Discovering (Lily Dale #4)(27)

“But . . . I mean, there are so many new drugs, aren’t there? I thought—”

“No, it’s too late for her.”Willow holds her head stoically high. “She doesn’t have much time left. The doctors say there’s nothing else they can do.”

“Oh, Willow . . .”

“You and Sarita are the only ones who know .”

“Oh, Willow . . .”Without stopping to think, Calla throws her arms around her friend. “I’m so sorry.”

Willow’s thin frame is shaking violently, and Calla feels her tears dampening her own shoulder.

Somehow, all around them, the usual cafeteria chaos continues. Nobody is aware of Willow’s tragedy.

But I know . I know what it’s like to lose your mother.

Calla, too, is crying.

“What am I going to do?”Willow pulls back and wipes her face with a napkin Calla hands her. “How can I live without her?”

“You can.”

“No.”Willow sobs into the napkin. “I can’t.”

“You can. You will.”

“No . . .”

Calla grips both of Willow’s bony shoulders. “Look at me. Please.”

Willow looks at her, desolate. Her face is ravaged with a pain that’s all too familiar to Calla.

“You’ll go on. You’ll live without her. You have to. I mean, think about it. What’s the alternative?”

“I’m so afraid.”

“I know . It’s awful. It’s so awful, and hard and unfair, but . . . you’ll survive. I promise. Listen, if I can, you can.”She grabs her friend’s hand and squeezes it. “I’ll help you get through it.”

“I don’t want to be alone.”

Her voice is so small. So frightened. So familiar.

“You aren’t alone, Willow.”

“I really am, without her. But I don’t turn eighteen until January. What am I supposed to do until then? Go live with my father and his new wife and ruin their perfect new family?”

“He just lives down in Dunkirk, right? That’s only a few miles away. You could still—”

“No. He doesn’t want me.”

“Sure, he does.”

“No. He’s not like your father. Do you know what he said when I called him last night and asked if he could meet me at the hospital because Mom had just been rushed there in an ambulance?”

“What?”

“He said that he’d see what he could do, because he and his wife had to go to open house at his daughter’s school. He’d see what he could do,”she repeats, shaking her head in disgust.

“Did he show up?”

“Yeah, for, like, two minutes. Then he asked me what time I thought I’d be done there, because if I was going to sleep at his house, they wouldn’t have to get a babysitter after all while they were at open house.”

“So . . . did you stay there? And babysit?”

“No. I stayed in the hospital.”

Calla swallows a lump in her throat, picturing Willow curled up in a hospital bed in the middle of the night, beside her dying mother.

“How did you get back here?”

“I have my mom’s car. I’m going back there after school, too. I’m staying tonight, and every night until . . .”

She can’t say it.

“Willow . . .”Calla can’t say it, either. “Listen, you can’t move into the hospital. That’s . . .”

What? Crazy? Unhealthy? Heartbreaking?

“I can’t leave her. And I’m not going to stay at my father’s,”she adds defiantly, “or . . . home. Alone.”

“You can come stay with me and my grandmother.”

“Yesterday you said that your dad has to stay next door because you don’t have any room.”

“I meant for him. You can stay in my room, with me. My grandmother borrowed a cot from Andy when my friend Lisa came to stay, and—”

“That’s sweet, Calla.”Willow flashes a sad smile. “But I can’t leave my mother. I need to be with her.”

Her voice breaks, and suddenly, she looks ten years younger. Tears stream down her face again.

“I need my mother. I can’t lose her.”

Calla has no more words of comfort.

“I know,”is all she can say, over and over. “I know .”

“Hey, what brings you out here?”Jacy makes room for Calla on the moss-covered fallen log.

“You.”She sinks down beside him. “I need you and I figured this was where you’d be.”

“I need you, too—but I never thought you’d come out here two days in a row. You don’t like to break the rules. Skipping lunch. Kissing guys in the woods when you’re supposed to be in school. . . .”

“I’m not—”

“Oh, yeah, you are.”He pulls her close and his lips meet hers.

It’s tempting— so tempting— for Calla to forget all about everything but Jacy, right here, right now. That would be the easiest, and probably the healthiest, thing to do. It’s what she would have done a few months ago, when she was just a normal girl surrounded by others who were just like her, kids with intact families and enough money, kids who didn’t know things they couldn’t, shouldn’t possibly know, about the past or the future or other people’s lives in this world or the next.