All the Answers (17 page)

Ava wished she could run around with a wheelbarrow and laugh, too. But her pencil-news felt like all she could carry today. She sighed.

It must have been a loud sigh because Marcus turned to her. “What's wrong with you?”

Ava shrugged and started stacking the empty tomato cages. “I'm worried.”

She waited for Marcus to ask why, but he just nodded. “Dad says Grandpa's still mostly staying in bed.”

That made her look up. “How come?”

“I don't know. You know he's been sick this week, right?”

Ava nodded, even though she hadn't known. Why hadn't Mom told her?

“Dad said they're doing tests on his heart.” Marcus shrugged. “He's just old, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Ava pulled out a dead tomato plant. There was a rolypoly bug underneath, looking all surprised to see light. “Hey, Marcus … do you feel like it's weird how Grandpa is Mom's dad, but it's always Dad who's talking about him and making us all go to family night and stuff?”

“No.” Marcus answered, his voice certain as the pencil's.

Ava poked the roly-poly bug, and it curled up tight.

“He and Mom have barely spoken since Grandma died,” Marcus went on, “and Grandpa had that gambling thing and lost our college money.”

“What?” For a second, it almost made Ava forget about Mom's cancer.

Marcus tipped his head and looked at her. “I didn't realize you didn't know. Mom and Dad were talking about it while we
were cleaning out Grandpa's apartment over the summer. You were at Sophie's. They either didn't know I was in the living room packing up books or didn't care. But yeah …”

“What happened?”

“When Grandma Marion died, Grandpa went kind of wild. He flew to Las Vegas and played slot machines or blackjack or something—won a boatload of money for a while, too, then—bam! He went to some casino in Atlantic City and lost everything.” Marcus brushed some dirt off his knee. “Grandma had told Mom that money she left with him would be for our college.” He shrugged. “But that's not gonna happen.”

“Wow.” Ava looked at Marcus. “Wow,” she said again, this time because she suddenly understood why he'd gotten so serious about physics and his science projects, why he was so intense. He was hoping for a scholarship. He
had
to hope for a scholarship now. And Mom … Mom was the most money-careful person Ava knew. No wonder she was furious. “Wow.”

“You want to shoot baskets?” Marcus asked.

“No thanks.” Ava hesitated. He'd told her a secret; it felt like she should tell him about Mom. But she couldn't. He'd find out soon. She swallowed hard and went inside.

Ava tried to read her book for English, but her head was spinning like one of those slot machine screens, with thoughts popping up and then whirring away again. Grandpa's gambling. College. Marcus. The general store. Mom. Mom's cancer. Even thinking that word made Ava shiver. She couldn't imagine what
it would be like when Mom came home from that appointment and said it aloud.
Cancer
.

Ava took a shaky breath. She needed Sophie back so much. She tried to message her again but only got a quick: SORRY CAN'T TALK. OUT HIKING WITH DAD AND JENNA. Ava guessed that was a lie without even asking the pencil.

On Sunday morning, Ava finished her homework. She tried to fill up the afternoon with saxophone practice. Over and over she played the songs Miss Romero had given her. She was getting all the notes to the
Titanic
song, but it didn't sound right. It didn't sound true. Ava wondered if watching that sad scene in the movie would help, but she decided she was too full of her own sadness to make room for any of Leonardo DiCaprio's, so she put that piece away and took out the Johnny Hodges song she'd played for Grandpa.

That one was better. After she played it a few times, her stomach felt less twisty. It wasn't going to help her with the audition, though. She had to play one of the pieces she'd been given, and the more Ava thought about it, she couldn't imagine surviving Monday. She had to go to school and get on a bus bound for the Adventure Course of Doom, and if she survived that, she'd have jazz tryouts after school.

Ava put her saxophone away and sat down at her desk.

The pencil was there. She'd been trying so hard not to use it, but there it was. So she picked it up.

Ava had tried all day to keep the questions about Mom penned up in the back of her mind. Now, they spilled out, one after another.

What time is Mom's appointment on Monday?

“One o'clock.”

Is her doctor good at treating cancer?

No answer.

What is her doctor's success rate with breast cancer patients?

“Dr. Vakara's five-year survival rate for breast cancer patients is sixty-one percent.”

Ava almost choked on the lump that welled up in her throat. That was awful! Sixty-one percent was hardly more than half.

Does that mean my mom has almost a 50 percent chance of dying?

“No.”

Why not?

“Because her particular type of breast cancer responds better to treatment than many others.”

That answer should have made Ava feel better, but it didn't. Which others? What kind of cancer was it? And what was it doing in there, invisible in her mom's body? Had it already started to spread? Ava knew the pencil wasn't always right. It had totally messed up on Jason and Sophie. But what if the pencil
had
been right about the cancer but wrong about this particular detail and really, Mom's cancer was way worse?

Ava's hand couldn't keep up with her frantic thoughts. It was like that
I Love Lucy
episode Dad showed her and Sophie once, where these chocolates kept flying down an assembly line and Lucy and Ethel couldn't keep up so they tried to eat them all and ended up a mess. Probably sick, too. That's how Ava felt. But she couldn't stop.

What kind of breast cancer does Mom have?

“Stage one B.”

What does that mean?

The pencil was quiet.

