Pretty soon Danny was inviting his friends to the apartment after work, and they’d stay until late. My mother’s blood count hadn’t stayed good, and one week stretched into two. Mornings, I’d oversleep and the place would be a mess, and my head would be killing me, so I’d stay home to empty ashtrays and wash dishes and clear out empties in time for everyone to come over again after my afternoon cashier shift. Maybe if I’d had Bohack’s in the morning, like Danny, I’d have found a way to keep doing everything I was supposed to be doing, but I didn’t see the point of being sleep-deprived and hungover just for school, not now that I was living real life. Playing hooky meant not seeing Angie, since she didn’t like Danny’s friends, but that wasn’t a good enough reason to keep going.

Angie kept quiet about it, so it wasn’t until Danny’s brother said something that Danny learned I was skipping school. Danny yelled, and that night he grabbed at me and insulted me in front of his friends. After everyone left, I told him I didn’t like how he was acting, and he said it was my fault. Living like this was sinful, but I had made him want it, and now he couldn’t stop. Each day he wanted me more, but it was lust, not love. I dragged a mattress into the living room, which was all old food and dirty dishes. I lay there thinking about my mother and the life I’d come to hate, trying to remember a time when things had been good. When I arrived at the grocery store the next afternoon, Danny gave me flowers. On break, he told me that as soon as I turned eighteen, we could get married.

Visiting hours were over by the time I arrived at the hospital that night, but the nurses let me see her anyway. Since I’d last been there, I knew everything had changed. My mother’s skin was gray and her hair was dull. Her face was choked with pain and exhaustion and fear. She seemed to be using every ounce of her remaining strength to tell me that we were moving to Cleveland. She was going to need chemo: the latest test showed that the cancer was in her blood after all. Treatment was very expensive, and there was also me to think of. Next she started going on about Mr. Wythe: how wonderful he’d been, how grateful she was, and how important it was that she leave me with something. Did I understand? None of it made sense, but her voice was so urgent and her stare so desperate that I nodded and reached for her hand. Mama, I said. I love you so much, she said.