Trust

✍ Quirky

I'd never noticed it before, but Evan's driving was shocking. He tended to swerve dangerously from lane to lane, not notice speed limits and take corners with two wheels and the brakes screaming. I was a fan of fast driving and all, but it was hard not to feel a little sick by the end of a ride in Evan's car.

"Sorry about the traffic light back there," Evan said when we pulled up in the hospital parking lot. "Hope your head feels alright."

I rubbed the sore spot on my head that had encountered the glass window when Evan had suddenly slammed on the brakes. "It's all good."

"You're looking a little green. You sure you're okay?"

I rolled my eyes, a little too dramatically. "I'm fine, daddy."

Evan scowled. "Cheeky bugger," he said and walked away. I watched him flirt with the hospital receptionist then charm his way through at least four nurses before we got to mum's room on the second level. I wasn't quite sure about what made him such a hit with the ladies, but I figured it was probably the British accent. That and his baby blue eyes.

Mum was awake when we got to her room. Her nurse told us in hushed tones that she'd been vomiting violently in the morning and that she needed a lot of rest, which was kind of a polite way of telling us to keep our visit short.

"Hey sweetheart," mum smiled when she saw me. She was getting awfully thin, cheeks starting to hollow out a little. "How are you?"

"Doing well," I said and smiled brightly. "As long as Evan doesn't burn down the house, I think we'll be alright."

Evan scoffed. "Don't listen to her. I'm a fantastic cook."

"I'm sure," mum said drily and winked at me.

We talked for a little while longer- about mum's treatments, how long Evan was going to stay for, how weird the view was from mum's window and how the sun was starting to set earlier nowadays- before Evan said, "So Poppy's summer dance is coming up."

I pursed my lips. Mum looked at me with wide eyes. Her eyes had always been big and round, but with her recent weight loss, they seemed to be much larger and bulge out more than usual.

"Pops! Why didn't you tell me?"

I shrugged. "I forgot?" I said askingly.

"Poppy, you are going to the dance, aren't you?"

I tried my hardest to glare at Evan through my eyelashes.

"Poppy, I'm talking to you," mum said. I sighed.

"I was thinking of skipping it this year," I said really fast so that the ends of my words caught onto each other and made them hard to understand. I stared at my feet. I hadn't wanted to tell mum about the dance. I knew she wanted Adam and me to keep living our lives as we would usually, and that she didn't want her sickness to affect us in any way, but it was kind of hard to pretend like it wasn't one of the greatest things impacting my life at the moment when, well, it kind of was.

"Poppy, you are going to go to the dance."

"But," I said.

"No buts. You're going. I want you to go. It's your final year of high school, sweetheart. I want you to enjoy it," mum said. She started coughing at the end of her sentence.

I opened my mouth to say, "but," again, but decided against it. I'd never won an argument against mum before. I didn't think that trend was about to change anytime soon.

*****

It was two weeks since Chase and I had performed our duet to the class for the project. Since then, we hadn't interacted very much, and with the summer dance coming up and my mother's insistence for me to go, I was starting to get nervous. Social events weren't really my style and if I had to bring a date to one, I wanted it to be Chase. At least he would keep me entertained with his Augustus Waters tendencies.