4. Emma
EMMA
“You know you need to try to eat something.”
Grandma’s gentle but firm reminder lands heavy no matter how soft-spoken she is. Like lead weights against my skull. “You know I try. But if I force it, that just makes things worse.” To make her happy, I lift a piece of toast to my lips. Of course, she insists on watching until I take a tiny bite.
“Maybe you should log in from home today.” She takes a seat across from me at the small, square table positioned in front of a sunny window.
The kitchen is cheerful, if cluttered. Then again, it would be pretty much impossible not to clutter a kitchen this small.
Somehow, Grandma made it work—pots and pans hang from hooks embedded in the wall, and the shelves Grandpa made before I was born hold small appliances that don’t fit on the small counters.
Grandma insisted we bring the shelves with us when we moved.
The room is drenched in love. Right now? I would rather be anywhere else in the house, since the aroma of Grandma’s scrambled eggs has me fighting off nausea.
Maybe she is right, and I should log in and review my coursework from home today. Usually, it’s the day after treatment that knocks me on my ass the hardest, but today I feel even worse. Yesterday I was able to power through, but perhaps I overdid it.
“You can’t push yourself too hard, sweetheart. You know that.” Her face wrinkles deeper than ever as she picks up her cup of tea and takes a sip after blowing across the surface of the steaming liquid.
“I promise. I know my limits.”
She is not convinced. “The thing about limits is, sometimes, we don’t know we’ve hit them until it’s too late. Like taking a long walk and figuring out you’re worn down, but then having to turn around and walk home. You have to stop before you’re too tired to get back.”
She means well. I know she does. She has a point, too. I guess being alive all these years means she’s learned a thing or two.
But there are things I know. Things I might have told her about, but let’s face it, she doesn’t know how it feels because she didn’t go through it.
Feeling like an animal in a zoo, being watched and pitied everywhere I went.
All it took was one person overhearing a conversation I had with a school counselor for the news to spread like wildfire.
Emma has leukemia. That day, I might as well have gotten a brand burned into my ass. Victim. Poor thing. So brave.
Yes, even being thought of as brave came off as an insult after a little while. I mean, brave? As opposed to what? Digging my own grave and hopping in? I stopped being a person. Even my friends didn’t know how to act around me anymore.
Only someone who’s been through it would really understand.
At times like this, the best I can do is offer a compromise. “How about I go to my first class, and if I’m tired afterward, I’ll come home? I have to at least try.”
The clinking of the spoon against the mug as she stirs her tea tells me how she feels about that idea. With a sour twist of her mouth, she gives in. “I want you to call and check in with me after class.”
“What, you think you need to check up on me?” It takes more energy than I should probably spend to put on a happy face, to reassure her. I only have so much energy every day. Some days are better than others—this is not a great one.
And maybe I am being too stubborn by insisting on going in today.
There’s a reason they made a special exception for me, with permission to access my classes online as much as I need to.
I should probably try to take advantage of that arrangement, right?
But no, instead, I have this constant need to prove myself.
To whom? Considering nobody beyond the administration knows I’m sick, it doesn’t really make much sense.
Maybe I just need to prove it to myself. That has to be enough.
Once I’ve swallowed everything I can manage to get past my lips, I clean up after myself before Grandma can give me grief over how little I ate.
The fluttering of wings on the other side of the window over the sink draws my attention—the bird feeder hanging on the other side of the glass attracts more and more of them all the time.
We might be living in a new town in a different state, but some things never change. Like Grandma’s love of animals.
The surroundings have definitely changed, though, and not for the better.
Not that my grandparents ever had a ton of money—they lived pretty frugally when Grandpa was alive.
But their neighborhood was cheerful, a place where everybody knew everybody else and looked out for each other.
It’s going to take time to build that sense of community here, where all I’ve seen so far from the people living on either side of us is wariness or suspicion.
Maybe a mix of both. Wondering what brings us here.
Wondering if we’re going to upset the balance.
I’m the reason my grandmother couldn’t spend the rest of her life in the house where she spent her marriage and raised her family.
She would never see it that way, of course, and I know I’m lucky.
She has never held that against me, never made me feel like I was dragging her down.
By the time Mom and Dad were killed by a drunk driver, she should’ve been enjoying her life—kids out of the house, her husband was retired, it was time to start living.
And then she ended up with another kid to raise once I was orphaned. But she never complained. Never hesitated for a second. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to pay her back. It will probably take the rest of my life.
She’s watching a morning talk show and working on a crochet project on the living room sofa by the time I emerge from my bedroom again.
“You check in with me now,” she reminds me as I lean down to kiss her soft cheek.
She’s always careful not to wear perfume or scented moisturizer, since it seems like my sense of smell is so much stronger and my aversions are so much harder to deal with a day or two after chemo. Another way she thinks about me.
“I promise,” I reply before leaving. But I’m going to try my hardest to stick it out. Sometimes I need to set little goals for myself.
It’s just the goals themselves that have changed. I guess some people want to get a certain grade in a class, or they try to make the Dean’s List. I just want to make it through an entire day at school without exhaustion crushing me. I want to walk through life like a normal, healthy person would.
Instead, I make the drive to school, eyeing the dangerously low gas gauge and doing the mental math it takes to figure out how much I can feasibly spend to fill the tank.
It’s not only Grandpa’s life insurance that’s running low.
The insurance payout from Mom and Dad, which I’ve used to pay for books and intuition, is running low, too.
I have enough to get me through until I graduate, but not too much more than that.
And even then, I have to be careful how I spend.
That means crossing my fingers and praying every time I turn the key in the ignition, then patting the dashboard and praising the car for running so well when I make it to my destination.
