I’d practiced it four times before anyone got there. Once to Bernard, who yawned. Once to the ceiling. Twice under my breath while Pops asked whether I wanted buffalo chicken or Supreme, which was how I ended up saying “I have cancer” in answer to what kind of pizza.
Three words. I’d said harder things. I’d once told Coach Mathieson I was the one who backed over the ball cart.
Then the front door opened, Noelle called, “Mr. Zack?” and every version I’d practiced went straight out of my head.
They came in the order they always did. Noelle first, with her overnight bag slipping off one shoulder and a grocery bag holding the good pretzels and three bags of Takis, because they’d been on sale. Maekynzie straight from the mall with a twelve-pack of Dr Pepper and a story about a customer who’d tried to return a dress with a ketchup stain on the hem. Tinsley with a bakery box. Emory last, his guitar case coming through the door before he did.
Each of them stopped in my doorway for half a second when they saw my leg propped on the pillows. Each of them started talking about something else.
With all of us squeezed into the downstairs guest bedroom beside Dad’s office, I could barely see the rug beneath their bags. Noelle had claimed the edge of my bed, Maekynzie sat on the floor beside her, and Tinsley pulled the chair closer while Emory found somewhere to put his guitar.
From the kitchen, Pops reminded Emory that he was sleeping on the floor and the bedroom door would stay open.
“I brought a sleeping bag,” Emory called back, holding it up even though Pops couldn’t see him.
“Pizza’s here in twenty minutes,” Pops added. “And nobody makes Sloane get up to fetch anything.”
“I’m right here,” Emory said. “She can send me.” He dropped into the beanbag Stetson had hauled down from my room and kicked his shoes beneath it.
Bernard, who’d been pretending to sleep beside my bed, thumped his tail twice. Emory had a long history of dropping pizza crusts, and Bernard had never forgotten a single one.
My friends had all shown up for something. None of them knew exactly what yet, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could let them sit there without telling them.
For a while, everybody tried very hard to have a normal sleepover. Noelle queued up Twilight on her laptop and connected it to the TV, but left it paused while Emory dealt UNO cards across the comforter. Pops set two pizza boxes on the dresser: buffalo chicken, my favorite, and a Supreme with extra olives. He passed me a plate, checked that my water was within reach, and left us to it. Maekynzie was already arguing that stacking draw-two cards should be legal.
Nobody asked about the crutches or why I’d missed so much school. I knew they were trying to give me room to say it myself, but the effort was so obvious that I almost wanted somebody to ask.
I lost three hands in a row because I kept forgetting what color we were on. When Maekynzie slapped a draw-four card in front of me, I picked up the cards and stared at them as if they’d been delivered to the wrong address.
“That’s seven cards,” Emory informed me, leaning forward to inspect my hand. “You only had to draw four.”
“Did I?” I counted them again and put three back.
Emory slid the draw pile closer. “You want to stop?”
“No. It’s your turn.” I held my cards up before he could ask again.
Tinsley let her turn pass without playing anything. She was watching me instead, her cards resting facedown against her knee. When I looked up, she didn’t glance away or pretend she’d been studying the game.
After the last game, Emory gathered the cards while Noelle started Twilight. My stomach had tied itself into a knot, and I barely followed the first twenty minutes before reaching for the remote. Bella froze mid-sentence, and the room went quiet except for the crinkle of Noelle’s Takis bag.
I’d wanted them here all day. Now that every face was turned toward mine, I wanted to pull the comforter over my head and stay there until somebody invented a different Friday.
I twisted my sleeves around my fists. “So, there’s something I need to tell you guys.”
Noelle set the chip bag down. Maekynzie shifted closer on the rug, and Emory lowered the cards he’d been shuffling. Tinsley stayed where she was, waiting.
“I have cancer.”
I’d expected the words to stick somewhere on the way out. Instead, they landed between the pizza boxes and game cards, flat and ordinary. I looked at the paused movie, then made myself look at my friends.
“It’s called Ewing sarcoma. It’s a bone cancer, and it’s in my left femur. That’s why my leg’s been doing its whole dramatic collapse routine. The chest scan didn’t show anything in my lungs. They still have more scans to do before they can say whether it’s anywhere else.”
Tinsley went still. Maekynzie lowered her soda without taking another sip, and Noelle’s hand closed around the Takis bag so tightly it crackled.