Ava's eyes burned with tears. How was that not specific enough? She needed to know what stage one B meant, and she couldn't go downstairs and google it or everybody would want to know why. Her fist tightened around the pencil. She hated it so much. But she needed it.

Her hand shook as she wrote,
What are the characteristics of stage 1B breast cancer?

“With stage one B breast cancer,” the voice said, “the tumor is two centimeters in diameter or smaller, and there is evidence that cancer has spread to the lymph nodes with small clusters of cells no larger than a grain of rice.”

Lymph nodes. They hadn't learned that in life science yet, but it sounded bad.

What are lymph n–

Ava hurled the pencil and its stupid broken tip right across the room. It bounced off the door with a
crack
, and Ava put her head down on her desk and sobbed. She cried until her throat
hurt and her head pounded and her eyes were all puffy and she got the hiccups.

She finally quieted enough to hear a knock on the door.

She didn't bother trying to sound okay. She wasn't. “Yeah?”

The door opened slowly, and Gram peered in. “Honey, what's wrong?

Tears spilled down Ava's face again. She couldn't claim nothing was wrong. This was more obvious than blinking. “My pencil broke.”

It sounded stupid, but Gram was the kind of person who knew she didn't need to point that out. “I see.” She looked thoughtfully at the blue pencil on the floor, picked it up, walked over to the pencil sharpener on the wall, and started turning the handle, grinding away at it.

Ava could see it getting shorter, being eaten before her eyes. “Gram, I can do that!”

“That's okay. It's done.” She held the stubby pencil up as if it were a rose and presented it to Ava at her desk. “Here you are.”

“Thanks.” Ava took a shaky breath.

“Ava?” Gram stood waiting.

“Yeah?”

“This is not about your pencil, is it?”

Ava shook her head.

“Want to talk about it?”

She did. So much. But she couldn't. “No, I'll be okay.”

Gram nodded. “If you change your mind, I'll be in the
family room watching CNN. Been a busy day out there in the world.”

“Who are you praying for?” Ava asked.

“The president—don't tell your mom because she can't stand him—the people who've had to leave home in that civil war in Africa, that singer you like … what's her name?”

“Katina D? What's wrong with her?”

“I saw that music video where she's out in the wind and rain wearing practically nothing. She's going to catch pneumonia.” Gram shook her head. “So I'm praying somebody finds her some pants and a coat. Let's see … there's also that Olympic skier who broke her leg training, all the workers who are unemployed …” Gram ticked off the list on her fingers. “… and you.” She kissed the top of Ava's head and started for the door.

“Gram?” Ava took a shaky breath. “Maybe you should pray for people with cancer. I saw something about that on the news today, too.”

Gram nodded. “Consider it done.”

Bright sunshine lit up Monday morning. The blue sky was like a giant billboard that read PERFECT DAY FOR THE FIELD TRIP OF DOOM!

For a moment, when she first woke, Ava had thought about being sick. When she was anxious, the journey from nervous-queasy stomach to actual vomiting was a short one. She was already halfway there, and if she threw up, she'd have to stay home.

But then Mom would cancel her appointment. That couldn't happen.

Mom had to go to the doctor. Which meant Ava had to go on the field trip.

So she left for school early and didn't wait for Sophie. Ava dropped her saxophone off in the band room, turned her permission slip in at the office, and headed to the cafeteria where
Mr. Avery was taking attendance. When he finished calling names, he said, “Okay, you can head out to the bus now.”

Ava didn't bother looking for Sophie. Sophie was probably still mad, and Ava knew she had to do this on her own anyway. She marched out the cafeteria door, eyes straight ahead like a soldier marching into battle. She had a plan.

Ava had read online that the adventure course had a policy—if you fell off a course and ended up dangling by your harness and couldn't get yourself back up, they'd send somebody to rescue you. And once you got rescued, you were done for the day. You couldn't go back up there and keep trying. Ava figured that was to make sure people tried really hard to rescue themselves before they called for help. But it didn't matter why the course had that policy. All that mattered was that you were done for the day if you got stuck and got rescued. Nobody could bully you into trying again because you weren't allowed anyway.

Ava didn't give Sophie a chance to not sit with her on the bus. Ava took the first open seat—next to Amy Titherington—who was already playing some game on her phone and didn't even look up. Perfect. Ava pulled out her book. She just wanted to get there and go through the training so she could fail and get rescued and be done.

When the bus pulled into the adventure course parking lot an hour later, Ava got off without looking back. She hurried into the lobby with Mr. Avery and collected her harness. The girls working behind the counter seemed more concerned
about Tom, the cute new guide from the community college, than they were about Ava's survival. “Go on out and they'll give you directions for setting up your harness,” one girl said with a wave, then turned back to her friend. “Anyway, Amber told me Tom had a girlfriend but they broke up. How could anyone break up with those dimples?”

Ava went out to the porch and sat down near Luke Varnway at one of the picnic tables. Leo walked by and quacked at him. Luke got up and followed Leo, stepping all over the back of his sneakers the whole way. Leo quacked louder. And every quack reminded Ava of all the messes she'd made with her dumb magic pencil. She couldn't give Luke his secret back. She couldn't undo what the pencil said about her mom. She couldn't make it not true, and now that she knew, she couldn't
un
know it.