or Daisy calling back with more angst about French, but instead it’s a number I don’t recognize.
“Hi, angel,” says a chirpy voice. “It’s Frankie. About that test shoot? We’ve got someone fixed up for next weekend, and maybe you could join her. You don’t have school on Saturday, do you?”
“Er, no, but —”
“Perfect. It’s with Seb Clark. He’s really lovely and gentle. I’ll call you later with the details, but I just wanted you to get it on your calendar, OK? God, sorry, got to go.”
I can hear the sound of another phone ringing in the background, then nothing. If Frankie had stayed on the line I could have explained about not doing the shoot, but I can’t face calling her back. I start trying to figure out the best thing to do, but mybrain isn’t really working today. It’s too distracted by what’s happening at the hospital, and also — thanks to this program — what happened to the elm tree. Over twenty million of them were killed by disease in the last forty years. We need to replant the new ones as fast as we can. Soon the call has slipped from my mind, and I don’t remember it again until Ava gets home and asks me about my day.
Which, if you think about it, is the wrong
We spend the rest of the weekend scattered around the flat, with Mum sobbing into a tissue and Ava telling her off about it,Dad busy trying to fix the gear shifter on his bike (and breaking it beyond repair), and me trying to take up as little space as possible.
If the guidance counselor were to ask me now, I’d say I feel guilty again. Guilty for being so healthy, while my sister has a plastic tube sticking out of her chest. If I could go halves with her and settle on a shared bad bout of chicken pox, or a broken leg each, I would. But nobody asked me. I am not a part of this equation. So I keep quiet and try not to make anybody’s nerves more jangled than they already are.
On Sunday night, we both lie awake long past midnight. I can hear Ava’s breathing, and she can hear mine.
“It’s going to be fine, T,” she says into the darkness, sensing what I’m thinking. I know I should be comforting her, but in the topsy-turvy world we’ve entered, she’s good at trying to comfort me. “People get this all the time. I’ve just got to get through the chemo and I could be clear by December. You heard what Doctor Christodoulou said about me being fit. He’s an expert. He’s treated loads of people way worse than me. We just need to look after Mum and Dad, because they’re really not taking this well.”
No kidding. She seems disappointed by their reaction, but I have to say I can totally see where they’re coming from on this one.
When Monday comes, Mum lets me stay at home while she and Dad take Ava in for her first session. Ava has to sit there for a few hours while the drugs run through her system, then she can come home. I wanted to go, too, but they all said no. So, Ihave several hours of daytime TV ahead of me. Not scintillating, but at least I get to miss our French oral exam — which was definitely beyond my powers of concentration today.
Daisy texts me afterward to say how bad it was. She follows it with a line of question marks and exclamation marks. I’m not sure if these refer to the exam, though, or our phone conversation yesterday, when I told her about Model City. Daisy thinks I’m crazy to follow my sister anywhere , but especially into the arms of a model agency. We both agreed that modeling is for anorexic people with no brain cells. Well, Daisy said it and I agreed. A teeny bit of me was hoping she’d be impressed that they liked my Polaroids all the same, but she completely wasn’t. She kept focusing on the “being crazy” part.
I’m engrossed in a program about reintroducing the elm tree to the British countryside when my phone goes again. I assume it will be Mum, or Daisy calling back with more angst about French, but instead it’s a number I don’t recognize.
“Hi, angel,” says a chirpy voice. “It’s Frankie. About that test shoot? We’ve got someone fixed up for next weekend, and maybe you could join her. You don’t have school on Saturday, do you?”
“Er, no, but —”
“Perfect. It’s with Seb Clark. He’s really lovely and gentle. I’ll call you later with the details, but I just wanted you to get it on your calendar, OK? God, sorry, got to go.”
I can hear the sound of another phone ringing in the background, then nothing. If Frankie had stayed on the line I could have explained about not doing the shoot, but I can’t face calling her back. I start trying to figure out the best thing to do, but mybrain isn’t really working today. It’s too distracted by what’s happening at the hospital, and also — thanks to this program — what happened to the elm tree. Over twenty million of them were killed by disease in the last forty years. We need to replant the new ones as fast as we can. Soon the call has slipped from my mind, and I don’t remember it again until Ava gets home and asks me about my day.
Which, if you think about it, is the wrong
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