The-Lucky-List-Rachael-Lippincott

19
The summer my mom was diagnosed was the year I did my one-week stint at Misty Oasis.
There was a girl in my bunk. Dominique Flores.
I remember how cool I thought she was. How nice her black hair looked in a ponytail. How my
cheeks turned bright red every time she talked to me.
I remember the bus ride home from camp, the tiny pang of something that I now recognize as
heartbreak over maybe never seeing her again (or, definitely never seeing her again, because I was sure as
hell NOT going back to Misty Oasis, no matter how much Kiera begged).
I wanted nothing more than to get o that bus and talk to my mom about it. To tell her while we
were unpacking that night, or to sit on the floor of her closet the next morning as she was getting
ready, the confusing mess of these unexpected feelings from this past week spilling from my lips.
But the second I saw my mom when I got o the bus, I knew something was wrong. In the car ride
home, she didn’t talk about the bingo fundraiser happening the next day, and she kept rolling the lucky
quarter around and around in her hands.
That’s when I noticed it.
e Band-Aid where an IV had been. e dark circles under her eyes. Months of headaches and
dizziness and nausea finally investigated… and added up to stage IV cancer.
We got so swept up in doctor’s appointments, and surgeries, and my mom getting sicker and sicker,
withering away before my eyes, that I just ignored it. I pushed it down. Our closet time in the morning
turned into her perched on the edge of the bed while I brought her a change of sweatpants or an
oversize T-shirt. Our bingo fundraiser Fridays turned into late nights at the hospital, machines beeping
noisily all around us while I ran to the vending machine to get her a snack she would be too nauseous
to eat. Her brown hair, identical to mine, was cut short and then, in the blink of an eye, gone
completely.
Soon the feeling was nothing more than a tiny blip on my radar, something so small and
insignificant compared to everything else going on. And then Matt began showing up to keep me
company in the hospital, bringing my mom flowers, and holding my hand in waiting rooms, my mom
whispering to finally give him a chance. Looking so certain about this one thing. is boy I’d been
partners in crime with all through middle school, who had an unyielding crush on me, was there when