The Look by Sophia Bennett Read Free Book Online Page B

… staring out the window, mostly. Often Daisy has to prod me at school because I haven’t heard what she’s just said.
    Of us all, Ava is the most relaxed. Her biggest concern is that Jesse has two more A-level exams and a big sailing race to trainfor, so he can’t come and visit her yet. Other than that, she seems to be coping amazingly well. Perhaps it’s Dr. Christodoulou’s reassuring attitude. Perhaps it’s having most of the hot boys in her grade asking after her whenever she’s out of school for more tests. Perhaps it’s just that she’s not very good at math. (I still can’t help remembering about the ten percent, but maybe she didn’t notice.) Above all, she just wants to carry on as normal.

    I come home from school a week after our snapshot fiasco, and she’s in the middle of a raging argument with Mum.
    “I refuse to let you come with me!”
    “But you can’t go on your own, darling. You’re very ill !”
    “I don’t feel it. And you’ll just cry everywhere. I hate it!”
    “I promise not to cry.”
    “You’re doing it now!”
    Mum rubs her nose. “I’m not. Look, darling, this is a very important appointment.”
    “It’s totally routine!” Ava sighs loudly and sees me standing in the living room doorway. “Tell her, Ted. I’ve just got to pop into the hospital on Saturday to check everything’s working properly. I can do it in a couple of hours by myself. She’s turning it into a major expedition.”
    By “everything,” I assume she means the thin plastic tube she had inserted into her chest yesterday, called a Hickman line. One end sticks out so it can feed the chemo into her bloodstream when it starts on Monday. Ew. Disgusting. Actually, when she showed me last night it looked rather neat. Not as bad as I was expecting — a bit like earphones for a mega-iPod taped to her skin. But still … No wonder Mum wants to go with her to check it’s working.
    “Er …”
    “I can walk, Mum. I can take the Underground. These things don’t weigh anything. Besides, you need to work. Tell you what, Ted can come with me. How about it, T?”
    “Well, actually, Daisy invited me round to …”
    Ava puts on a hangdog expression. It’s a fake hangdog expression, I know, not even designed to make me feel that guilty, but when your sister has lymphoma …
    “OK. I’ll come.”
    Mum sniffs. “All right, then. If you’re sure. I know you don’t like me fussing, darling.”
    Ava sighs. “Exactly.”

    When Ava got the diagnosis, all we wanted was news, details, and explanations. Then the test results came in and they just seemed to make things more confusing. Apparently, the disease has reached Stage 2B, which enables them to know what type of chemo to give her and how long for. But why are they starting next week, for example, and not this minute?
    Dad instantly pounced with the inevitable “2B or not 2B” joke from Hamlet . His face was like granite when he said it, but Ava and I laughed anyway. Mum didn’t. Sometimes, I sit beside him at the computer so we can try and make sense of it all. The stage refers to how much the disease has spread. It seems Stage 2 is worse than Stage 1, but a lot better than Stage 3 or 4. The B means Ava gets night sweats. They have a letter for it and we have a washing machine for it. Whatever.
    Stage 2B. To me, it sounds like a venue at a music festival. Staring at Dad’s computer screen that evening, the words circled around my head until they meant nothing at all.

    Ava seems to be right about this latest appointment being routine, though. When we get to the hospital on Saturday, it’s a totally different experience from the last time I was here. Ava knows her way around the shiny corridors pretty well by now, and a nurse only takes a few seconds to fiddle with her Hickman line and check that the insertion point is OK. Everything’s set for Monday, when they’ll hook her up for the first bout of life-saving chemicals. That’s it. We’re