You Should See Me in a Crown(28)
“Oh! Well, in that case not really? I mean, being a legacy only works if people know, right?”
“Well, yeah, I guess. But why wouldn’t you be telling people about that?” I think about what Gabi would say if she were managing Mack’s campaign instead of mine. The ranking formula that G and Stone cooked up would be thrown for a loop if this information was public knowledge. “You would be skyrocketing in the rankings.”
“The rankings?” She laughs a little. “No, I’m not really worried about that. My mom used to tell me all about this amazing, incredible time she had running for prom queen in her hometown. I was raised on stories about how wonderful this tradition is and how many friends she made.” She shrugs and bites at her thumbnail. “I thought that if I had to transfer midway through the last semester of my senior year, getting to have that would make it worth it.”
“And has it been?”
She sort of smirks and cocks her head to the side.
“I’ll say it has been an … experience so far.”
I laugh. I definitely know what she means.
“I bet she’s proud of you for taking the leap though.”
“Oh,” she starts, looking down. “She died a few years ago. Ovarian cancer.”
This is weird, and probably a little messed up, but hearing her say that she’s also in the Dead Mom Club makes me feel closer to her. Like the two of us are in on some secret—a deep, unrelenting trauma that you couldn’t possibly understand unless you’ve been there—that can’t be explained.
“Same.” I answer, but amend quickly. “Not cancer though. Stroke. She, um, had sickle cell.”
I don’t talk about my mom, not ever. But for some reason Mack’s admission has me wanting to be honest too.
“Would she have been excited about you running for prom queen?”
I freeze where my hand is reaching for the last chair. I realize I don’t know how my mom would feel about prom. We never really got there. I was too young when she died to have gotten to most of the important stuff. Dating advice, how you deal with starting your period in the middle of gym class (which was mortifying, by the way), any of it. What I remember is learning how to love the people who love me with everything I have. I remember visiting Pennington for homecoming football games in my miniature Pennington Penguins cheerleading uniform. I remember knowing what it feels like to have someone be your entire world one second and them be gone the next.
My stomach churns, but I try to smile.
“I hope she would be.”
When someone in your life is sick, or could get seriously sicker, you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even when things are going well, when it seems like everything is fine, some part of you is anticipating the worst. My palms are sweating as I read the text from my granny, and even though it’s not the worst message I could have gotten, it’s definitely among the ones I fear the most.
“Lighty, you good?” I look up from my phone into the face of a very concerned-looking Jordan Jennings and realize that I’ve stopped walking in the middle of the hallway. His face looks almost as scared as I feel as he rests a hand on my shoulder. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I open my mouth but shut it again immediately. Granny knew to tell me not to come home early because my first instinct is to leave, to go to him. Even though I know he’s probably fine. Probably just pushed himself too hard in gym or something and needed to go home and rest before he had a flare-up.
Sickle cell anemia is in the blood. That’s the way they explained it to me the first time I remember my mom being hospitalized long-term. It’s a genetic thing. Where most people’s red blood cells—the cells that carry oxygen—are shaped like circles, in people with sickle cell, they’re shaped like moons. Sometimes when those moon-shaped cells don’t move through their bloodstream properly, people with the disease can be in an ungodly amount of pain.
But they fail to mention when you’re five years old that the median age of death for women with the disease is sometime in their mid-forties. And that for some women, it’s even earlier. For women like our mom, it was the even earlier.
The pain they described is what people in the sickle cell community call a crisis. Robbie says it just feels like a cramp when it’s not so bad, but it’s something like being stabbed over and over again when at its worst. The switch can happen really quickly, and that’s the scariest part. We can’t really see it coming. So the days when his pain is at an eight on a scale to ten, when there’s nothing I can do to help him but wait for it to pass and make sure he has his meds handy, those are some of the scariest of my life. I’m never not afraid of losing him.
Jordan’s hand is still on my shoulder when I finally respond, and instead of being freaked out by him talking to and touching me in the middle of a hallway full of our peers, something about it is grounding.
“I’m fine. I, um, got some not-great news.” I pull the straps on my backpack up higher. “Sorry for blocking your path or whatever.”
He winces like what I said physically hurt him. I don’t mean to be rude, but he set the terms of this non-relationship a long time ago. I’m just trying to respect that. Just because I’ve let my guard slip a few times during volunteer events doesn’t mean I can trust him again.