Page 26 of Sunburned

Any qualms I had about lying to her were erased after the first week of treatment. Her energy had improved after only a few days, and by the time we left, she was the closest I’d seen to her old self since her cancer had reappeared a year ago. Her hair had started to grow back in a soft fuzz of silvery brown, her coloring was better, her eyes less sunken. She looked alive.

In the car on the two-hour drive home, we listened to all her favorite eighties bands—Depeche Mode, Talking Heads, Madonna—and she sang along, her face upturned to the sun. Whereas chemo had left her unable to eat, the new treatment made her ravenous, and we stoppedfor burgers at a roadside diner, taking milkshakes to go when we were finished.

My phone dinged with a message as we were pulling out of the parking lot, and my mom saw Tyson’s name pop up on the screen. “Doesn’t seem casual,” she said with a smirk.

“We’re just hanging out,” I protested.

She laughed, shaking her head. “Hormones and pheromones.”

“We have things in common, too,” I protested.

She held up her hands. “Enjoy your youth, honey. I of all people know it won’t last forever. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I know,” I said. I gave her what I hoped was a convincing smile. “You don’t need to worry.”

Tyson and I hadn’t talked about what would happen at the end of the summer, but he regularly made references to our future together, and he’d reached out every day I was gone to check on me.

I was excited to tell him about my mom’s progress, so once I’d put her to bed that evening, I biked over to his house like we’d planned. But when I arrived, I found the house empty and the doors locked.

“I’m at Ian’s,” he answered when I called. “Come over.”

I sighed. I was far too worn out to be around people tonight. “I’m only coming to get the keys.”

Leaving my backpack on the porch, I pocketed my phone and went out the back gate. The sun was setting as I followed the path through the long grass and around the muddy pond to the mobile home, where Ian’s old pickup truck was parked next to the beat-up Corolla I now recognized as belonging to the girl he was dating. What looked to be a generator was making a loud noise on one end of the trailer, and some kind of pump contraption was humming next to the warped wooden steps up to the front door.

As little as I wanted to be there, I’d never seen inside Ian’s place and was curious. I could smell the weed through the door as I knocked on the fogged glass. After a moment, the door swung in, revealing my boyfriend, a joint in one hand and Coors Light in the other, his eyes athalf-mast. He pulled me close, planting a kiss on my mouth. “How’s your mom?” he asked.

“Better,” I said. “She ate a double bacon cheeseburger for lunch and sang ‘True Blue’ all the way home.”

“That’s good to hear,” he said. “I missed you.”

As he released me, I took in Ian’s eclectic décor: plastic-framed posters of Che Guevara and Steve Jobs hung on the walls above a stained La-Z-Boy and a floral-patterned couch that must have belonged to Tyson’s parents, engineering textbooks piled on the side table. An empty microwave box served as a coffee table, on which was an ashtray filled with at least fifty cigarette butts. Either he wasn’t a very successful drug dealer, or he was investing his money elsewhere, because he certainly wasn’t spending it on his décor.

Ian was on the couch eating a piece of pizza out of the open box that rested on the makeshift coffee table. “There’s pizza if you want it,” he said, gesturing to the box.

“I just ate,” I said. “I’ve had a long day. I can’t stay. I’m just grabbing the keys to the house.”

At that moment, the door at the end of the hallway burst open and the girl stumbled out, rubbing her eyes as if she’d just woken up. She was mouselike, petite and pale, her dark hair cropped to chin length, a fringe of bangs falling in front of her eyes.

“The motor’s making a funny noise,” she said to Ian without moving from the doorway.

There was a twang in her voice, a flatness to her vowels. Australian, maybe?

“What kind of noise?” he asked, peeking through the blinds over the window behind the couch.

“I don’t know, like grinding or something,” she said.

Yes, her accent was definitely Australian. I wasn’t sure why I was so surprised, but I was.

Ian sprang to his feet and pushed open the front door, bounding down the steps into the gloaming. Tyson trailed behind him, the joint still burning between his fingers.

“Keys,” I reminded Tyson, following.

“I’m coming with you, I just want to see what he’s got back there,” he said as we reached the bottom of the steps.

“What is all this shit?” I whispered, gesturing to the pump contraption.

“Water filter,” Tyson said, starting along the path around the trailer.

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