Chapter 14
14
Drew
When I open the latch on the sliding door out the back of our place, I try to be quiet. Mum is asleep on the couch. I pull the blanket over her and adjust the cushion under her head, and she barely moves—she’s out of it, after back-to-back night shifts.
I scoop up the empty wineglass, which has fallen over on the threadbare forty-year-old carpet beside the lounge, switch off the late-night talk show on the TV, and flick the kitchen light as I head toward my bedroom.
Minutes later, I’m lying awake in bed, wondering if she took her medication. I just want to roll over and sleep. But she can’t skip it. If she goes off her meds, the side effects are horrible and I can’t miss any more school if she ends up in the hospital again.
I drag myself back up, stagger down the cramped hall to the kitchen, flick on the light, and check the plastic medicine pack on the chipped Lamin-x bench, near the swollen patch where I once left a hot saucepan. Mum loathes this kitchen. It’s about three decades overdue for a renovation, but there’s no way that fits into a budget swamped by medical bills.
“I can recommend our builder,” Mum’s work acquaintance offered when she dropped her off the other night. “I have one that’s probably more affordable than your private school fees.”
Mum didn’t tell her we don’t pay the fees. My absent father does. And that’s all he does too. I’d try to get him to pay her hospital bills instead, but legend has it he’s an “Old Boy” at the school. That tells me everything I need to know.
The three evening tablets are snug in Saturday’s capsule. I pour a tall glass of water, carry it and the tablets into the living room, and shake her gently by the shoulder. In my hand, her bones are too prominent. I wonder, briefly, how this woman was ever strong enough to bring me into the world. How she’s strong enough to convey herself through it now. And whether she even wants to.
“Mum? Wake up.”
Nothing.
“Come on. You need your meds.”
Eventually she stirs and looks at me like she’s lost track of what day it is. She’s actually lost track of a lot more than that. Graying brown hair falls out of its ponytail and across her face, which, even this worn-out and unwell, lights up when she notices me. She’s not one to worry about coloring her hair. Can’t afford to, either. And she’s exhausted from work, but she ran out of sick leave months ago, and there are only so many hours after school and on weekends that I can cram full of café shifts.
Mum smiles, but the glow doesn’t quite reach her eyes, and my body’s fear response kicks in as usual.
How much longer will you hold on?
“How was the party?” she asks, attempting to inject some brightness into her tone.
“It was fine,” I lie. I’m as bad as her. We do this theater piece, each of us trying to fool the other that things are okay, both knowing it’s an act. She’s anxious for me to enjoy life, despite her illness, and so I pretend to, so she won’t blame herself.
“Meet anyone nice?” she presses.
There’s an unwanted flash of Evie Hudson and her friend across the pool before she and Oliver plunged into the water, destroying that skirt and top and her hair, and any hope I had of talking to her.
I needed to speak with her too, after the debacle with Alicia, who’d been haranguing me all night and invited me to the St. Ag’s formal. Somehow, in turning her down, I think she got the impression I was already going—with Evie. I’d only meant to wave at her and warn her that the guys were throwing punches behind them. What a mess.
“Nobody special,” I tell Mum.
I help her sit up and pass her the glass and tablets. She takes them in shaky hands and downs all three in one gulp.
“Thanks, darling,” she says, and I pull her to her feet. She’s stronger now than she was a year ago, though that’s not saying much. We rarely stray onto the topic of her long-term prognosis, but you don’t need a medical degree to know she’s nowhere near out of the woods. She’s got chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. Burning, shooting pain from damaged nerves in her hands and feet. It’s why she’s been relegated to admin duties at work instead of proper nursing. It’s also why she takes so many painkillers. And the antidepressants.
I hate this for her. All of it. This fragment of the life she deserves. The hull of the person she’s become, clothes drooping off her frame. Every day, she seems to disappear further, while my fear bolts and I try to imagine living in a world where our tight little unit of two is halved. It’s unthinkable. I’m seventeen and everyone assumes I’m one of those mentally tough kids who could easily exist independently. The type to set off on a gap year and not come back until Christmas, when I’d lope in on the last flight and turn everyone’s year around. I don’t want to admit, even to myself, how far from the truth that is. How much I need her, even at this age.
“Are you sure you haven’t met someone, Drew?” she asks. Her health might be the first thing on my mind, but it’s the last thing on hers. “You seem different.”
Mothers and their supernatural abilities!
I pause, for too long. She smiles—for real this time. “You have !”
I can’t. Not the way things are here. Not with six work shifts each week outside school. And not now that Oliver Roche is on the scene.
“It’s really nobody,” I inform her.
“Uh-huh.” And there’s the real smile, after all.