Page 4 of Styx & Stones

CHAPTER TWO

ALASKA

This blows. I stare at the closed doors to the oncology ward while my mom fishes in her purse for her insurance, or Tic Tacs, or ... God knows what.

Cancer.

That’s what I’ve been reduced to.

Cancer.

That’s what I have become.

A cancer on my family, on their emotions, on their time, and on their bank account.

Cancer sucks.

I grow tired of waiting for Mom to fish through her purse, and I walk through the doors. I don’t know what I expected from chemotherapy: puke everywhere, patients strapped to beds writhing in pain, their loved ones drowning in a puddle of tears?

I hadn’t expected everyone to be sitting in a circle, laughing like they were front and center at Cobb’s Comedy Club. I hadn’t expected amusement and conversation, and I hadn’t expected to recognize the kid who stared back at me with wide, horror-struck eyes.

Loner boy.

He goes to my school, sits by himself at lunch, never talks to anyone, and worms his way out of handing in assignments by playing the cancer card. It’s odd that when the doctor told me I had a brain tumor, this Styx kid was the first person who popped into my mind. Not my parents, or my friends, or that I might die, lose all my hair, or that they’d cut open my skull and fish out the thing growing inside my head, but that I had cancer ... just. Like. Styx.

I don’t know why my first thought was of him, a boy I’d never so much as uttered a word to, but I think I hate him on principle now. I hate him because he reminds me of the thing that’s trying to kill us both. I hate him because he represents a fight I’m not sure I’m ready for. I hate him because despite being a weird loner, who’s never so much as looked in my direction, I wanted to question him about all this cancer stuff the second I found out. Which, I guess, just makes me an asshole. Why would he want to talk to some rando girl about her newly diagnosed cancer?

Teens are so fucking entitled.Myself included.

All six patients watch me, but it’s the weight of one stare in particular that puts my teeth on edge.

Styx Hendricks.

What the hell is he looking at?Hasn’t he ever seen a teenage girl with cancer before?

“You must be Alaska Stone?” A sweet-faced black woman blocks my view of loner boy.

“Yeah,” I reply on autopilot, wishing I could be anywhere else in the world right now but in this room. Why did he look at me like that? And why doesn’t he have a parent here with him?

“I’m Carissa. I’m going to be taking care of you today.”