Chapter 10 Sloane
SLOANE
Normal is a performance.
It’s the way I tie my shoes in a double knot like it’s just another Tuesday. The way I pull my hair into a ponytail so tight my scalp aches. The way I stand in front of my mirror and practice a face that doesn’t look like it just watched the world end.
I brush my teeth. I rinse. I spit.
I look up at myself and whisper, “Get it together.”
My reflection doesn’t argue.
Because my reflection doesn’t have to walk into a gym full of people who think basketball is the most important thing in the world.
It doesn’t have to pretend the word hospice isn’t sitting in the back of my throat like a splinter.
I leave my room, and the house is quiet. Pops’s door is shut. Logan’s isn’t.
I don’t look at it.
I don’t look at anything that might pull me out of the thin layer of control I’ve wrapped around myself like armor.
I make coffee. I don’t drink it.
I pack my bag. I check my phone.
Three new emails from the hospital. One voicemail from a number I don’t recognize. A calendar invite titled Palliative Care Consult.
My vision blurs.
I blink hard until it clears.
Then I open my browser.
Clinical trials. Glioblastoma trials. Immunotherapy. New radiation protocols. Anything. Everything.
My search history is a graveyard of hope.
trial eligibility age 59
tumor burden multiple lesions
phase 1 trial location california
experimental treatment outcomes
how to get into clinical trial fast
I scroll until the words stop meaning anything and become shapes.
The problem is every site says the same thing in different fonts:
Eligibility criteria.
Prior treatments.
Performance status.
Tumor location.
Progression.
Progression.
There’s that word again.
I find a trial at Stanford. My fingers hover over the contact form.
Then I read the exclusion criteria, and my stomach drops.
Not eligible.
I find another one in LA.
Not eligible.
Another one in Seattle.
Not eligible.
It’s like the universe is playing a game where the answer is always no.
My phone buzzes with a reminder:
Practice – 2:00 PM
Basketball practice.
Like that matters.
Like running suicides will undo what’s happening in my father’s brain.
I stare at the notification until my chest tightens with anger.
Then I lock it down.
I throw my phone into my bag like it’s the problem.
I walk out the door like I’m not carrying a ticking clock inside me.
The gym is loud.
Sneakers squeak. Balls bounce. Voices echo. Music thumps from someone’s speaker. The air smells like sweat and wood polish and the faint metallic tang of adrenaline.
It should feel familiar.
It should feel safe.
Instead, it feels like stepping into a world that doesn’t know it’s about to lose me.
Jade spots me first.
She’s already in warmups, hair in braids, grin sharp as ever. She lifts a hand. “Rhodes! You look like you’ve been personally victimized by daylight.”
I force a smile. “That’s because I have.”
Blakely jogs up behind her, ponytail swishing, eyes softening when she gets close enough to read my face.
“Hey,” she says, quieter. “You okay?”
“Yep,” I lie too fast.
Jade narrows her eyes like she’s filing it away. She always notices more than she pretends to.
Blakely bumps her shoulder lightly. “Don’t interrogate her.”
“I’m not interrogating,” Jade says, offended. “I’m observing.”
I almost laugh, but it comes out wrong.
Coach whistles and calls us in.
We start practice like we always do—lines, layups, passing drills. The rhythm of it should drag me into my body.
It doesn’t.
My hands catch the ball, my feet move, my brain counts reps and steps and angles like muscle memory is trying to save me.
But my thoughts keep sliding away from the court.
Palliative consult. Hospice. Months.
Pops in a recliner with a blanket.
Pops saying, home.
The ball hits my palms too hard, and I fumble it. The sound echoes.
Coach’s voice snaps across the gym. “Sloane. Focus.”
“Got it,” I say automatically.
I don’t.
We run sets. I miss a cut. I hesitate on a pass. Jade throws me a look like what the hell are you doing?
At one point, I’m at the free throw line, and the gym goes too quiet in my head. The ball feels heavy. My arms feel detached from my body.
I bounce it once.
Twice.
I picture Pops’s hands folded in his lap in that office.
I picture the doctor’s mouth forming the word terminal.
My throat tightens.
I shoot.
The ball rims out.
A few girls groan.
Coach blows the whistle. “Again.”
My hands shake as I retrieve the ball.
Again.
Again and again.
By the time practice ends, my body is sweating, and my lungs burn, and I feel none of it. Like I ran through the entire thing underwater.
The team starts dispersing. People are talking about weekend plans and finals and some guy who slid into someone’s DMs.
I stand at my locker and stare at my bag like it’s a foreign object.
Jade and Blakely flank me on either side without making it obvious.
