Slammed(80)

I look at the boys. They're playing rock-paper-scissors and laughing. I know she's referring to their costumes, but she's already lost my respect with her attitude, so I continue to act oblivious.

"Is rock-paper-scissors against school policy?" I ask.

Eddie laughs.

"Ms. Cohen," Principal Brill says. "They're dressed as cancerous lungs!" She shakes her head in disbelief.

"I thought they were rotten kidney beans," Eddie says.

We both laugh.

"I don't think this is funny," Principal Brill says. "They're causing a distraction amongst the students! Those are very offensive and crude costumes! I don't know who thought it was a good idea, but you need to take them home and change their clothes."

My focus returns to Principal Brill as I slowly turn around and lean forward, placing my arms on her desk.

"Principal Brill," I say calmly. "Those costumes were made by my mother. My mother, who has stage four small-cell lung cancer. My mother, who will never watch her little boy celebrate another Halloween again. My mother, who will more than likely experience a year of 'lasts.' Last Christmas. Last birthday. Last Easter. And if God is willing, her last Mother's Day. My mother, who when asked by her nine-year-old son if he could be her cancer for Halloween, had no choice but to make him the best cancerous tumor-ridden lung costume she could. So if you think it's so offensive, I suggest you drive them home yourself and tell my mother to her face. Do you need my address?"

Principal Brill's mouth is gaped open as she shakes her head. She can't respond. I stand up and Eddie follows me out the door. I stop short and spin around and walk back into her office.

"And one more thing. The costume contest? I hope it's fairly judged."

Eddie laughs as I shut the door behind us.

"What's going on?" Kel asks.

"Nothing," I say. "Y'all can go back to class. She just wanted to know where we got the materials for your costume so she can be a hemorrhoid next year."

Eddie and I try to contain our laughter as the boys make their way back to class. We head outside and as soon as we open the doors, we explode. We laugh so hard, we cry.

When we get back in the jeep, I have six missed calls from my mother and two from Will. I return their calls and assure them the situation has been resolved without sparing any details.

Later that afternoon when I pick the boys up from school, they sprint to the car.

"We won!" Caulder yells as he climbs in the backseat. "We both won! Fifty dollars each!"



20.


“Well I've been locking myself up in my house for some time now

Reading and writing and reading and thinking

and searching for reasons and missing the seasons

The Autumn, the Spring, the Summer, the snow

The record will stop and the record will go

Latches latched the windows down,

the dog coming in and the dog going out

Up with caffeine and down with the shot

Constantly worried about what I've got

Distracted by work but I can't make it stop

and my confidence on and my confidence off

And I sink to the bottom I rise to the top

and I think to myself that I do this a lot

World outside just goes it goes it goes it goes it goes it goes...”

-The Avett Brothers, Talk on Indolence



Chapter Twenty



The next few weeks come and go. Eddie helps out with watching the boys until Will gets home on the days I take my mother to her treatments. Will leaves every morning at six-thirty and doesn't return home until after five-thirty. We don't see each other. I make sure we don't see each other. We've resorted to texting and phone calls when it comes to Kel and Caulder. My mother has been pressing me for information, wanting to know why he doesn't come around anymore. I lie and tell her he's just busy with his new internship.

He's only been to the house once in the past two months. It was the only time we've really spoken since the incident in the laundry room. He came to tell me he was offered a job at a Junior High that starts in January.

I'm happy for him, but it's bittersweet. I know how much the job means for him and Caulder, but I know what it means for Will and I, too. Deep down there was a part of me silently counting down the days until his last day of internship. It's finally here, and he's already signed another contract. It solidified things for us, really. Solidified that they're over.