What Are the Odds?

 

REX WAS SLEEPING, and so was Georgie. Odette  was tucked into bed too, but she was wide awake. The walls around her felt solid and reliable. The pillows were thick and downy. And Odette, luxuriating in the feeling of soft sheets and a real mattress beneath her, felt like the world’s worst human being for enjoying any of it.

The house was old, and it had brass slatted heating vents on the floor, one right near Odette’s bed and another, she surmised, in her parents’ room, because if she was careful to breathe quietly, she could hear their conversation.

“She looks terrible,” Mom said. “Just terrible.”

“Her body looks pretty worn down,” Dad said, “but her attitude seems really good.”

“Her attitude won’t keep her alive, Simon.”

“I know. I know that.”

Then there was the sound of Mom crying—messy, sad crying, not the happy kind like at school recitals and on Mother’s Day after she opened her cards. But it was muffled, like she had her face in a pillow or against Dad’s shirt. She probably didn’t want any of them to hear her—not Odette or Rex and certainly not Grandma Sissy.

“What are the odds?” Dad said. “Who recovers from breast cancer and then gets appendiceal cancer?”

“It doesn’t matter what the odds are,” Mom said.

“Of course not,” Dad said. “I know.”

Then Odette didn’t want to hear anymore—about cancer, or odds, or anything. She flipped onto her side, pulled the pillow over her head, and pressed it hard against her ear. Appendiceal cancer. What did that even mean?

It sounded kind of like appendix, which Odette knew was a body part, but she didn’t know what it was for or even where it was, exactly. Somewhere near the stomach.

And cancer—she didn’t know much about that, either. She knew Grandma Sissy had had it, and now that she had long crescent scars where her breasts had been. Odette had seen them once, accidentally, when Grandma Sissy had been getting out of the shower the last time she visited. It wasn’t Odette’s fault—Grandma Sissy hadn’t locked the door—and she’d felt really bad how scared it made her feel and how ugly the scars were. But after Grandma Sissy was dressed, she’d come into Odette’s room and then it was all right again. She looked like herself once her clothes were on.

This was different. Clothes couldn’t hide what was wrong with Grandma Sissy this time. Nothing could.