My Life After Now - By Jessica Verdi Page 0,46

think they’ll remember me.”

“Awesome!”

I hitched my bag further up onto my shoulder. “So…thanks for this. It was really nice of you.”

“No problem. We have to stick together, right?” She gave me a meaningful look.

“Oh, um, yeah, I guess.”

“Wanna go grab some coffee? I don’t have to be home until six.”

I looked at this girl who seemed to have her life so perfectly together, who seemed so happy all the time, and I suddenly needed to know how she did it. “Okay, sure,” I said.

We found a table at a little hole-in-the-wall coffee shop around the corner, and I bought us two large coffees—mine black, Roxie’s filled with cream and sugar.

“I’m so glad this all worked out,” she said. “I usually don’t work on Saturdays but I needed the extra money.”

The audition buzz was fading now, and I was starting to feel bad about what I’d done. “I kind of went off the rails in there,” I confessed. “I’m so sorry—I know they only saw me as a favor to you. I hope it doesn’t affect your job or anything.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. I don’t even work with those people. They work for the casting agency that NYU hired. I’d never even met any of them before today.”

I smiled. That made me feel a lot better.

“So what did you do?” Roxie asked, a curious glint in her eye.

“I decided I’d rather do a monologue than read their dumb copy. It was actually really out-of-character for me, but after the day I’ve had…”

“Oh yeah, you had a doctor appointment today, right? How did it go?”

I grimaced and told her what had happened.

“Ugh! I know exactly what that’s like! Some of these doctors are so arrogant, like they think that just because they’re super smart they get to treat us like garbage. I’ve been to more of them than I can count. There was this one guy, when I was ten—”

“Wait,” I cut her off. “Ten? How long have you had…?” It was probably too personal of a question, but I couldn’t help myself.

Roxie just looked back at me, unaffected. “Since I was born.”

My mouth fell open.

“My mother had it and passed it on to me,” she explained.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

Whoa. Nineteen years with this virus in her system. “And you’re…okay?”

She shrugged. “For now. I’m on the wonder pill, and, for the most part, it’s keeping the bad stuff at bay.”

“For the most part?”

“I was in the hospital last year for a few weeks. Nasty bout of pneumonia.”

“Do you have AIDS?” I whispered.

“Nope.” She crossed her fingers. “As far as they can figure, I have at least a few more years before getting a visit from the Big Bad.” She laughed.

I really didn’t see what was so funny. “How can you be so cavalier about it all? Aren’t you scared?”

“Of course. But I’ve had forever to get used to the idea. I’m not going to let it stop me from living my life.”

I thought about that for a minute. “How’s your mom doing?”

“Not so good. She died,” Roxie said.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, it was a long time ago.” She took a sip of her coffee. “It’s just been my brother and me for a while now.”

I felt a heart-wrenching pang. “Your brother has it too?”

She smiled and shook her head.

“But…how?”

“By the time my mom was pregnant with him, she was more educated about the whole thing. Once you’re on meds, it’s a lot harder to pass it on to your baby.”

“Oh,” was all I could say. It was beginning to dawn on me that I still had a lot to learn.

Roxie told me about growing up in foster care and being shuffled around from home to home and having to constantly fight to not be separated from her brother. The day she turned eighteen she’d filed for custody and had been working to support the two of them ever since. She’d spent most of her life in overcrowded free clinics and getting her medical care from not-for-profit organizations. It made me appreciate my own family so much more.

“Alex is the reason I work so hard at keeping myself healthy,” she explained. “I don’t really have the luxury of moping around feeling sorry for myself. He’s only eleven—if I kick the bucket, he goes right back into the system.” She paused to take a sip of coffee. “So what’s your story?” Roxie asked.

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

Crap. I had to tell her now, after she’d been so honest with me. So, staring into my coffee