Page 72 of Styx & Stones

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

STYX

Mom shakes me awake. I hadn’t known I’d fallen asleep. I hadn’t known you could fall asleep in the hard, plastic waiting-room chairs.

“Honey, the surgeon is here,” Mom says.

I blink and bolt upright. The flesh around my port throbs and I flinch but quickly ignore it and get to my feet.

“How is she?” I blurt. Stones’ parents and the doctor all look at me as I barrel toward them. Mom walks up and squeezes my hand. The surgeon glances between us and Alaska’s parents. Mrs. Stone nods. Mr. Stone clearly isn’t ready to acknowledge my existence.

“She’s in recovery,” the doctor says.

A collective gasp of relief goes through the group.

The surgeon gives a pained smile. “It was a tough surgery. The tumor was embedded deeper than we expected. It’s encroaching on the optic nerve, but has also attached itself to the carotid artery. We’ve taken as much as we could, but I’m afraid we couldn’t remove it all.”

My heart beats double time, and my legs threaten to give out. My whole body is shaking.She’s alive.

Mom’s phone rings and she shoots the Stones and apologetic look as she steps away to answer it.

“It’s the hospital with your results,” she says. I nod and turn back around to the surgeon, but a motion beyond the waiting-room window catches my eye.Snow. There’s snow in San Francisco. In September. I move toward the window and watch the falling flakes.

The doctor goes on and on about Stones’ treatment.

“Look at this. Come look at this! It’s snowing.”

“Styx?” My mom’s voice is shaking, panicked. “Honey, it’s not snowing. That’s a cherry blossom mural. You’ve seen it at least one hundred times.”

I turn and look at my mom, her eyes are saucers, whirring and spinning as she races toward me. My heart beats double time.

“Mom, I don’t feel so good,” I whisper, afraid the Stones will hear and keep me from their daughter. I don’t like the way they’re looking at me with their red, beady eyes.

The next thing I know, I’m on the floor. My arm is throbbing, my head is too, and I can’t stop shaking. It’s so cold. So fucking cold I’m freezing my balls off. “I don’t wanna go to hospital. I don’t wanna go. Just let me die here in the snow. Please, please, just let me die.”

“Styx,” my mom says, shaking me. “Oh my God, you’re burning up. Someone help us!”