“No, she looks lovely. And so thin! Have you been dieting?” Mamie continued.
Everyone in Entrance knew I had cancer. When my parents found out, they had put out an announcement in both the Entrance Herald and the parish newsletter. Still, no one out and out talked about it.
Which I found, increasingly, frustrating as hell.
What were they going to say when I lost my hair?
Oh darling, what a fashion-forward statement you’re making!
Such bullshit.
I smiled widely at Mamie. “No diet, just trying to stay healthy.”
She nodded sagely. “Wise girl. I yo-yo dieted for years and now my skin doesn’t fit quite right.”
“She’s sick, Mother. She isn’t on a fucking diet,” Reece Ross sneered at her as he stepped up to our little grouping.
He was wearing a suit, as was proper for Sunday service, but the tie was loose around his neck and the top three buttons were undone. He was one of the handsomest boys at Entrance High and in most of my classes. We didn’t talk much though, mostly because he was cool in a burgeoning bad boy way and I was a good girl.
So, I was surprised that he’d come to defend me.
Especially against his own mother.
I’d wanted to do that countless times with my own mother but never found the gumption. It made me look at Reece Ross, who was known around town as a hotshot basketball player and all-round player, with new respect.
Mamie’s mouth opened and closed uselessly.
My mother glared at Reece, disgusted by his lack of decorum.
“That said, you do look pretty great for a sick girl,” Reece added, his gaze roving languidly over my modest dress, the curves beneath it.
I’d been blessed when puberty hit with an abundance of breast and ass and a small waist that, with my blond hair, made me look almost like a Barbie. It was ironic and cruel given the family I was born into. I was a Lafayette and as such, I was to be defined by certain qualities such as piousness, generosity and grace. Not sexuality, wickedness and beauty.
Anger burned clean through the murkiness in my blood, purging me clean for one glorious second before I remembered myself and became boring again.
“Thank you,” I said, idiotically.
My mother smiled, as did Mamie.
Reece glowered at me.
The older women bent close, cutting us out of their heart to heart. Reece took the opportunity to step closer to me, his cologne strong in my nose.
“You dying?” he whispered harshly.
Anger again, a brief flare. “You care?”
“Do you?” he bit back. “I watch you live your pretty life, Louise, and it looks fucking dull. Worse than death, some might say. If you’re truly dying, don’t you think it’s time you lived a little?”
“Let me guess, you’re volunteering to show me how?”
His grin was a slim slice across his face. “Interested?”
“Why are you suddenly so into me? I don’t think we’ve spoken ten words to each other and I’ve known you all my life.”
Reece stepped back slightly, crossing his arms and affecting that teenage boy stance that spoke of artificial bravado and casualness. “I was hoping you’d be more interesting now. With the cancer and all.”
“Are you trying to be a massive asshole or does it come naturally to you?” I snapped.
My hand flew to my mouth to cover my gasp. It wasn’t that I never swore. I just never did it in public or even anywhere outside my head. I’d never said an ill word to anyone and yet at the slightest provocation, I was being absolutely vile.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t be.” He lunged forward into my space again but not so close that the busybodies in the congregation would titter about it. “Doesn’t it feel good to be mean?”
“It shouldn’t matter if it feels good or not. Meanness is not something to aspire to,” I preached.
He rolled his eyes. “You’re so boring, I’m surprised you don’t put yourself to sleep with talk like that.” Suddenly, my hands were in his. “Look, let me help you here. You’re a seventeen-year-old girl with absolutely no life experience and you could die soon. Doesn’t that scare the pants off you?”
“You wish,” I muttered darkly before I could censor myself.
His eyes caught fire with humor and I realized just how pretty he was. “There, doesn’t that feel good? Saying what you really think.”
I swallowed because it did.
Triumphantly, he grinned into my face. “Listen, you can think about it, yeah? I’m not asking you to do a line a coke or anything. I’m just urging you to live a little while you got the chance.”
“Why do you care?” I asked again, this time softly because what he said was under my skin.
“I care because I’ve got half the crap you’ve got to deal with and I hate it.” He indicated his mother, who was still gabbing away with my own. My parents were King and Queen of Entrance society and Mamie Ross was firmly on the fringe despite years of trying to be otherwise. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d seen Reece dragged to the same boring events I was forced to attend.
“I’ll think about it,” I whispered, afraid to even have the words in the air.
The rebellion that was churning hot and slow under my skin had always been just a feeling, a rumbling heat that growled sometimes but never erupted into words or actions. I felt the release of my promise to Reece, felt the crack in the shell of my hardened exterior. It was both ominous and entirely beautiful.
I hadn’t felt so free since Zeus had stopped writing to me.
So, when my mother returned to my side and excused us by saying that we had an important meeting to get to instead of just saying that she had to take me to the Youth Cancer Support Group in Vancouver, I decided to dip my toe in independence.
“I’ll drive myself,” I said, firmly.
Mum hesitated as we crossed the parking lot, surprised by the iron in my voice. She’d molded me to be her ideal child and her ideal child was supposed to be a pushover.
“You’re so busy with all your charity work and there’s the dinner with the Anholt’s tonight so you have to make sure Chef isn’t serving anything with dairy because of Mrs. Anholt’s lactose intolerance… You have so much on your plate and I can easily drive myself down to Vancouver.”
I waited, holding my breath, for my mother’s response.
She took her time thinking about it and, by the time she answered, I was probably purple in the face. “Fine, but be home by dinner.”
“Will do,” I said behind a curtain of hair so that she wouldn’t see my enormous smile.
It was such a little thing, driving myself an hour both ways to Vancouver, but it felt like a massive triumph because my mother dictated almost every aspect of my life and I spent most of the time with her when I wasn’t in school.
“Use the slow lane and watch out for those idiot motorcyclists who think that road rules do not apply to them,” Mum said as she ducked into her sleek black BMW.
“Of course,” I said.
I watched her pull out of the parking lot before making my way over to the silver Mazda hatchback I’d named Optimus Prime. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was a zippy little machine and it was my very own. I absolutely adored it.