Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
CALEB
The Harvard acceptance letter sat on my desk this morning like it should mean everything.
Crimson crest at the top. My name—Caleb Sterling Graham—lined up beneath it in a font so clean it feels inevitable. Like it was always going to say those words. Like my entire life was designed to culminate in this exact rectangle of cream-colored paper.
We are pleased to inform you…
I traced the embossed letters with my index finger—four times, then seven, then eight.
It should’ve felt like triumph. Proof that every late-night cramming constitutional law, every perfect grade maintained at the cost of sleep, every carefully managed second of my existence for the last six years was worth it.
Proof that the rules work. That control equals safety. That perfection can hold back chaos.
Instead, it feels… hollow.
Empty as a championship trophy sitting in a display case—beautiful, impressive, and utterly lifeless.
It was a Tuesday, after all. And for goddamn regionals, the debate championship I’ve been preparing for since freshman year, I was missing an appointment with Mom.
Dr. Park’s office. Round three of the new experimental chemo. The one with the sixty-two percent remission rate for her specific markers.
Sixty-two percent.
I folded the letter with mechanical precision—corners aligned, creases sharp—and slid it into my backpack, right next to yesterday’s Princeton letter. Two Ivy Leagues in forty-eight hours, both telling me I’ve won the game I’ve been playing since I was twelve years old.
Since I decided the only way to keep Mom alive was to be perfect enough that the universe couldn’t take her from me.
This was the dream. The future that would justify her sacrifices. The proof that her fight meant something. That I mean something.
So why does my chest feel like someone hollowed it out with a spoon?
I check my phone—exactly ninety seconds since the last check. I’ve been tracking it. Every ninety seconds feels safe. Divisible by thirty, by fifteen, by three. A controllable interval. If I check at the right times, everything will be okay.
But there are no new texts from the hospital. Mom’s appointment started at eight. It’s nine-forty-seven now. They should be done soon.
Should be.
Should.
That word’s doing a lot of heavy lifting.
My thumb hovers over Mom’s contact, but I don’t call. Because
Rule #9: Don’t burden others with your anxiety.
And Mom has enough to worry about without her neurotic son calling to make sure she’s still breathing.
Sixty-two percent. Those are good odds. Better than the original prognosis. Better than last year’s thirty-eight percent.
I can live with sixty-two percent.
I have to live with sixty-two percent.
My phone buzzes, and my heart slams against my ribs.
But it’s not Mom. It’s Harper. She took the morning off from school to be with Mom.
HARPER: Good luck at Regionals today. You’re going to be incredible.
HARPER: Sox knocked over my coffee trying to get my attention. She says good luck too. Well, she said “meow” but I’m pretty sure that’s what she meant.
Something in my chest unclenches. Just slightly. Just enough to let oxygen back in.
She’s the only person who texts me like that—no preamble, no asking if I’m available to talk, just dropping affirmation into my day like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like she knows I need to hear it, even though I’d never admit it out loud.
I stare at that heart emoji longer than is probably healthy.
She sends those sometimes. Never says “I love you” back when I say it—and I’ve said it multiple times, usually whispered against her skin in the dark—but she’ll drop hearts into texts like breadcrumbs. Like she’s leaving a trail for me to follow to somewhere she can’t quite articulate yet.
I’ll take the breadcrumbs. I’ll take whatever she’s willing to give.
Winning the debate championship today is just one more milestone on the path to State. Four years of preparation for this moment. Four years of researching precedents and practicing rebuttals and learning to argue any side of any issue with equal conviction.
Win today, and Harvard isn’t just an acceptance letter—it becomes scholarships, prestige, my future, all but guaranteed. The résumé no one can argue with. The life Mom always wanted for me.
Everything’s clicking into place exactly the way I’ve scripted it.
So why does it feel like I’m watching someone else’s life unfold?
I adjust my tie in the mirror mounted inside my locker. Check the knot against my belt buckle.
Not quite right. I loosen it, retie it. Check again. Still off by maybe a millimeter. My hands are shaking slightly as I adjust it again. Fourth time. Four is good. Four is safe.
The knot finally sits exactly where it should—perfectly centered, bottom edge kissing the belt buckle. I touch both collar points to make sure they’re symmetrical. Left, right. Left, right. Equal pressure.