“I still need a port and chemotherapy,” I continued, trying to remember the order Dr. Giacherio had explained everything. “A lot of chemotherapy. Then they’ll have to deal with the tumor in my leg, probably with surgery or radiation. Maybe both. Treatment could take most of a year.”
I stopped and wound a loose thread from my comforter around my finger. Emory set his cards on the floor. I looked down at the thread until my finger started to hurt and unwound it.
“No volleyball,” I added. “No Happy Paws for now. And apparently my hair might decide to quit before I do.”
Noelle covered her mouth, but that didn’t stop the tears. She moved closer on the edge of the bed, avoiding my left leg, and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. One of her braids came apart against my cheek.
I knew Noelle’s hugs. She was usually the kind of person who squeezed you once, announced you were crushing her ribs, and let go. This time she stayed, her fingers tightening in the back of my hoodie. When I tried to shift so she could sit more comfortably, she shook her head against my shoulder and held on.
“I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to say anything.” I held on to the back of her hoodie while she cried.
Maekynzie pulled her knees up on the rug and shook her head, pressing the heel of her hand against her mouth. “No. That’s not… Sloane, no.”
Tinsley didn’t cry. She reached across the comforter and took my hand, rubbing her thumb once over my knuckles. She kept looking at me, not at the crutches or the bed or the floor.
“Are they taking care of you?” she asked.
“Yeah. Dr. Giacherio’s my oncologist, and Dr. Mehta’s handling the bone stuff. They’ve been really good.”
“Good.” Tinsley tightened her fingers around mine. “Tell us when you hear about the other scans.”
Emory sat motionless on the beanbag, looking from me to the pizza boxes. He rubbed his palms against his jeans before leaning forward. “Do you want another slice?”
I shook my head. “Can you pass the pretzels?”
He found the bag beneath Noelle’s laptop case and opened it before handing it over. Maekynzie reached for a tissue, and Tinsley pushed the box toward her with her free hand.
“Pops ordered way too much pizza,” Emory said after a minute.
“You’ve had four pieces,” Maekynzie told him, wiping her cheeks.
“Three.”
“I watched you eat the fourth.”
Emory looked at his empty plate, then at Bernard sitting beside him. “I had help.”
“Don’t blame him,” I said. “He can’t defend himself.”
Bernard nudged Emory’s elbow, and Maekynzie laughed while she pulled another tissue from the box. Emory put his plate on the dresser, out of reach, then picked up his guitar. He played quietly while Noelle stayed beside me with one arm around my shoulders. Bernard lifted his muzzle and howled once, making Maekynzie laugh again. Tinsley eventually released my hand to rescue the cards from beneath a pizza box.
For a while, nobody tried to make me feel better or explain what I should be thinking. They ate, argued over Emory’s questionable musical choices, and complained when Bernard contributed another note. I sat in the middle of them with my leg propped on pillows and listened.
Maekynzie asked if I wanted to keep watching. I said yes, and she reached for the remote while Emory put the guitar away. The film picked up where we’d stopped, and Noelle settled back against my shoulder.
Around ten-thirty, headlights swept across my window. Chandler’s Jeep pulled into the cul-de-sac, followed a moment later by Stetson’s Lexus. From the kitchen came my brother’s voice, much too loud for the hour.
“Two to one!”
Pops told him to use his inside voice, and Stetson lowered it just enough to repeat the score to whoever was still listening.
Noelle glanced toward my open door. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and straightened the hem of her hoodie. Despite everything that had happened in the last hour, I almost smiled.
“You know he can’t see you through the wall, right?”
“I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Then you won’t mind if I tell him you’ve gone to sleep.”
She nudged my shoulder, but Bernard lifted his head before she could answer. Stetson appeared in the doorway with Chandler behind him, both still wearing their soccer warm-ups.
“You missed my goal,” Stetson said.
“You haven’t shown me yet. There’s a difference.”
He reached for his phone, but Chandler caught his sleeve. “Later, man.”
“I was going to show everybody.”
“We heard about it from the kitchen,” Tinsley said.
Noelle smiled at Stetson. “Was it a good one?”
His attention went straight to her. “Chandler put it right at my feet. I’ll show you.”
While Stetson found the video, Chandler looked at me. “How’s it going?”