They’ve been doing that since sophomore year.
Since the first time I walked into practice with red eyes and insisted it was allergies.
Blakely’s voice is soft. “Sloane.”
I keep my hands busy, untying my shoes. “What?”
Jade crosses her arms. “You were a mess today. Like…a Sloane mess. Which is saying something.”
“I’m fine,” I say again, because it’s my favorite lie.
Blakely doesn’t move. “Did something happen?”
My throat tightens.
There’s a moment where I consider saying no.
Where I consider locking it down and walking away and letting them think I’m just tired or stressed or being dramatic.
But then Jade’s expression shifts—less teasing, more serious.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” she says, her voice blunt in the way Jade is blunt when she cares. “You know that, right?”
The words hit me in the sternum.
I swallow hard.
My hands stop moving.
I stare at my shoes because if I look at their faces, I’m going to break.
“My dad,” I manage, voice too quiet. “His scan came back.”
Silence.
Blakely’s breath catches. “Sloane…”
I keep going because stopping would kill me.
“It’s…worse,” I say, and the word is thin and useless. “It’s progressed. They…they said there aren’t really any more options.”
Jade’s eyes go wide, then harden like she’s looking for something to punch. “What the fuck.”
Blakely steps closer, hand hovering like she wants to touch me but doesn’t know if I’ll flinch. “What did they say?”
I finally look up.
Their faces are open. Unarmored.
And that’s what does it.
My chest tightens. My vision blurs.
I blink hard, forcing it back.
“They said…comfort care,” I whisper. “Hospice. At this point, with the treatments available, the cons outweigh the pros. It’s terminal.”
Blakely’s eyes fill instantly. Jade’s jaw clenches, and I can see her fighting the same impulse Cameron always has—the need to rage at something because rage feels better than helplessness.
“Oh my God,” Blakely breathes.
Jade shakes her head once like she can shake the truth loose. “No,” she says, voice fierce. “No. There has to be something. Trials. Something.”
“I’m looking,” I say too fast.
Because that’s the only part of this I can control.
“I’m looking at everything,” I insist. “Every trial, every program, every—”
Blakely nods like she believes me. “Of course you are.”
Jade steps closer, voice softer now. “Then let us help.”
“I don’t need—” I start.
Jade cuts me off. “Yes, you do.”
Blakely reaches out then, fingers brushing my arm gently. “Have you told Coach?”
The idea makes my stomach turn.
Coach is kind. Coach is fair, and he’d immediately tell me to take time off, to step away, to breathe.
And the thought of stepping away, of sitting still with all of this, feels like drowning.
“No,” I say. “And I don’t know when I’m going to.”
Jade frowns. “Sloane—”
“If I take time off,” I say, voice sharpening, “what does that do? It doesn’t stop it. It doesn’t change anything. It just gives me more hours to sit in my room and think about my dad dying.”
Blakely’s eyes soften painfully. “Sloane…”
I swallow hard. “I can’t just…pause my life.”
Because if I pause, the grief will catch me.
And I’m not sure I can survive being caught.
Jade exhales slowly, then nods once like she’s deciding her strategy. “Okay,” she says. “Then you’re not doing it alone.”
I shake my head. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes,” Jade says, voice firm. “We do.”
Blakely nods, her expression steady even through tears. “Tell us what you need.”
I stare at them, throat tight.
What I need is impossible.
What I need is a miracle.
What I need is time.
I don’t have that.
Instead, I say the only thing I can say without shattering.
“I need…normal,” I whisper.
Jade’s mouth tightens, but she nods. “We can do normal.”
Blakely squeezes my arm gently. “And when you can’t do normal, we’ll do the rest.”
My chest cracks again, a little deeper this time.
I nod once, because if I speak, the sob will come.
Jade clears her throat harshly like she’s angry at the world. “Also,” she says, wiping at her face like it’s an inconvenience, “you’re sending me those trial links. Tonight. I’m not asking. I’ll help you look through them.”
A laugh slips out of me, small and broken.
“Okay,” I manage.
Blakely exhales and leans her forehead briefly against mine, a quiet gesture that feels like shelter. “We’ve got you,” she whispers.
I close my eyes for one second, letting myself believe it.
Then I open them again and pick up my bag.
Because practice is over, and the world expects me to keep moving.
And I will.
I’ll go home. I’ll open my laptop. I’ll search until my eyes ache. I’ll chase anything that looks like hope.
Because if I stop—
I’ll hear the word months again.
I will hear that I don’t have the one person who is my everything anymore.
I’ll picture having to do anything without him.
And I don’t know what I’ll do if I hear it in the quiet.