Page 2 of Things I Wish I Said

“He’s been here a lot lately,” Mom says like I don’t already know this. “I hope it’s not too much. I just . . . He and I . . . This is different,” she says, answering my unspoken question.

Mom has dated on and off throughout the years but has never been serious about anyone. Never invited them over for regular dinners or got to know their children. She’s right. This is different, and I don’t need her to tell me to know. Even if I couldn’t see it with my own two eyes, I could feel it.

Doesn’t mean I like it.

“John is unlike any of the guys I’ve dated in the past,” she continues. “He’s nice and?”

“Oh, well if he’s nice,” I interrupt.

“Stop.” Mom shoots me a meaningful look before she grabs the stack of mail off the end of the island.

“Mom, you described the man you’re supposedly falling for as ‘nice.’ I have blankets that are nice.

The old lady at the library who steals all the free bookmarks is nice.

Fuzzy socks are nice. Pumpkin lattes. Graham crackers.

The new Taylor Swift song. But shouldn’t the benchmark of a man you’re serious about be a little more than nice? ”

“You know what I mean, and you didn’t even let me finish the sentence.” She starts rooting through the stack of mail. “Oh, here’s something for you,” she says, passing it off to me.

“Ooh, nice .”

Mom snatches a dishcloth off the counter and playfully smacks me with it.

Grinning, I tear the envelope open without even looking at the return address, but the second I slide the letter out and see the bold Gatorade logo in the upper left-hand corner, my heart stops.

I quickly read, scanning the words a second time just to be sure, blinking as if it’s a mirage. “Holy. Shit,” I rasp out, breathless for the first time in a while due to something other than my fucked-up lungs.

“Language,” Mom snaps.

I stand abruptly, the letter clutched in my bony hands, when a wave of vertigo hits me. The room spins, tilts, forcing me to cling to the table beneath my palms to steady myself.

“Ryleigh?” Mom’s hand gently grips my arm.

“I’m good,” I say as my vision clears. “Just stood up too fast.” I take another second before I offer her the paper with a trembling hand. “I won. I did it.”

“Did what?” Mom’s eyes focus on the print in front of her while the wave of sorrow that accompanies anything related to soccer threatens to crash over me.

“I’m the national pick for the Gatorade Player of the Year award. They picked me out of the entire country. Six hundred state winners and twelve national winners, yet they chose me to win the singular national title.”

Mom glances up from the letter, eyes glistening. “That’s wonderful, honey. You earned it.”

My throat aches, burns with the fresh sting of tears pricking the back of my eyes.

God, I love soccer. I love it more than anything I’ve ever loved in my measly eighteen years.

No longer being able to play is torture.

Months of watching the years of conditioning go to waste as my treatments and disease weaken my body has killed me more than any amount of cancer ever could.

Even after my diagnosis in December, I fought like hell to keep playing and continued into my spring league.

But despite my valiant effort, when immunotherapy went sideways and I had to have surgery to remove the inferior lobe of my left lung, I knew I was cooked.

Forget sucking in wind and gasping for breath.

I’d have eight weeks of recovery, then chemo.

By the time March rolled around and I started chemo, I finally accepted I was done. I couldn’t ignore how weak I was. I could barely walk the length of a soccer field without getting winded, and that was before my treatment started.

It was a cruel form of torture, losing soccer before I died and not after.

But this letter—this award—is proof of the mark I’d made on the sport.

Had I not gotten sick, I would’ve played at Florida State in the fall with the Olympics in my future.

All eyes were on me. I’d won the Golden Boot and made the U-18s.

All before the age of eighteen. All before I got sick.

Headlines touted me as the next Mia Hamm.

I was a machine. Brilliant on the field with uncanny instincts.

I had no idea what these last few months would bring.

No clue my scans following the lobectomy and first four cycles of chemo would reveal I still had cancer.

But as I stand here, clutching the letter in my hands, I vow that if I could just go to the ceremony in July and accept my award, I’d die happy.

I need this. More than I need to breathe.

“I have to go to this,” I say, taking the letter back from my mother.

Her throat bobs, a distant look in her eyes that tells me she’s going to say no. She’s going to shut me down, my one request since this whole shitstorm started. “Even if I can find the money to send you, I can't afford to leave work for a week, and you can’t go alone.”

Making a living as a potter isn’t easy. Most of the money she earns is from stoneware, things like mugs and dinnerware sets, and more often than not, people don’t value quality, at least not with their dollars; they’d rather head to their local department store and buy something cheap that comes from China.

Not that I blame them. Half of our belongings have come from thrift shops and flea markets, and Mom waits tables at Kit’s Kitchen just to get by.

“Maybe I can go with one of the girls from Federal Hocking,” I say, referring to my high school soccer team.

My mother’s gaze turns sorrowful .

I’m not fooling anyone.

I received a scholarship from Federal Hocking, an all-girls' school, in eighth grade to play soccer for them. We took it, knowing it would lead to better opportunities, but the only girls I’ve ever been remotely close to were Christy and Nadine, and they’ve already left to prepare for college soccer.

The rest of my classmates and teammates saw me as better than them, on another level.

Though that’s never the impression I projected; they set me on a pedestal I couldn’t quite climb down from.

And even if they hadn’t, between spring leagues and summer travel teams, I didn’t have time for them.

It’s a little hard to make friends when you’re never around.

Even the U-17 and U-18s treated me differently. It’s like the more skilled I became, the less they saw me as their peer. Instead, I became this idol, a person to look up to, and for a while I was okay with that. But when I got sick, I realized very quickly just how lonely it is at the top.

“Do you even still talk to them?” she asks, calling my bluff.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure any of them would die to go to this thing with me.”