“I told them.” I glanced around the room, then back at him. “We’re watching Twilight.”
“Again?” He smiled a little, and I was grateful he let the first part sit without asking anything else.
“Apparently we haven’t learned our lesson,” Emory said.
Stetson held his phone where Noelle could see, leaning closer when she asked which player was him. Maekynzie got up from the rug to watch over her shoulder, and he started the clip again without being asked.
Pops called from the kitchen that there were cookies. Stetson looked up and asked Noelle if she wanted any.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Chandler stepped aside to let him through, then looked back at me. “Want some?”
“Two. Before he takes them all.”
“I heard that,” Stetson called, already halfway down the hall.
Chandler followed him, and Noelle reached into her bag for a folded calendar and a fistful of markers. She spread the blank pages across the end of my bed, careful not to disturb the pillow supporting my leg.
“I brought this, too,” she said. “For appointments and stuff. If you want it.”
I looked at the empty squares. “You don’t even know when I start.”
“I know. We can wait.” She set a pink marker beside it and looked at the others. “I thought we could each pick a color.”
Maekynzie reached for purple, and Emory took green. Tinsley picked up the orange marker, checked that it worked on the scrap paper beside my bed, and passed the paper to him.
“What are we putting down?” Emory asked.
“Nothing yet,” Noelle said. “Just names, so we know whose color is whose.”
“Can I write mine?” I asked.
Tinsley handed me a blue marker. “Here.”
Maekynzie held the calendar steady while I wrote my name in the margin, then added hers beneath it. Emory leaned over to sign his and smudged the last letter with the side of his hand.
“Nice,” Maekynzie said.
“Still readable.” He wiped his hand on a napkin before passing the calendar to Tinsley.
Chandler came back with two cookies on a folded napkin. He set them on my nightstand while Stetson handed Noelle hers, then held out the plate to the others.
“What’s this?” Stetson asked, looking at the calendar.
“For when I get my schedule,” I said.
He watched Noelle add The Chemo Calendar across the top in pink. Chandler stayed beside the nightstand while she hesitated over the first empty square.
“When you get the dates, we can figure out who can come,” she said. “If you want us there.”
I looked at the empty boxes. I’d barely gotten used to the word chemo, and now there was a place to write down when it would happen. I picked up one of the cookies and broke it in half without taking a bite.
“I might not want everybody there every time,” I admitted. “Sometimes I might just want to sleep.”
“Then you tell us,” Tinsley said, reaching for the cap to her marker. “It’s your calendar.”
“I can drop stuff off, too,” Emory said. “Homework. Food. Whatever.”
“You can bring my English notes,” Tinsley said. “I’m not trusting you to take them.”
“Neither am I.” Emory looked at me. “You’d get half a page and a drawing of a dog.”
“I’ll take the notes. You can keep the dog.”
Chandler glanced at the markers. “Can I have one?”
Noelle passed him the green, and he crouched beside the bed to write his name beneath Emory’s. Stetson waited for the purple, then added his at the bottom.
“You can share with me,” Maekynzie told him. “But don’t draw anything.”
He lifted the marker away from the paper. “I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking about it.”
Stetson capped it and handed it back while Noelle held the calendar against the corkboard Dad had brought down from my room. She looked at the volleyball pictures pinned there, then at me.
“Can I put it here?”
“Put it there.” She pinned it beside the pictures. Seven names ran down the margin, with two greens and two purples because nobody had brought enough markers. Noelle stepped back to check that it was straight while I finally took a bite of my cookie.
Stetson lingered beside her, looking at the blank squares. Then he turned toward me.
“You need anything else before I shower?”
“I’m good. Thanks for the cookies.”
He picked up the empty plate. Chandler squeezed my shoulder before following him out, and Noelle sat beside me again, reaching across the comforter to gather the loose markers.
By midnight, Twilight had become background noise. Noelle was curled beside me with her head resting against a pillow, Tinsley had claimed the chair near the window, and Emory was sprawled across the beanbag with his guitar case beside him. Maekynzie sat cross-legged on the rug, typing on her phone.
