Zac and Mia by A.J. Betts Read Free Book Online Page B

another.
    Mia: y stuck?
    The cursor blinks curiously. How do I type this? My weakness through year 11, thinking it was too much footy. The bruises and fatigue and flu. Then the tests and diagnosis and those six months of chemo, then life—life!—then relapse, followed by the search for a Bone Marrow Transplant donor and the Total Bone Irradiation, then the quarantine for the German marrow to take hold as I rebuild my immune system so my neutrophils will be ready for the world. But until then I’m stuck here, stuck here to graft and build andheal and wait and get excited about the smallest things, like a tap on the wall and someone, finally, my own age to talk to.
    Zac: Just stuck. 7 more days. Not so bad …:-/
    I’m left looking at the blank space for ages. Did I say too much? Did it sound like I was asking for pity?
    I sense her slipping away, her eyes glazing over, wanting to return to her Facebook page of healthy, popular friends from the real world with tans, oversized sunnies and heart-shaped pendants. They could be models in magazines. I want to tell her I’m one of those people too—well, kind of—even if I do currently resemble a Rice Bubble. But all I say is:
    Zac: U can play yr music if you want. I hate gaga but
    Mia: Me too
    Zac: ?
    Mia: it was a gift.
    & good mum-repellant
    Zac: ?
    Mia: guaranteed
    Zac: didn’t work on mine
    u can play anything u want. Its yr room.
    There’s no response so I go stupidly on.
    Zac: Take it easy. dont be sa
    This iPad should have an override button to stop me stuffing up.
    Zac: d
    I add, but I don’t know why I type this either, asif I’m the Sad Police. I’m not. She can be whatever she wants to be.
    Apparently what she wants to be is alone. Her green chat symbol disappears and I’m left feeling like I’ve said all the wrong things, spelled all the wrong ways.
    Don’t be sad?
Why isn’t there a significant other—like her mum, or the guy in the hat who’d visited that day—to spew out dumb stuff instead of me? She needs someone beside her to tell her that everything is going to be all right, that it’s not for long; that at seventeen, she has sixty-seven years of life ahead of her, according to current statistics, and this is just a blip, a time-out from her real life, less than one square on her ceiling.
    I hear her body rising from the bed next door and, soon, the toilet flush. If she’s throwing up, I hope it’s because of the Cisplatin and not because of me.
    I linger on her Facebook page long enough to learn she’ll be going into year 12 next year; that she’s been training for a Diploma of Beauty Therapy one day a week. That she loves Tim Burton films, Ryan Reynolds, Flume and peanut M&Ms. That she hates bananas. And she’s in a relationship, it says, with Rhys Granger.
    I switch the iPad off. We might be ‘friends’ but we’re not friends and, apart from the obvious, we have little in common. It would feel weird to stalk her wall any longer.
    ‘A six-letter word meaning ostracise?’ Mum asks.
    But words fail me.

7
ZAC
    Status: 5 days to go. Dying of boredom. Suggestions?
    Mum’s assigned herself a project: teaching herself to knit from a
Knitting for Dummies
book. At forty-nine, and a soon-to-be-grandmother, she decided it was time. Her first attempt is a scarf for Bec’s yet-to-be-born baby. She clicks and clacks using wool from a packet that was hygienically sealed to prevent germs from entering our cocoon. Cast 32, knit-stitch eight, purl 24. It sounds like aerobics. Mum could do with some aerobics.
    I need a project too. Something to make my last week trip along like her stitching, quickening with increasing confidence. Instead, time feels like a lump of plasticine in my useless, puffy hands. Five big fat days to go.
    It’s not that Mum hasn’t offered to teach me—shebought spare knitting needles in the hope we would purl in sync—but I threatened to use one to stab myself in the eye. I’d rather watch repeats of
Glee
than take up