Please! Your mother is such a lovely person.

Their mouths are sad. Their eyes are pitying.

First you just thank them—Yah. Okay. Like you’re embarrassed they know about your mom and (you think) they care about her, and you.

Anything I can do for Lilian, Jacey. Let me know.

Then one day outside school, where she’s come to pick Billy up after practice, you ask Billy’s mother could she drive you to the hospital tomorrow morning—and she hesitates and says she will summon an Uber for you, because she has an appointment in the morning, on the farther side of town.

Let me know what I can do, Jacey—Len’s mother says, so you tell her that your mother would appreciate a visit from her sometime, and Len’s mother says quickly yes, she would love to visit Lilian, she will try to get to the hospital tomorrow or the following day, but so much is happening in her life right now—It’s kind of crazy. Frankly.

Still, your mom receives cards, flowers. Potted wax begonias from the ex-husband.

On the card—Hope you will have a speedy recovery. Yours, Ben.

Speedy recovery!—like, is this a joke?

Yours. That is a joke.

So furious, pulses are strumming in my head. Dying for a hit!

But shit, I’m short of cash. Like somebody is turning me upside down by my ankles, shaking out money from my fucking pockets.

Bad dream: a vampire bat is sucking my throat. Carotid artery.

Except, suck-suck-sucking my blood, the bat is also regurgitating into my blood sweet fruity-chemical taste and releasing a chill cloud to conceal us.

Funny sensation in my chest. Lungs? (Bubble lung? Sounds like a scare tactic/fake news spread by the tobacco industry.)

(Whatever I spend on vaping isn’t as much as you’d spend on cigarettes. And there’s no tobacco. No cancer.)

Dad would be furious with me if he knew about the vaping. If he knew my track performance isn’t so great. Fuck Dad, what does he know.