“Good girl,” I whisper once I’m parked in the lot, surrounded by much flashier, probably more reliable, cars driven by people who have never sat alone during a chemo treatment, who have never heard about things like ports and the difference between lymphocytic and myeloid leukemia.
They don’t know how good they have it. A couple of girls pass in front of me once I’ve killed the engine, shaking the ice in plastic cups printed with the logo from the coffee shop in town, a few minutes’ walk from campus.
It’s a cute, charming little area, and I would like to explore it sometime when my energy’s a little better.
But unlike the girls whose conversation carries on the morning breeze, I would be alone.
Let’s face it: if I barely have the energy to drag myself to campus, how can I muster up the strength to make a friend?
But every day isn’t like this. I have to remind myself of that as I slowly climb out of the car and sling my backpack over one shoulder. There are ebbs and flows, and today is an ebb day, that’s all. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget there are better days when everything feels so daunting.
I’ve been through worse than this. Much worse.
And it kind of makes me wonder as I slowly cross campus, strolling like there’s nowhere in particular I have to be.
What are the people around me going through?
Because if there’s one thing this experience has taught me, it’s how easy it can be to overlook other people’s struggles.
I doubt there’s anybody who would look at me now without knowing what’s going on and imagine I have cancer.
The guys tossing a football around on the lawn, the girls watching them and giggling—I’m sure they all have stories nobody knows about.
Private struggles. Just like me. What would it be like if we all walked around with signs hanging from our necks, telling the world what it is we’re wrestling with?
Maybe we’d understand each other a little better if we remembered everybody’s going through something.
Maybe there wouldn’t be so much negativity and fear in the world.
“Well, well, well. Look who it is. Pearls.”
Whoever says it is practically shouting, obviously trying to get my attention as I reach the hub of the quad, where the paths leading from different buildings converge like spokes in a wheel.
Reflex makes me touch a hand to the pearl necklace I’m wearing—it was Mom’s, and it’s one of the few hand-me-downs that were actually worth keeping. We didn’t exactly have a lot of money.
There are really only two people in this school who have bothered me since I got here. Otherwise, I’ve managed to fade into the background. That’s why I know exactly who I’m going to see when I look around to find the source of that voice and the snide, derisive laughter in it.
It’s like seeing double. Lucky me. The twins are currently standing in my way, not quite blocking the path, but not stepping aside to let me pass, either. Because why come straight out and admit they want to make me miserable? Why not drag it out like this?
“Are they real?” The long-haired one points to my necklace like he’s never seen one before. “The only pearl necklace I’m used to is the kind I leave behind, if you get what I mean.”
Charming. He’s not even original. Coming to a stop in front of them, my gaze bounces back and forth as I wait for one of them to do the decent thing and step aside so I can get past. “Excuse me,” I grit out, lifting my gaze to glare at one of them, then the other when it’s clear neither of them has any intention of getting out of the way.
The short-haired twin shrugs. “Sure. What do you need to be excused for?” Oh, boy, we are really hitting all the clichés, aren’t we? I feel like I’m back in grade school.
“Don’t you have anything better to do? Move,” I grunt when it’s clear neither of them has any intention of giving this up.
There’s a prickling sensation along the back of my neck—people are watching, because of course they are.
Apparently, nobody has anything better to do than pay attention to somebody getting humiliated for no reason.
These jerks. These arrogant, thoughtless creeps.
They don’t have the first clue what it’s like to really have problems. If they were in my shoes, they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves and would probably ask the oncologist if he knows exactly who he’s speaking to.
I can just imagine them being that full of themselves.
“Why should we do what you say?” The longer-haired twin glances toward the other. “Right, Preston? It seems to me we were pretty decent and chill when we first ran into pearls over here.”
“Good point, Easton,” the other twin mutters, sneering as he looks me up and down. Easton and Preston. I’m sure their parents thought they were being very clever when they named their sons. What a shame the boys couldn’t absorb any of that cleverness.
“Oh, that was your idea of being decent and chill? Beating somebody senseless, two against one? Wow,” I conclude, shaking my head, my voice louder now that a small crowd has started to form.
I swear, people around here need some better entertainment options.
“Remind me not to be around when you’re being a couple of violent bullies, then. ”
“We’d remind you, but you would probably ignore that, too,” Easton mutters, elbowing his brother. Like he needs to be told when something is funny. Makes me wonder if either of them has ever had an original thought of their own.
“The next time I have a fight I know I can’t win fair and square, I will call you two,” I retort. “Since I know neither of you is brave enough to fight on your own—or maybe you’re just not strong enough. Is that it?”
Oh, no. I mean, sure, it feels great to watch their faces fall as the laughter erupts all around us. I didn’t even have to try that hard to insult them. It’s actually pretty sad.
On the other hand? What was once arrogance turns into something else. Something that makes their eyes narrow and their jaws tighten.
“So that’s how you want to be, pearls?” Easton brushes his hair back with his fingers, chuckling darkly. “That’s just fine. We’ll play it your way.”
“My name is Emma,” I grunt. “And that’s a lame nickname, anyway. Am I supposed to be insulted? Is that the worst you can come up with?”
And then they both smile, and I really, really wish I hadn’t asked. “Oh, not even close,” Easton assures me. “But you’ll see for yourself very soon, pearls. Wait and see.”
On the surface, I do everything I can to show them how disinterested I am, right down to rolling my eyes before shoving my way in between them.
It takes almost all the strength I have left—now that the showdown is over, my body is trembling, and it takes every ounce of willpower to put one foot in front of the other.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come to school today, after all.
Because I’ve only made life worse for myself by kicking the hornets’ nest.