None of the Above(57)

“What’s on Wednesday?”

Darren grimaced. “Promise you won’t judge?”

“Why would I judge?” I asked innocently.

“Okay, now I know I’m not going to tell you.”

“Come on!” I laughed. “What could be that bad?”

He turned and raised his eyebrows. Then he coughed in his hand while saying, “Science Olympiad.”

I smiled, more at his embarrassment than anything else. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Yeah, because it’s rated ten out of ten on the high school coolness scale.”

“Come on, what girl can resist an Olympian?”

“Actually, that is where I met Becky.”

“See? Smart is sexy.” I was happy for him. Really, I was. But I couldn’t help feeling a little bit sorry for myself, too. Being single sucked when everyone around you was pairing up like it was Noah’s ark.

Later, when we were in the clinic break room eating our dinner, Lisa, the nurse’s aide, poked her head in.

“Mikey’s here for his infusion,” she said.

Darren stuffed down the remaining half of his sandwich, grunted an apology in my direction, and scrambled out. I looked at Lisa. She grinned. “When you’re done eating, go to the procedure room to check out Mikey’s setup.”

It didn’t take me long to finish my leftover lasagna. About halfway to the procedure room, a rat-a-tat that sounded like a machine gun filtered down the hall. Seconds later I heard a few explosions, and a boy’s voice shouting, “No! Bring your guys in from the south!”

When I pushed open the door to the procedure room, I saw a skinny, bald African-American kid wearing black plastic glasses and an I ? BOOBIES T-shirt sitting in the infusion chair. He had one of the clinic laptops sitting on a metal instrument stand and was clicking away at his mouse and keyboard so vigorously I was afraid he’d pull the IV right out of his arm.

Darren sat across from him pounding away at his own laptop. “Don’t worry, I’ve got reinforcements. But you need to get those upgrades soon!”

“Nice way to fulfill your community service requirement,” I deadpanned.

Darren didn’t bother looking up, but raised his middle finger behind his back so Mikey wouldn’t see it. “It’s only a sixty-minute infusion. I consider it back pay for all the lunches I’ve worked through.”

I craned my neck to peek over his shoulder. “StarCraft Two, huh?”

At that, Darren froze for a second and looked at me. I heard Mikey scream as one of his buildings blew up. “What, you know how to play?”

“One of the kids I babysat for was obsessed with it.” I shrugged. “I know the basics.” I squinted at his screen. “Enough to know that you need some Vespene gas stat.”

“Crap!”


On the ride home, Darren told me that Mikey had been coming in for infusions every three weeks for the past two months. “They’re trying to treat his bone cancer with chemo before surgery. Hopefully they won’t need to amputate his leg.”

If I hadn’t been driving, I would have closed my eyes. Instead, I just stared ahead, and counted the dotted lines on the highway median to keep my shit together. As awful as chemo had been for a woman with a ten-year-old child, how horrible must it be when it’s the ten-year-old who’s sick?

“Mikey’s mom can’t afford a computer, so I try to game with him as often as I can.”

“The clinic could be a lot better for kids,” I said. “Is there any budget to stock the waiting room? They should get a subscription to Highlights.” I had loved those when I went to appointments with my mom.

Darren shook his head. “The clinic barely even has a budget for basic medical stuff. Most of the supplies are donated, which is why there are, like, five different brands of exam gloves and none of them ever fit properly. That’s one of the awesome things Jessica’s doing—she’s organizing a supply drive through the local hospitals.”

At the admiration in Darren’s voice, I felt a pang of jealousy. It surprised me, because I wasn’t normally the kind of person who did things to impress other people. My mom had drilled it into me that doing the right thing was its own reward. But after I dropped Darren off, I spent most of the ride home trying to figure out why his opinion of me suddenly mattered so much. I respected how smart he was, for sure, and I couldn’t imagine a more stand-up guy. But after our parents broke up, I never went beyond the occasional small talk when I ran into him. It wasn’t like it was normal to hang out with the son of your dad’s ex-girlfriend, right?

It was a new thing, having to go out of my way to make friends. Before, they’d just fall into my life, whether through Vee and Faith, or track. The last time I’d had to work to make friends was probably before my mom died, when I first started going to Sunday school. I dreaded the hour after the service, because the three other girls my age all went to school on the same bus and, as Aunt Carla would put it, were thick as thieves. It wasn’t that they were mean to me—they just weren’t exactly inclusive. When I mentioned it to my mom, she told me I should try to compliment their clothes, or invite them to a movie, or somehow impress them with a joke. In the end, after a couple of variations on “Wow, what a cute dress,” I gave up.