14

April ran out of the hospital, hailed a cab, and gave the driver Mark’s address. She knew his schedule by heart now and was sure he’d be at home. She needed to see him. Had to see him. Tears blurred her eyes, and she felt as if a hundred-pound weight were pressing on her chest.

At his apartment, she rang the doorbell. She fidgeted on his doorstep until he opened the door. “April!”

“Mark …” April’s voice quivered as she tried to tell him what had happened at the doctor’s office.

“Come in, honey. Tell me what’s going on.” Inside, he settled beside her on the couch. “Your doctor didn’t give you good news, did he?”

Too choked with emotion to speak, April shook her head. Mark held her close while she cried and sputtered out her story bit by bit. “I’m no better, Mark. No better at all,” she finished. “Nothing they did for me has helped.”

“Maybe you didn’t hang around long enough to hear everything your doctor had to say.”

“The expression on his face said it all. He didn’t give me any hope because there isn’t any.”

She watched Mark’s eyes fill with tears. “I won’t accept that. I won’t lose you.”

“Aren’t we the perfect couple?” she whispered. “You think you have no future, but I don’t seem to have one either.”

He grabbed her shoulders. “Stop that kind of talk! You don’t know your future. The radiation could have damaged the tumor and stopped its growth. It may never flare up again. You may live to be ninety.”

April’s thoughts were reeling. Deep down, she’d assumed that modern medicine would fix her as it had the first time. That the radiation would have shrunk the tumor enough for surgical removal. She hadn’t been prepared to hear that it hadn’t worked. “What am I going to do?”

“You don’t have to make plans for the rest of your life right this minute. You just have to get through the next minute and then the one after that. That’s how I do it.”

April realized that every time Mark got sick, he stood at the very crossroads where she now stood. He wondered if he would ever have a tomorrow, ever make plans for a future. Yet he never seemed depressed. He’d shown her that life could be good in spite of bleak medical problems. Mark was strong in a way that April saw she too must be. She couldn’t give up. She wouldn’t. She took a deep breath. “I feel like I’m going to explode.”

“That feeling I can help you with,” he said, smoothing her hair. “When things look really bad for me, I drive fast.”

“Aren’t there laws about speeding?”

“Only if they catch you.”

He drove her in his aqua and white Chevy onto the interstate and out into the countryside, turning off onto side roads and finally stopping on what looked like a deserted airstrip. Weeds grew out of the cracked concrete. Mark shut off the engine and turned to her. “This is where I learned to drive. The surface is still decent.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Take the wheel.”

“Me? You want me to drive your car?”

“Drive her fast.”

“But I can’t—”

“Sure you can.”

He got out of the car. “Come on, switch places with me.” April slid over into the driver’s seat, and Mark got into the passenger’s seat. She switched on the engine. It rumbled, low and velvety. She let the clutch out slowly and the car eased forward. It felt like a racehorse coiled and waiting to sprint. She pressed on the gas pedal, felt the car lurch, and glanced at Mark. He grinned.

She pulled out onto what had once been a runway. She shifted gears and felt the car gather speed. She shifted again and pushed the pedal lower. Forty, sixty, seventy—the speedometer’s needle climbed. She gripped the wheel with both hands, braking as she came to the end of one runway and turning onto another.

Eighty, ninety … the speedometer inched higher. The field on either side of the strip became a streaking blur. Her fear faded. She thought of nothing except pushing the car faster. It was pure exhilaration. The engine roared. The needle hit 100, but then a curve forced her to brake and send the needle downward into the 70s.

As she pushed the car along the crisscrossing surfaces of long, deserted runways, her mind emptied of her troubles. Nothing else mattered but the speeding car. Every nerve ending was focused on keeping the car going fast. The tires hit breaks in the concrete, making the car vibrate and making her hold on tighter. And push harder. Finally, exhausted, she slowed, downshifted, and braked.

