“Hey you, come down to earth.” Grandma jostles me.
“What?” I glance up at my mom and grandmother. I haven’t been listening to what Mom’s been saying for about five minutes, which makes me feel a stab of guilt. She only has a certain amount of words left. I shouldn’t miss any.
“How was it?” Mom asks again, gently.
“It? The kissing scene?”
Her eyebrows lift. “Oh, the kissing scene? Was that today?”
Grandma scowls. “What kissing scene?”
Crap. “Yes. It went fine. He told me I was his first kiss.”
Mom gasps. “Get out.”
“I know!”
“Is this that boy you’re going to have sex with?” Grandma asks.
“No, Grandma.” I glance at the door for the nurse. “I’m not going to have sex.”
“His first kiss, hmm,” Mom says. “That’s a big deal. How did it go?”
“It was . . . a kiss.”
“No fireworks, huh?” Grandma says. “Too bad. That happens sometimes.”
“Yeah, but this was stage kissing,” I argue. “It’s not like real kissing. It’s a performance. You’re not supposed to really feel anything. Usually.”
“Did you feel something?”
“Don’t answer that question.” Grandma makes a face. “We do not need to know what you felt.”
“Grandma! Geez!”
Mom’s laughing. And then she’s coughing. And coughing. We all sober up a bit.
“What did Nyla say?” Mom asks when she can talk again. “When you told her this was his first kiss?”
“Um . . .”
“What’s going on with you and Nyla?” Grandma asks.
“Yes,” Mom says. “What’s going on?”
“I told you.”
“You didn’t tell me. You lied to me about it.”
“I did not. I—”
“You’re lying right now,” Mom says, then sighs like she’s too tired for this crap. “I’m your mother. I can tell when you’re lying. Remember that time with your rubber duck in the bathtub?”
“Don’t lie to your mother,” Grandma says.
“Okay!” I burst out. “We had a fight. At the drama competition, Nyla got this amazing scholarship, and I didn’t, and I was mad because I need that money, and she doesn’t need it, and I said . . . I said . . .”
Mom’s eyes are sad. “What did you say?”
“I said something . . . racist.”
“Oh shit,” says Grandma.
“What did you say?” Mom asks.
I tell her.
“Yep, that’s racist,” Grandma assesses.
Mom’s mouth is a flat line. She actually looks mad, and (gulp) ashamed. “Do you think you’re better than Nyla?”
“No!”
“Then why did you say what you said?”
“Because—” I have to stop and think about this for a minute. “Because I was hurt, and I was jealous, and I wanted to hurt her, too.”
Mom nods silently. “Did you tell her you were sorry?”
“Yes, but things haven’t been the same since then.”
“Some wounds take time to heal,” Mom says. “In the meantime, you have to decide whether or not it’s okay to say something racist, for any reason. If that’s who you want to be.”
I swallow. “Right.”
She touches my cheek. “Everything’s going to be all right, sweetie. You’ll mend things between you and Nyla—you’ve been friends for too long for it to end over a single sentence. You’ll go to College of Idaho, and Nyla will go wherever Nyla decides to go, and you’ll miss each other terribly, and you’ll think about this horrible fight you had and shake your head about how wrong you were and how much growing up you still had to do.”
“I miss her now,” I admit.
Things are quiet for a while, with only the beep beep beep of her monitor.
“Mom,” I say, because clearly it’s a night for being honest, and maybe she’ll be honest, too. “Why do you keep saying that I’m going to go to College of Idaho like it’s a sure thing?”
“Well,” she says.
“Don’t say the universe. Even if I get in—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’ll get in,” Grandma says.
“It’s so much money. Money we still don’t have. And yes, I’ll get scholarships, maybe, but even if I get the highest possible theater scholarship and the highest possible academic scholarship, and even if I work full-time during the summers and part-time during the school year, I’ll be short.” Like ten thousand dollars a year short. I sat down and figured it out a few days ago.
Mom looks down at her hand with the IV. Curls and uncurls her fingers. Clears her throat lightly.
“Well,” she begins softly, “when I . . .”
“There’s life insurance money,” Grandma says for her. “One smart thing your parents did—they got large life insurance policies when you came along, in case there was ever an accident. Or an illness, I suppose.” Her lips tighten. “So when your mother . . .” Even she can’t say it. “When she’s not with us anymore, there’ll be some extra money. Money for you to go to College of Idaho. Or wherever you’d like to go, honestly.”
My eyes fill with stupid tears. It takes a minute for me to be able to talk again, and then I say what I’ve been thinking about ever since I didn’t get the scholarship. Which is maybe I’m not meant to do all of this. Maybe my purpose right now is lying in a hospital bed in front of me, and I should focus on her.
“Thank you for telling me.” I lean over to take Mom’s hand. “But I’m not going to go.”
She pulls back to look at me. “What?”
“I’ve decided not to go to college next year.” I rush on before Mom can argue. “I’m going to stay home. Find a job. Save up. Because that’s the responsible way to do things.”
Grandma frowns. “Say that again—my hearing’s not the best.”
“Cass,” Mom says, but then she flounders. “Honey, I—”
“College can wait.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t have to do that. College is months away. I won’t be here.”
“But Dad will be here. He’ll be all alone.” This isn’t entirely true, either, I know. Dad has friends. And Uncle Pete. And Grandma, who’s as much of a mother to him as my grandparents in Portland. But the thought of Dad sitting in our empty house when Mom’s gone, with me four hours away, it feels wrong on a gut level.
Mom’s shaking her head. “You can visit your father. You can call him, every day. You don’t have to give up—”
“I’m not giving up,” I tell her. “I’m only deciding what it is that I want. And this is what I want.” I squeeze her hand three times. “This. Then after you—you get your heart, or whatever happens, after you . . .” I take a deep breath. “After you die . . .” My eyes flood with tears again, but I dash them away. “After everything’s settled down, and I’ve had time to process it, too, you know? I’ll go then. Will it make you feel better if I promise I’ll go? Later?”
She’s still shaking her head. “Baby, we can’t let you—”
But then Grandma jumps in. “Yes, you can let her, Kitty Cat. She’s asking for some time to grieve, and I don’t think that’s unreasonable. It’s her decision, after all.”
“Mama.” Mom frowns.
“What? She’s an adult. She can make the necessary decisions about her own life. Heaven knows you did when you were her age.”
That shuts Mom up. Grandma’s good at that.
“It’s my life,” I say softly.
“Okay,” she murmurs.
For a minute we all sit here listening to her heart rate on the monitors, which is faster than I’d like it to be. I’m feeling perfectly calm, though. I feel better than I have in a long, long time.
It’s the right thing. I’ve made the right decision. I feel it.
Grandma’s smiling at me. She looks like Mom, or I should probably say that Mom looks like her. She’s what Mom would end up looking like if she ever made it to old age.
“Shall we watch some television?” she asks. “I think we might still be able to catch Wheel of Fortune.”
Mom and I both groan, but we indulge Grandma, who finds her show and starts shouting out the answers and calling the contestants morons when they don’t instantly know the words on the board.
Mom looks sad, though. I wish she didn’t look so sad. I hope that she’ll come to understand that while this is a present I’m giving her, and Dad, too, I guess, it’s also a gift for me.
The gift of time.
I only wish that time could be with her.