I picked up my phone to check the time and saw Maekynzie had posted a new story. I tapped it. White letters stood out against a black background, with a purple heart and a pair of praying hands beneath them.
praying for my girl tonight. y’all don’t know what she’s carrying 💜
I looked over at her, then back at the post. She hadn’t used my name, but she didn’t need to. People at Sierra Vista Central knew we were friends. They’d seen me limping before I disappeared from school, and it wouldn’t take much for somebody to start putting things together.
“Maekynzie.” I waited until she looked up, then turned my phone toward her. “What’s this?” Emory reached for the remote and paused the film as she leaned forward to see the screen.
Whatever she saw on my face wiped away her smile. She glanced at the screen again.
“Oh my God. Was that bad?” Her eyes widened. “I didn’t say your name. I just wanted people to be nice to you.”
“I haven’t told anybody else.” My voice was quieter than I wanted, and I hated that it shook. “I wasn’t ready for people to know.”
Maekynzie reached for her phone so quickly she nearly knocked over her soda. She opened the app, tapped through the story controls, and deleted the post.
“It’s gone. Look.” She turned her screen toward me. “I’m so sorry, Sloane. I wasn’t thinking.”
It had been up for four minutes, which should’ve been nothing. Four minutes was barely enough time to brush your teeth or make microwave popcorn. Online, apparently, it was plenty.
Emory frowned at his phone. “Uh, guys? Tahni already shared it.”
He turned the screen toward me. Tahni had posted a screenshot of Maekynzie’s story with one line written over it in pink.
who’s sick?? 👀
Kleo had put up the same screenshot with a skull emoji beneath it.
The room went silent. Maekynzie pressed both hands over her mouth, and Noelle sat upright beside me.
“Sloane, I swear I wasn’t thinking,” Maekynzie said. “I can message Tahni and tell her to delete it.”
“Please don’t. Not tonight.” I handed Emory’s phone back to him and pulled the blanket a little higher over my lap.
Deleting Maekynzie’s story hadn’t deleted the screenshot. I could already imagine the questions waiting at school, and I couldn’t even tell which ones would come from Tahni and which ones people would invent on their own.
Noelle reached for my hand. “We can tell people to mind their business.”
“Since when has that worked at Sierra Vista Central?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, probably because we both knew it hadn’t.
Maekynzie stared at her phone as if she could pull the screenshot back through it. Her eyes were red again, and she kept turning it over in her hands.
“I really thought I was helping,” she said.
“I know.” I looked at her, wishing that made it hurt less. “But it’s my cancer, Maekynzie. I should get to decide who knows about it.”
Her face crumpled. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Tinsley held out her hand toward my phone. “Want me to silence it for a while?”
I passed it over. She silenced it and set it on the nightstand, then looked toward Noelle.
“Can we put the movie back on?”
Noelle picked up the remote but waited for me to nod before pressing play. Bella started talking again, and Emory lowered the volume. Maekynzie stayed beside the bed, looking down at her phone.
When Maekynzie tried to apologize again, I stopped her. I’d heard her, but I couldn’t keep telling her it was all right.
“I know you meant well. I just need you to ask me before you post anything about me. Ever.”
“I will,” she whispered, wiping beneath her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “I promise.”
After a minute, I reached down and squeezed her shoulder. She looked up, surprised, and I gave her a small nod before settling back against my pillows.
She stayed beside the bed, twisting a tissue between her fingers. I didn’t want her to leave. I also didn’t have anything else to say that would make this better for either of us, so I looked back at the movie.
Emory eventually started complaining about Edward, and Tinsley told him that if he hated the movie so much, he could stop watching. He said he needed to know how it ended, which made Noelle lift her head long enough to remind him he’d seen it with us twice.
Noelle shifted closer, resting her shoulder against mine. She was watching me, but she didn’t ask whether I was okay. I leaned against her and watched Emory reach for the last piece of pizza.
Outside my window, the street was quiet. Somewhere upstairs, Stetson’s bedroom door closed, and Pops called a soft goodnight from the hallway.
The Chemo Calendar hung beside my volleyball pictures, its squares still empty. I looked at it, then at my phone on the nightstand. I wanted to check whether anyone had messaged me. Before I reached for it, Tinsley passed me the last cinnamon roll, and I took that instead.
On the rug, Maekynzie pulled her sleeping bag closer to the bed. Emory asked if anyone minded him turning the movie down. Nobody did. I picked at the cinnamon roll while they settled around me.