Mom drags a hand through her dark hair, the same shade mine used to be, only hers is pin straight while mine curls when wet. Or, at least, it used to.

“I don’t know if I like the idea of you flying clear across the country in your condition, let alone with someone you barely talk to. ”

“Mom.” My expression hardens. “I don’t think you understand. This award is given at the ESPYs.”

She blinks at me, her expression blank.

“It’s put on by ESPN,” I say, but still, she has no reaction. “It’s the biggest award ceremony in sports. They recognize professional athletes and their performance each year from all over the country. I can’t miss this. Besides, I’m already—”

“Don’t say it.” Mom holds her hand up, and I sigh. “You’re sick. Going on a trip that far from your doctors and flying on an airplane would be reckless, a suicide mission. If these most recent scans show progress, you might need more treatment, and—”

“I know, okay? But I also don’t care. Mom, this is my life we’re talking about, and however little of it I have left, don’t you think I should be able to live it how I want?”

Mom shakes her head and I want to laugh. “No?” I choke out.

She says nothing for a while, biting her lip so hard I’m surprised she doesn’t draw blood. Meanwhile, I stare her down, willing her to budge.

“Maybe if I could go with you, or if there was someone close to you I could trust, but . . .” She trails off, glancing up at me, her blue eyes liquid with fear.

How do I explain to her how much this means to me? How much I want this ?

“Mom, I might not have much longer left.” She holds a hand up for me to stop, but I don’t. She needs to hear this. “Please. Can’t you give me this one thing?”

She swallows, her voice a scratchy rasp when she says, “Not if it means the risk of losing you sooner.”

I endure a long dinner with John and Katie, glad for once I have an excuse for the exhaustion that’s plaguing me.

Despite the fact it’s only 7 p.m., it takes everything in me not to simply collapse into bed, close my eyes, and sleep until morning, but I can’t stop thinking about the Gatorade award and how I can twist Mom’s arm into letting me go.

I plop down in front of my desk and fold my arms over its cool, smooth surface, resting my forehead against them.

Something tells me Mom was bluffing when she mentioned going with a close friend or boyfriend.

Even if she could take me and we weren’t in debt up to our eyeballs, she still wouldn’t want me to go.

And not out of concern for germs and a lowered immune system, but because I know how much she worries any time soccer is the topic of conversation.

She’s afraid focusing too much on everything I lost will send me into a depression I can’t climb out of, one that will affect my mindset, and in turn affect my progress .

Little does she know if I were going to fall apart, I would have already done so. I’m barely hanging on by a thread as it is, and soccer is the only thing holding me together.

The only way to get around a bluff is to call it. Which means I need someone she trusts to go with me to LA. Someone stronger than me. Someone that cares about me on another level, who has my best interests at heart, same as her. Someone . . . like a serious boyfriend.

I bite my lip as I mull this over.

It’s perfect, only I have zero male friends and certainly no prospects.

Finding a boyfriend on short notice while finishing chemo and battling lung cancer doesn’t even seem possible at this point.

Talking about vomit, shortness of breath, and how many rounds I’ve completed isn’t exactly the best icebreaker.

Where’s a genie in a bottle when I need one? Screw three wishes, all I need is one.

Just one little wish and I can make the rest happen . . .

An idea sparks to life. I lift my head as a sudden rush of adrenaline spikes my veins.

Flinging open the desk drawer beside me, I rummage through all the junk I’ve accumulated over the years for the pamphlet I stashed there after the first and last Healing Community meeting I ever attended.

Right now, when Mom thinks I’m at a meeting, I’m really just sitting in my car, staring out at one of the soccer fields I dominated since I was three years old, wishing with everything I have to go back in time, to before I was sick .

When the trifold pamphlet with a bright yellow star on the front catches my eye, I snatch it up.

I have no idea what prompted me to take it when I was there.

It’s not like I planned on using it. Maybe I took it because Wishing Well is a foundation catered to eighteen-year-olds through adulthood, and I was about to be eighteen at the time, so I knew much of my cancer journey would be completed as an adult.

Whatever the reason, I’m eternally grateful for the unexpected foresight.

I quickly open it up and skim the text, skipping over the foundation’s history, straight to the submission process.

I no longer qualify for the Make-A-Wish foundation, but I do qualify for this.

I wonder if they’ve ever had someone request a boyfriend before?

A dry laugh, more like a cackle, springs to life inside my chest as I jot down the submission email address, then read the instructions:

Complete the application on our site and give a brief summary of your wish, and why you or your nominee qualify.

Great. That can’t be too hard, right?

Except there’s no way they’re going to grant my wish.

Is giving someone a fake boyfriend even ethical? It’s not illegal, but it definitely gives ick.

And even if they do grant my wish, it could take months—time I don’t have.

I purse my lips. This is stupid .

I start to shove the pamphlet back in the desk drawer, along with my only hope, before I growl and yank it back out. Since when am I a quitter?

Shot in the dark or not, if there’s even a chance they’ll hear my plea and grant my wish, I need to take it.

I have six weeks from now until the award ceremony. Six weeks to prove I have a boyfriend trustworthy of taking me on this trip.

I flick on the ancient PC sitting on my desk, waiting as the familiar whir of the monitor boots, then navigate to their website, complete the form, and attach it in an email along with my short request, using the subject line, TIME SENSITIVE.

I exhale, hovering over the send button, suddenly struck with the urge to ask for a little help from the big man upstairs.

I’m not sure how much he listens to me these days since I only ever seem to call on him when I need help.

Our relationship is definitely one-sided, but if there’s any chance he’s in the mood for granting prayers, I’ll take it.

I close my eyes, stumbling through a quick prayer before I blink them back open, and click the mouse, hoping that by some miracle, I’ll hear back before it’s too late.