Jacket smooth across the shoulders. No stray threads. Collar crisp.
Control the controllable.
That’s the entire philosophy, really. I can’t control Mom’s white blood cell count or whether the chemo will work this time or if the cancer will come back. I can’t control whether Harvard will ultimately offer me enough financial aid or if we’ll be able to afford it even with scholarships.
But I can control this tie. This debate. This moment.
Another buzz:
HARPER: I should be back by lunch. I’ll be the one trying not to stare at you like you hung the moon.
I can’t help it—I smile. A real smile, the kind that makes my face feel weird because I use it so rarely at school. The golden boy doesn’t smile like an idiot at his phone. The golden boy maintains composure.
But Harper sees past the golden boy. Sees past the student council treasurer and the debate team captain and the Harvard-bound prototype everyone else wants me to be.
She sees me. The guy who schedules when it’s safe to cry—usually just at night, in the dark, when she comes through the bathroom into my room and curls against my chest. The guy who checks and rechecks silverware alignment at dinner because if he can keep the small things in order, maybe the big things won’t fall apart.
The guy who’s terrified every single day that he’s not enough.
And somehow, impossibly, she loves that guy.
Or she’s learning to. I think. The heart emojis have to mean something.
CALEB: Love you too.
I send it before I can second-guess myself. Even though she won’t say it back. Even though I know I’m pushing, know I should give her space to come to it on her own terms.
But she climbed out of her bedroom window last night. Didn’t think I heard her—I’ve learned to sleep light, always half-listening for sounds from Mom’s room—but I heard the soft scrape of the frame, the rustle of her leather jacket.
She was gone for three hours.
Came back smelling like weed and something else I couldn’t identify. Climbed back through her window like she’d never left. Like she doesn’t know I’m always, always listening for her.
I can’t ask about it. Can’t demand to know where she goes or what she does because we’re not… what are we, exactly? Stepsiblings who cross lines we shouldn’t? Kids playing house in the spaces between propriety and disaster?
Besides, Harper doesn’t respond well to demands. She responds to patience. To space. To proving through action that I’m not going anywhere.
So I give her space during the day. Let her breathe. Let her come to me when she’s ready.
And I spend my nights listening for her at the bathroom door.
CALEB: One more day. Then it’s our getaway. Lake house. Just us.
I hit send before I can overthink it.
The lake house. I booked it three weeks ago with money I’ve been saving from tutoring gigs and a part-time job at the library.
A long weekend in Waco, where we can disappear completely.
No more quick kisses stolen in hallways or my bedroom.
No more watching every word, every gesture, every moment we’re in the same room together.
Just us. No performance. No masks.
I know I’ve been a goddamn zombie lately.
Since Mom’s cancer came back—recurred, Dr. Park’s clinical voice in my head, not ‘came back’—I’ve been running on autopilot.
Going through the motions. Harper’s taken everything in stride, never complaining when I’m too exhausted for conversation, never pushing when I shut down.
She deserves better than the ghost I’ve been.
So I planned the perfect weekend. Couples massages—her first ever, she admitted when I told her, eyes wide like I’d offered her the moon. A jacuzzi overlooking the water. Privacy. No parents, no school, no cancer appointments haunting the periphery.
A weekend where perfect doesn’t matter and I can finally, finally just exist in her orbit without all the scaffolding I’ve built to hold myself upright.
The bell rings, sharp and intrusive.
I head to third period, checking my phone in the passing period between classroom doors and lockers slamming.
SILAS: Knock ’em dead today, kiddo. Your mom would be so proud.
I freeze.
The hallway keeps moving around me—students streaming past, voices rising and falling—but I’m stuck. Paralyzed.
Would be.
Not is.
Not will be.
Would be.
Like she’s already gone.
Panic spikes through my chest, sharp and sudden and vicious. My throat closes. Air won’t move.
It’s just a figure of speech, I tell myself, forcing my feet to keep walking even though my legs have gone numb. Probably autocorrect. People use future tense wrong all the time. It doesn’t mean anything.
Mom’s fine. The new treatment is working. Sixty-two percent remission rate.
Those are good odds.
Great odds.