Chapter Twenty Keely #2
Max’s gaze flicked to Keely. Her face went instantly hot. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m not.” Her mom snorted, and Max’s mouth twisted like he wanted to match the expression but couldn’t quite manage it. “You still run track?”
“Yeah.” Max glanced down at his shoes. “Thanks for remembering.”
“What school again?”
“Ash Mountain.” Max gestured down to his hoodie. The cartoon bug that had been haunting Keely for months stared back at her, mocking.
“AMU? Small world,” her mother repeated, nudging her. “That’s where Keely ended up, too. About to graduate with a biochemistry degree.”
Did she even need to be here?
“You don’t say.” Max licked his lips. They were colorless and dry, like he’d spent the morning pressing them into a firm line until all the blood had fled.
“Keely’s headed for Caltech in the fall,” Mom said. “She’s already got a place lined up.”
Sweat beaded on the back of Keely’s neck.
She still hadn’t found a good time to tell her parents about the loan application.
They were always fighting, or making passive-aggressive comments about the other, and she couldn’t tell them separately, because whoever she told first would gloat, and whoever she told second would get their feelings hurt.
She wanted to tell them together, but they weren’t ever together these days.
And, if she was really honest, she still wasn’t sure she could face the horror of watching herself become another thing they fought about—another asset to be divided. And so the cycle went.
But for some reason the way Max was looking at her felt almost. .
. encouraging? Maybe this was her chance to come clean.
She didn’t relish the idea of doing it right here in the cereal aisle, but she knew if she let this window of opportunity close, she’d find it impossible to open up again. Before she lost her courage.
“Actually, Mom—” Keely started.
“She’s going to do great things. She takes after me, obviously. Not her sad excuse for a father,” her mom continued, steamrolling right over Keely’s attempted confession. Keely felt flattened out. “She’s got so much potential.”
The pressure on Keely’s shoulders intensified, and she saw stars from the diamond she was becoming.
Potential.
In science, potential referred to the possibility of action.
The split second before a boulder fell off a cliff, the last inch of a stretched rubber band.
It stored all the stress an object was under, waiting for just the right conditions to release, to move, to fall.
Currently unrealized energy saved for a later date.
But if there was a later date for realizing her potential, Keely worried it would never come. Her energy was already actualized. This was the best she could do, the thinnest she could stretch before ripping apart.
And it still might not be enough.
Max watched her closely. Was he going to rat her out, twist this around into some way to come out ahead? Later, she could deal with that. Just not right now. She shook her head, a silent plea.
His mouth twitched but remained shut, and rare gratitude pulsed behind her ribs.
Then she went and ruined it by saying, “I thought you lived in Elmwood.”
“The Simmonses moved back last year,” her mom interjected, a set of wrinkles appearing around her pinched mouth. “I thought I told you.”
She pointedly did not. Keely would have remembered. Would have. . . girded her loins or something.
Max coughed behind a clenched fist. “It’s closer to St. Francis than our old place.”
The hospital? Keely’s gaze shot up, but he wouldn’t look at her. Max’s dad was a dog groomer and his mom was a bank manager. Did one of them have a late-in-the-game career change? And somehow squeezed med school, residency, and boards into the ten years they’d lived elsewhere?
“Dad had to close his grooming business,” he added, and Keely’s confusion deepened.
Maybe his dad was working at the hospital now, but it didn’t feel right.
He’d loved those dogs, all dogs. She could still remember him coming home with a huge smile on his face day in, day out, telling them wild stories of his craziest clients.
Max and his brothers used to fight over who’d get to lint-roll his clothes free of pet hair before they went in the hamper, because his mom refused to clog the washer with it.
“So it was nice we could come back to a place everyone already knew, instead of having to start over.”
“Of course.” Her mom gave Max a sad smile. “How’s he doing, by the way?”
“He’s, ah. . .” Max kicked at a scuff on the linoleum, and his throat bobbed. “He’s alright. I’m coming from there.”
Coming from where? Keely had missed a vital piece of the equation. A big piece, if the yawning hole in her understanding was anything to go by.
Her mom’s face softened. “I’m sure they take wonderful care of him.”
“The nurses are great,” Max agreed, voice hoarse. “And his doctor’s really confident in this new treatment.”
“Today’s chemo is top of the line.”
Her mother continued speaking, but all Keely heard was a high-pitched buzzing as the final bit of that equation slotted into place.
Chemo.
Chemo = cancer.
Cancer.
Max’s dad had cancer. Or if not cancer, something equally as taxing and damaging that required chemotherapy treatment.
She’d done a whole unit on cancer last year in biochem.
Every data point from those research articles, five- and ten-year survival statistics buried in academic papers, tightened a binding around her heart.
“Well, we won’t keep you.” Her mom gave Max a quick hug, then bumped Keely with her elbow and gave a polite, under-the-breath cough.
“Nice running into you, Max,” she murmured, crossing her arms against the sudden urge to give him a hug of her own.
His head tilted again, but he nodded. “See you around, Keely.”
She stared unfocused at the shelf in front of her but tracked him in her periphery until he rounded the corner.
“Keely,” her mom murmured. “Go grab some extra ground beef. We’ll make them a casserole and you can take it over later.”
The worst part was, Keely couldn’t even be mad.