Risking it All

4

I never told the girls about the cancer. I don't know why, but I just didn't want then to know. After all, it's too late to tell them now. I can't go up to them and say, "Hi. So you see, I have cancer..."
But I couldn't do it in the beginning. I finally made friends and I don't want them to know. Besides, shouldn't they know about it anyway? The teachers should have told them by now. But I wasn't the one who told them. Well, technically I did, but I didn't verbally tell them. It all started the day I passed out.
Like I said earlier, it was English class and I was taking notes when I just passed out. You know the rest of that story. But when I returned to school the following day, people started acting weird. Like, really weird.
I walked down the halls and found Eliza by her locker getting her stuff for homeroom. We had texted the night before and I told her my backup plan. I was dehydrated and I just needed some rest. But when she saw me, she became a totally different person. I walked up to her, smiling and said, "Hey."
Eliza shut her locker and realized it was me. "Oh my God!" she screamed when she saw me. She threw her arms around me, making me laugh. When she pulled away she started rambling questions. "Are you okay? What happened? People said you were sick. Is that what it is? Are you sick? Then why are you here?" Eliza was talking a mile a minute, but stopped when she saw Noah Patton, our high school quarterback walked up to us. It's been obvious that Eliza had a crush on him. "Hi Noah," she said. "What's up?" Noah smiled at her, but turned his attention to me. "Hey Mackenzie," he said. "I have a friend who wants to get high. Do you think you can give him some weed?"
I almost didn't hear him. It takes me second to realize what he said. Did he just call me a drug addict? "What?" I asked. He just gave me an evil smile and walked away. Eliza put a hand on my shoulder. "What the hell was that?" she asked. I shook my head. "I'm just as clueless as you are," I said. She shrugged. "Come on," she sighed. "We'll be late for English."
Eliza and I walked to English and put our stuff down on our desks. She sat next to a guy named Ryan and I sat next to a girl named Mia. But that day, Mia was sick so I slid my stuff onto her desk. I sat down and realized there was a folded piece of paper in front of me. Confused, I picked it up and read it. The note said: If you have AIDS, get out of school!
I gasped and threw the note back on the desk. At the sound of my gasp, Eliza snaps her head around at me and gives me a confused look. "What's wrong?" she asked. I pointed to the note, shaking with fear. Who would have written something awful like that? When Eliza was done reading the note, her eyes were bugging out of her head. She walked up to Ms. Patterson's desk and handed her the note. I didn't hear what they said, but Ms. Patterson gave Eliza and I a pass to go to the office. When we got there and told the principle everything and showed him the note, he called my parents.
When my parents got there, Mr. Railer and my mom and dad had a long talk about it. "It just doesn't seem right of any of my student to do this," Mr. Railer told my parents. "But no one knows the real reason why she fainted, right?" my mom asked. Mr. Railer nodded. "Of course," he said. "I don't want the students to know about it. I didn't want them to know in the first place." My father, who took this very seriously said, "Look, I don't know why anyone would do this. It was no more than a fainting. It's common to everyone, so Mackenzie is no different. I don't want kids going around saying rumors that Eliza told us about. So if you hear anything about her being a suicidal teenager trying to kill herself by drug overdose, you won't have to worry about dealing with the punishment for the kids spreading the rumors."
Mr. Railer folded his hands under his chin and said, "Well thank you, Mr. Marsh, but I'm definitely sure that won't be necessary." That seemed to have gotten my father a little more mad.
"And this is just a reaction to what's happening with Mackenzie's body right now," my mom continued. "She has had cancer for almost four years now and it's never been a problem before."
This was Eliza's cue to jump in to the conversation. "Wait, you have cancer?" she cried. Well, crap. Eliza's clueless expression starred back at me. I didn't want her to find out like this. I didn't want her to find out at all. But she did. She looked at me for a long time and then finally stormed out of the office. And that was how I lost my friends, popularity, social status and dignity. My secret spread through the whole school by the end of fourth period thanks to Eliza. I left my parents in the office, cleaned out my locker and asked them to drive me home because I didn't go back to that school after that day. And when I got home, I stayed in my room all day. I didn't know which one was worse, having 100 texts from my so-called "friends" saying what an awful person I am, or having nothing at all.