CHAPTER THREE
I stayed up pretty late that night reading T h e P r i c e o f D a w n . (Spoiler alert: The price of dawn is blood.) It wasn’t A n I m p e r i a l A f f li c t i o n , but the protagonist, Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem, was vaguely likable despite killing, by my count, no fewer than 118 individuals in 284 pages. So I got up late the next morning, a Thursday. Mom’s policy was never to wake me up, because one of the job requirements of Professional Sick Person is sleeping a lot, so I was kind of confused at first when I jolted awake with her hands on my shoulders. “It’s almost ten,” she said. “Sleep fights cancer,” I said. “I was up late reading.” “It must be some book,” she said as she knelt down next to the bed and unscrewed me from my large, rectangular oxygen concentrator, which I called Philip, because it just kind of looked like a Philip. Mom hooked me up to a portable tank and then reminded me I had class. “Did that boy give it to you?” she asked out of nowhere. “By i t , do you mean herpes?” “You are too much,” Mom said. “The book, Hazel. I mean the book.” “Yeah, he gave me the book.” “I can tell you like him,” she said, eyebrows raised, as if this observation required some uniquely maternal instinct. I shrugged. “I told you Support Group would be worth your while.” “Did you just wait outside the entire time?” “Yes. I brought some paperwork. Anyway, time to face the day, young lady.” “Mom. Sleep. Cancer. Fighting.” “I know, love, but there is class to attend. Also, today is . . . ” The glee in Mom’s voice was evident. “Thursday?” “Did you seriously forget?” “Maybe?” “It’s Thursday, March twenty-ninth!” she basically screamed, a demented smile plastered to her face. “You are really excited about knowing the date!” I yelled back. “HAZEL! IT’S YOUR THIRTY-THIRD HALF BIRTHDAY!” “Ohhhhhh,” I said. My mom was really super into celebration maximization. IT’S ARBOR DAY! LET’S HUG TREES AND EAT CAKE! COLUMBUS BROUGHT SMALLPOX TO THE NATIVES; WE SHALL RECALL THE OCCASION WITH A PICNIC!, etc. “Well, Happy thirty-third Half Birthday to me,” I said. “What do you want to do on your very special day?” “Come home from class and set the world record for number of episodes of T o p C h e f watched consecutively?” Mom reached up to this shelf above my bed and grabbed Bluie, the blue stuffed bear I’d had since I was, like, one—back when it was socially acceptable to name one’s friends after their hue. “You don’t want to go to a movie with Kaitlyn or Matt or someone?” who were my friends. That was an idea. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll text Kaitlyn and see if she wants to go to the mall or something after school.” Mom smiled, hugging the bear to her stomach. “Is it still cool to go to the mall?” she asked. “I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what’s cool,” I answered.
* * *
I texted Kaitlyn, took a shower, got dressed, and then Mom drove me to school. My class was American Literature, a lecture about Frederick Douglass in a mostly empty auditorium, and it was incredibly difficult to stay awake. Forty minutes into the ninety-minute class, Kaitlyn texted back.
A w e s o m e s a u c e . H a p p y H a l f B i r t h d a y . C a s t l e t o n a t 3 : 3 2 ?
Kaitlyn had the kind of packed social life that needs to be scheduled down to the minute. I responded:
S o u n d s g o o d . I ’ll b e a t t h e f o o d c o u r t .
Mom drove me directly from school to the bookstore attached to the mall, where I purchased both M i d n i g h t D a w n s and R e q u i e m f o r M a y h e m , the first two sequels to T h e P r i c e o f D a w n , and then I walked over to the huge food court and bought a Diet Coke. It was 3:21. I watched these kids playing in the pirate-ship indoor playground while I read. There was this tunnel that these two kids kept crawling through over and over and they never seemed to get tired, which made me think of Augustus Waters and the existentially fraught free throws. Mom was also in the food court, alone, sitting in a corner where she thought I couldn’t see her, eating a cheesesteak sandwich and reading through some papers. Medical stuff, probably. The paperwork was endless. At 3:32 precisely, I noticed Kaitlyn striding confidently past the Wok House. She saw me the moment I raised my hand, flashed her very white and newly straightened teeth at me, and headed over. She wore a knee-length charcoal coat that fit perfectly and sunglasses that dominated her face. She pushed them up onto the top of her head as she leaned down to hug me. “Darling,” she said, vaguely British. “How a r e you?” People didn’t find the accent odd or off-putting. Kaitlyn just happened to be an
