I’d gone deaf. I couldn’t hear anything around me after Joy uttered those three little words. That’s not true. I could hear those three little words over and over in my head. Wendy has cancer Wendy has cancer Wendy has cancer Wendy has cancer. Did deaf people hear words in their heads too? All around me I watched in frenetic motion as people hugged their tanned, post-summer hellos, and all I wanted to do was fold my body up and stuff myself into a narrow locker.

While everyone around me chattered about vacations, parties, hook-ups, and breakups, I doodled on the cover of my pristine red notebook. Cancer, I scratched. What did I know about cancer? I knew one of my mom’s best friends died from it. I also knew a couple of them who lived through it. So that was encouraging: Not everyone with cancer dies.

Then why did it equal death in my head? Why did it hit me in my stomach and make it cave in on myself when Wendy had it?

I didn’t know what kind of cancer she had. Were some better than the others? Would she lose a ? Her hair?

Wendy loved her hair.

What if she already lost her hair? What if I was so busy mourning the loss of my dad that I wasn’t there when she needed me? What if all those times she tries to get in touch with me, she was asking for help? What if…What if I was too late?

The bell signalling first period rang, and I let the push of the hallway crowds propel me to my next class. The bubbliness of my Spanish teacher, Senorita Rita, and the fiesta-themed décor of the room brought me out of my question stalled brain for a short while.

I opened my notebook while people passed around the worksheets and wrote:

THINGS I KNOW:

1. People don’t always die from cancer.
2. Wendy isn’t dead, which I know because  a) Her mom would have called me  b) Joy wouldn’t have spoken about her in the present tense
3. Wendy cannot die because my dad just died, and that would be much too ty.

But was it enough to make it true?