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I a a shohen Kate jimmies the lock and comes into the bathroom "I want to talk to you," she says

I poke my head out from the side of the plastic curtain "When I' to buy time for the conversation I don't really want to have

"No, now" She sits down on the lid of the toilet and sighs "Annawhat you're doing--"

"It's already done," I say

"You can undo it, you know, if you want"

I arateful for all the stea able to see ht now "I know," I whisper

For a long tierbil on a wheel, the sa of possibility, and you still get absolutely nowhere

After a while, I peek ain Kate wipes her eyes and looks up at me "You do realize," she says, "that you're the only friend I've got?"

"That's not true," I i Kate has spent too roup she fits into Most of the friends she hasstretch of re It turned out to be too hard for an average kid to kno to act around so; and it was equally as difficult for Kate to get honestly excited about things like houarantee she'd be around to experience theot a few acquaintances, sure, butout a sentence, and sit on the edge of Kate's bed counting down the minutes until they can leave and thank God this didn't happen to them

A real friend isn't capable of feeling sorry for you

"I' the curtain back into place "I' a damn lousy job at that, I think I push my face into the shower spray, so that she cannot tell I', too

Suddenly, the curtain whips aside, leaving me totally bare "That's what I wanted to talk about," Kate says "If you don't want to beBut I don't think I could stand to lose you as a friend"

She pulls the curtain back into place, and the steam rises around me A moment later I hear the door open and close, and the knife-slice of cold air that comes on its heels

I can't stand the thought of losing her, either

That night, once Kate falls asleep, I crawl out of my bed and stand beside hers When I hold , a ainst my hand I could push down, now, over that nose and hts Hoould that really be any different than what I a?

The sound of footsteps in the hallway hasunderneath the cave of my covers I turn onto my side, away fro by the time my parents enter the room "I can't believe this," my mother whispers "I just can't believe she's done this"

My father is so quiet that I wonder if maybe I have been mistaken, if maybe he isn't here at all

"This is Jesse, all over again,"it for the attention" I can feel her looking down at me, like I'm some kind of creature she's never seen before "Maybe we need to take her so, so she doesn't feel left out Make her see that she doesn't have to do soet us to notice her What do you think?"

My father takes his ti "Well," he says quietly, "maybe this isn't crazy"

You kno silence can push in at your eardrums in the dark, make you deaf? That's what happens, so that I almost miss my mother's answer "For God's sake, Brianwhose side are you on?"

And my father: "Who said there were sides?"

But even I could answer that for him There are always sides There is always a winner, and a loser For every person who gets, there's soive

A few seconds later, the door closes, and the hall light that has been dancing on the ceiling disappears Blinking, I roll ontobeside one," I whisper

She sits down on the foot of my bed and I inch away But she puts her hand on my calf before I move too far "What else do you think, Anna?"

My stoht "I thinkI think you must hate me"

Even in the dark, I can see the shine of her eyes "Oh, Anna," hs, "how can you not kno much I love you?"

She holds out her arain and I fit there I press my face hard into her shoulder What I want, , is to turn back time a little To become the kid I used to be, who believed whatever ht without looking hard enough to see the hairline cracks

My e and explain it We can fix this," she says "We can fix everything" And because those words are really all I've ever wanted to hear, I nod

SARA

1990

THERE IS AN UNEXPECTED COMFORT to being at the oncology wing of the hospital, a sense that I a attendant who asks us if it's our first tiions of children with pink emesis basins tucked beneath their arms like teddy bears--these people have all been here before us, and there's safety in numbers

We take the elevator to the third floor, to the office of Dr Harrison Chance His name alone has put me off Why not Dr Victor? "He's late," I say to Brian, as I check uishes, brown, on a sill I hope he is better with people

To alove and knot it into a coxcolove dispenser near the sink is a pro We bat it back and forth, playing volleyball, until Dr Chance hiy for his delay

"Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald" He is tall and rail-thin, with snapping blue eyes htly set mouth He catches Kate's makeshift balloon in one hand and frowns at it "Well, I can see there's already a problem"

Brian and I exchange a glance Is this coldhearted eneral, our white knight? Before we can even backpedal with explanations, Dr Chance takes a Sharpie marker and draws a face on the latex, colasses to es him, he hands it back to Kate

I only see my sister Suzanne once or twice a year She lives less than an hour and several thousand philosophical convictions away

As far as I can tell, Suzanne gets paid a lot of money to boss people around Whichwiththe lawn on his forty-ninth birthday; our ether in the aftermath Suzanne, ten years my senior, took up the slack She made sure I did my ho She was siven ical antidote to cure it, which is what made her such a success at her job She was just as co the Charles She made it all look easy Who wouldn't want a role model like that?

My first strike was ree My second and third were getting pregnant I suppose that when I didn't go on to beco me a failure And I suppose that until noas justified in thinking that I wasn't one

Don't get , she loves her niece and nephew She sends thes from Africa, shells frolass office like hers when he grows up "We can't all be Aunt Zanne," I tell him, hat I mean is that I can't be her

I don't re phone calls first, but it was easier that way There's nothing worse than silence, strung like heavy beads on too delicate a conversation So it takes me a full week before I pick up the phone I dial direct "Suzanne Crofton's line," a man says

"Yes" I hesitate "Is she available?"

"She's in a "

"Please" I take a deep breath "Please tell her it's her sister calling"

A moment later that smooth, cool voice falls into my ear "Sara It's been a while"

She is the person I ran to when I got ether my first broken heart; the hand I would reach for in the er remember which side our father parted his hair on, or what it sounded like when our hed No matter what she is now, before all that, she was my built-in best friend "Zanne?" I say "How are you?"

Thirty-six hours after Kate is officially diagnosed with APL, Brian and I are given an opportunity to ask questions Kate lue with a child-life specialist while we meet with a team of doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists The nurses, I have already learned, are the ones who give us the anse're desperate for Unlike the doctors, who fidget like they need to be somewhere else, the nurses patiently answer us as if we are the first set of parents to ever have this kind ofabout leukemia," one nurse explains, "is that we haven't even inserted a needle for the first treat three treatments down the line This particular illness carries a pretty poor prognosis, so we need to be thinking ahead to what happens next What makes APL a little trickier is that it's a chemoresistant disease"

"What's that?" Brian asks