“Hey.” Too cheery for Sunday morning. Dan was on guard.

“What’s happening?”

“Not alotta.”

“Same here.” Cady hadn’t called in a while. There had been a short pink-cloud period when they talked every day. But not anymore. “Listen, Dan, you don’t really want to go to Spring Fling, right?”

“What?” Not a prank. He had agreed to take her to a real dance. Dan started to flip through the diary. His father had written a lot down.

“I’m just saying we don’t have to go. Okay?”

“Wait . . .”

“Are you angry about it?”

“I’m confused. What’s going on?”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have made a big deal out of it.”

“That’s okay. We can go do something else.”

“Dan.” Cady’s tone got pouty and impatient. “I’m saying not go together.”

“Oh.” Dan put down the diary and started paying full attention.

“You didn’t seem super into it, so let’s forget about it.”

“Want to do something else that Saturday?”

“Danny, that’s not gonna work.”

Dan finally started to get it. “Are you going with someone else?”

“No, not really.”

“Hold up. Who are you going with?”

“I don’t know. Just my girlfriends right now.”

It’s that Julie Houlihan. Cady’s dumping me because Julie told her to, and then she’ll set her up with some other guy, so they can all go as a group. Fuck.

“Wait, is this—”

“I gotta go.”

And the line clicked, and Dan let the phone slide out of his hand as he curdled with humiliation. He looked around the kitchen in disbelief until his eyes fell back down on his father’s medical diary. The following lines popped out at him:

Anne and Dan won’t speak to me. I’m all alone and it’s my own goddamn fault. I did this to me. Fuck me. Just let me fucking die.

Dan moved into the den and plunked down on a burnt-orange chair. He went back to the beginning of the diary and then skimmed ahead to the bad parts. His father was sicker than he had realized. He also drank too much. Dan closed the workbook. His head and heart tumbled with guilt, and he couldn’t think. He heard a car pull up in the driveway, his father’s Cougar. He ran to his father’s pile of papers and returned the workbook to the stack. He slipped into his own room as his father staggered through the front door. Dan sealed himself off and sank into despair. Such an awful confession. I didn’t know it was that bad. The MS had left him rotten. He could hear his father shuffling around the house. It’s losing his job. He’s depressed.