My father moved to the States from Colombia when he was ten, so he doesn’t have an accent, exactly, but there’s a rhythm to the way he speaks that’s a little bit formal and a little bit musical. It’s one of my favorite things about him. Well, that and our mutual appreciation of refined sugar, which is something Mom and Bronwyn don’t share. “Don’t wait on me for dinner, okay? We’ve got that board meeting today. I’m sure it’ll go late.”
“All right, enabler,” Mom says affectionately. He grabs his keys from a hook on the wall and heads out the door.
I swallow a giant mouthful of already-soggy Froot Loops and gesture toward her laptop. “So what’d you get?”
She blinks at the shift in conversation, then beams. “Oh! You’ll love this. Into the Woods tickets, for when Bronwyn is back next week. It’s playing at the Civic. You can see how Bayview High stacks up against the professionals. That’s the play the drama club is doing this spring, right?”
I eat another spoonful of cereal before answering. I need a second to muster the appropriate level of enthusiasm. “Right. Fantastic! That’ll be so fun.”
Too much. I overdid it. Mom frowns. “You don’t want to go?”
“No, I totally do,” I lie.
She’s unconvinced. “What’s wrong? I thought you loved musical theater!”
My mom. You have to give her credit for how tirelessly she champions every single one of my passing interests. Maeve did a play once. Ergo, Maeve loves all plays! I was in the school play last year and it was—fine. But I didn’t try out this year. It felt like one of those things that I’d done once and could now safely put on the shelf of experiences that don’t need to be repeated. Yep, tried it, it was all right but not for me. Which is where I put most things.
“I do,” I say. “But hasn’t Bronwyn already seen Into the Woods?”
Mom’s forehead creases. “She has? When?”
I chase the last of the Froot Loops with my spoon and take my time swallowing them. “Over Christmas, I thought? With, um…Nate.”
Ugh. Bad lie. Nate wouldn’t be caught dead at a musical.
Mom’s frown deepens. She doesn’t dislike Nate, exactly, but she doesn’t make a secret of the fact that she thinks he and Bronwyn come from, as she puts it, “different worlds.” Plus, she keeps insisting that Bronwyn is too young to be in a serious relationship. When I remind her that she met Dad in college, she says, “When we were juniors,” like she’d matured a decade by then. “Well, let me try to catch her and check,” Mom says, reaching for her phone. “I have thirty minutes to return them.”
I smack my forehead. “You know what? Never mind. They didn’t see Into the Woods. They saw The Fast and the Furious part twelve, or whatever. You know. Same thing, pretty much.” Mom looks confused, then exasperated as I tip my bowl to loudly guzzle the pink milk.
“Maeve, stop that. You’re not six anymore.” She turns back to her laptop, brow furrowed. “Oh, for God’s sake, I just checked my email. How can there be so many already?”
I put down my bowl and grab a napkin, because all of a sudden my nose is running. I wipe it without thinking much more than It’s kind of early for allergies, but when I lower my hand—oh.
Oh my God.
I get up without a word, the napkin clutched in my fist, and go to our first-floor bathroom. I can feel wetness continuing to gather beneath my nose, and even before I look in the mirror I know what I’ll see. Pale face, tense mouth, dazed eyes—and a tiny river of bright red blood dripping from each nostril.
The dread hits so hard and so fast that it feels as if someone’s Tasered me: there’s a moment of cold shock and then I’m a trembling, twitching mess, shaking so hard that I can barely keep the napkin pressed to my nose. Red seeps into its cheery pattern as my heart bangs against my rib cage, the frantic beat echoing in my ears. My eyes in the mirror won’t stop blinking, keeping perfect time to the two-word sentence rattling through my brain.
It’s back. It’s back. It’s back.
Every time my leukemia has ever returned, it’s started with a nosebleed.
I imagine walking into the kitchen and showing the bloody napkin to my mother, and all the air leaves my lungs. I can’t watch her face do that thing again—that