Page 35 of Styx & Stones

My blood turns to ice.No. No, no, no. I don’t want them cutting out a piece of my skull. I don’t want them digging through my head, turning me to mush. “What?”

My mother’s eyes widen. “You’re shaking.”

“She’s in shock, Joanie.”

“But good shock, right? Alaska, honey, this is a good thing.”

I nod, but it doesn’t feel good. There’s still a very real risk that I’ll wind up braindead or they’ll take out a piece of me that I can never get back. Sure, it might be life-saving surgery, but what if it’s not a life worth saving? What if this Alaska Stone ceases to exist? What if I don’t even make it out of the operating room?

“Honey, where are you going?”

“Headache.”

“I thought she’d be happier,” Mom says to Dad.

“Give her some time,” he reassures her with whispered words. “It’s a lot to take in.”

I want to scream. Their whispers fill my head, making everything too loud, too harsh, making me see the betrayal, the deceit in not wanting to live. It’s a betrayal of their legacy.

I’m supposed to go on.

To continue the bloodline. That’s my job here—to carry on the gene pool, carry my father’s name until I’m old enough to surrender it to another man and take his name instead. This is what they’ve wanted since the day I was born, but the urgency to make that happen now, to see that I survive at all costs, seems to have replaced their obsession with me growing up, getting a solid job, and marrying a man who can provide for me and our offspring.

I can’t tell them I don’t want this surgery. I can’t tell them I’m terrified, because it’s a betrayal. Not wanting the surgery makes me crazy. Anyone in their right mind would seize this opportunity. Everyone wants to live, right?

I’m no different. I want to live. I want to be a normal teenage girl obsessing over the perfect prom dress, but the reality is ... I’m not normal. I have cancer—not a little cancer. Not an easily treatable cancer. I have cancer on my fucking brain. A cluster of lumps, no bigger than a book of matches, but plenty big enough to fuck shit up. The surgeons want to carve open my skull and sever the tumor growing on my brain, and I’m just supposed to let it happen? Lie down on their table, take their anesthetic, and hope like hell they don’t scramble the contents of my head like I’m a zombie extra onThe Walking Dead?

I don’t want this.

I don’t want to be a teenage girl with cancer, but I am. That’s reality. And not having the surgery will kill my parents just as surely as the surgery will kill a part of me.

***

Itold my mom I hadone of my migraines so that they’d leave me alone. I couldn’t deal with her hovering, with Dad’s casual way of ignoring the subject. I sometimes wondered if he knew I was sick at all. I mean, obviously he knows, because he’s pulling overtime at the office now, and his insurance is covering ’most everything, but I still hear them arguing about money all the time.

I’m tired. My heart hurts. My head hurts, and I’ve spent too many hours alone in my room. My fear is crippling, and instead of sleeping, I’ve been staring at the ceiling.

I’ve written countless texts to Styx and deleted them all. I’ve paced and scribbled on my walls in the dark, and I can’t deal with the weight of this knowledge anymore. Earlier, I regretted saying those things to Styx, but now I really feel guilty because the truth is that while he may be using me as a distraction, I understand why. I know what he meant when he said I made him more aware of his cancer, because being with him reminds me to live while I have the chance.

With that in mind, I get up and change out of my pj’s into jeans, a tee, and an oversized grandpa cardigan. I throw on a light jacket because I don’t want to get my coat from the hall closet and risk waking my parents, and then I write a note for my mom and tell her I’m staying at El’s house. El lives two blocks from me, and we’ve done this since we were kids. We may not be talking anymore, but Mom doesn’t know that. Mom’s too invested in her wine to notice much of anything these days.

I pocket my phone and climb out my window, then close it quietly behind me. I almost fall off the portico roof, because the fog is so thick, I can barely see my hand in front of me. After sliding down the pillar, I hurry down the stairs and bend double on the street, trying to catch my breath. When my head stops spinning, I walk a block away from my house and call a Lyft.

Outside Styx’s dad’s apartment, I contemplate throwing rocks, but this is San Francisco, so there are none. Instead, I pick up an abandoned aluminum can, tip out the liquid inside, pray like hell it wasn’t pee, and hurl it at his window. It clatters to the ground without so much as grazing the glass, so I crush it underfoot and throw it again.

This time it does connect. The light comes on, and Mr. Hendricks opens the window. “Can I help you?”

“Oh ... um. I’m really sorry, Mr. Hendricks.”

“Let me guess—you’re looking for Styx?”

“Yeah.”

The window to the second room slides up and a shadowy figure leans out into the pool of light from the streetlamp. “Damn, Stones. I knew you were ballsy, but I didn’t expect you to try hitting on my dad in the middle of the night.”

“Very funny, jackass.”

“Do your parents know you’re here?” Mr. Hendricks asks, pinching the bridge of his nose.

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