Her knuckles were white. She’d been gripping the wheel so hard that she’d lost all sensation in her hands. Perspiration poured off her face and neck. Breathing hard, she leaned back against the leather upholstery. The roar in her ears went quiet, so quiet she thought she’d gone deaf. During the drive, she’d forgotten everything. The brain tumor. The doctor’s bleak report. Her plans for college. Her family, her friends, even Mark. It all had melted into the white blur of speed and heat and the sound of a racing engine and the smell of gasoline. She turned toward Mark.

His face was awash in afternoon sunlight. He was smiling, and his dark brown eyes danced. “Now you know why I do it.”

Later, as he drove her home, April’s fear returned. Where had she gotten the nerve to drive so fast? What if she’d crashed? Wrecked his car? She might have killed both herself and Mark! Yet she had tempted fate. And she’d won. She was still alive. She smiled and caught sight of her reflection in the glass window. She looked disheveled but glowing. Mark had given this to her. He had understood exactly what she’d needed to once again feel in control of her life.

It was almost dark when she made him drop her off at the top of her driveway. “Go on home,” she said. “I have to face my parents by myself.”

“I’ll go with you.”

She stroked his arm. “This is my battle. I’ll call you later.”

When she walked through the door, her parents threw themselves at her. “Where have you been? We’ve been worried sick about you!”

“I went to see Mark.”

“Mark! You left us sitting there in the doctor’s office. We didn’t know where you’d gone, what had happened to you.”

“Don’t ever do that to us again, April,” her father growled.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” April said, feeling guilty. “I guess I just figured you’d realize where I’d gone.”

“No,” her mother said, shrilly. “We didn’t realize.”

“I said I was sorry.” She glanced at them, seeing their anxiety but feeling annoyed. “I’m not a child, you know. I’m almost eighteen.”

“You’re our child.” Her father’s voice rose. “And I don’t care how old you get, we’ll always be concerned about you. We all heard some pretty jolting news today. Don’t you think we were affected by it too?”

“Yes.” She felt tears stinging her eyes, but she didn’t want to break down and cry. The exhilaration of the drive was evaporating, and she couldn’t hold on to it when her parents kept jerking her back into their reality. “I said I was sorry.”

Her father’s scowl lessened, and he took her into his arms. “We love you, April. And I don’t want you to think for a minute that what the doctor said today is the final word. There are other doctors, other treatment centers. I’ve placed some calls to European facilities. They don’t have to deal with the FDA, so sometimes their treatment techniques and medical protocols aren’t as rigid as ours over here.”

No! April thought. She didn’t want to spend months trekking all over the globe looking for some elusive cure when all that she loved and cared about was right here. “Well, Dr. Sorenson did say that the tumor was dormant now. I think that’s a good sign … don’t you?”

“I do,” her mother said. “I think we have to concentrate on the positive aspects.”

Her father stepped away, raked his hands through his graying hair, and said, “Of course we will. I just don’t want April to feel as if she’s been robbed of hope.”

“I still have hope,” she assured him. “I see how Mark makes it through a day at a time. And that inspires me. I’ll make it through that way too.”

“And about college—”

“Not now.” April interrupted her mother. “I can’t think about that now.”

Her father left the room, and her mother sat with her on the sofa. They sat quietly, with only the ticking of the grandfather clock across the room breaking the silence. The tension of the day overcame April, and suddenly she felt exhausted. She put her head back and closed her eyes.

“You really like this boy, don’t you?”

April tensed. “I thought we already talked about Mark and me.”

“But your feelings for him have deepened, haven’t they?”

April heard a melancholy note in her mother’s words, and April wondered what she was expected to say. “I like him.” She took a deep breath, knowing it was time to be completely truthful. “Actually, I love him.”

“Love’s a serious word. I’ve never heard you use it with anybody except family.”

“I’ve never felt this way about anybody else before.”

“April, don’t—”

“No, Mom, you don’t.” April struggled to her feet. “You don’t know what I’m feeling. But I do, so please don’t lecture me about my emotions. My whole life changed today. I don’t know what it means yet, but I just know things aren’t going to move along the way you, Dad, and I had planned them. I need time to think. I need space. And right now, Mark’s the only person in the world who understands me.”

Without waiting for her mother to reply, April darted from the room and ran up the stairs and into her bedroom, where she threw herself across her bed and wept bitterly.