Vanessa spent most of sixteen at home.

Her hair and eyebrows grew back, her color returned, and a glow returned to her skin. She lost the lethargy, her eyes brightened, her posture improved, she gained stamina (and weight), and became a healthy sixteen-year-old. There were still routine examinations. Her doctors were relaxed, their comments were upbeat and assuring, and the mood of everyone around her and inside of her improved. She went back to school, and most of the time school was good.

Of course, there were ups and downs, socially and academically, and Vanessa was smart enough to know that some of that was on her. She’d grown wary with people, for a reason. (What was the reason? She wasn’t sure.) She had to overcome that. She’d never really been shy, but if she wasn’t shy, what was she now? She talked about her not-shy feeling with friends, with her mother, with Hannah, and Hannah was the one who provided the most accurate explanation.

“You’re in recovery,” Hannah said. She said it bluntly, wished it hadn’t sounded so unconditional, but she could see Vanessa Hoffman emerging from a serious illness.

Hearing that, Vanessa dropped her eyes – Hannah had been blunt – and when she raised them, she looked just like someone who’d picked up an uncomfortable insight.

“I’m sorry I said it like that,” Hannah said, “but …”

“No,” Vanessa said, “you’re right.” She swallowed, took a breath, and held it. “I think … sometimes … I think I’ve been … I don’t know … I look at what I’ve been through as, like, a mistake. Like it’s not me. And it has felt like forever and this is weird … sometimes it feels like it’s following me around. The cancer.” A hesitant smile toyed with her lips. “It’s hard not to think about it.”

Over the past years, she’d worn the headwear cancer victims wear: scarves, turbans, slouchy hats. She hated them all. What her friends said, what her mother said, the well-intentioned compliments … they were trying to be nice. She’d worn the damn things but did her best to avoid looking in the mirror. She assumed what was covering her bald head was little more than a placard, a poster informing those unlucky enough to see it that ill health lived right below it.

At sixteen, she decided she and cancer were at stalemate. She did not feel cured, and she’d heard what her doctors and her parents discussed, and she’d read stuff on the internet, and she’d talked with other kids in the hospital, kids with multiple forms of cancer, and she was wary. Wasn’t it smart to be wary? Wasn’t it better to be cautious? She wanted to ask her doctors and her parents: am I not being smart about this? Am I being unreasonable? Should I think this is over? She was wary, so she asked no one.

When her hair came back, still short, two of her closest friends and Hannah spent an afternoon with her in her bedroom, all of them like besties, experimenting with Vanessa’s new style. She stood in front of her mirror, and her friends monkeyed with her hair, what there was of it. First they tried gel, which none of them liked. They laughed about it – hard – and Vanessa could take the teasing – it was so normal – and then she washed it out of her hair. Hannah got them all into her car, got them all to a store she liked where they bought foam and styling cream and a spray and some sort of styling clay and a volumizer. Hannah insisted on the trip and insisted she pay for all the junk, and they went into the evening playing with Vanessa’s head like it was attached to a favorite doll. When Taylor knocked on Vanessa’s door announcing he was looking for his girlfriend, Hannah hollered “We’re busy!” She started laughing, and Vanessa started laughing, and her friends started laughing, and the delight was a relief. A gift. Critical experimentation was taking place in Vanessa Hoffman’s bedroom. Vanessa was back and forth from the bathroom, washing hair and starting over, going flat, spikey, smooth, soft. There was important bonding going on, and there were tears. Girl tears. Sister tears. Emotions so thick in the air they could be boxed and sold.

This happened before the holidays. It was late fall, leaves dropping and nights starting to cool off quickly, lights coming on earlier. Vanessa was not on cloud nine, but she felt better. She felt every kind of better. She didn’t hurt. She went hard on her schoolwork and did well. She went out with friends – some had driver’s licenses – and they ran into other groups from school and went to football games and the movies and ate junk food at fast food restaurants, everyone standing around outside in the parking lots in the cool air with French fries and cold drinks. Shouting. Laughing. Vanessa with her new hairstyle.

Yet there was still something – Vanessa was aware of that something at all times – but she ignored it. Why bother? She’d had enough of that something for a lifetime. She was happy. She knew she’d be living with that something for a while, and she knew living with it was possible. Did she have to pay attention to it all the time?

After the holidays, it was the same. Maybe not the same, actually better. She had real friends, all the old ones and some new ones, and they did sleepovers and talked and texted on cellphones. They gossiped. There were movies. Study nights. After-school stuff. Friday-night stuff. Saturday-afternoon and Saturday-night stuff. Sunday stuff. Basketball games – home games at Wainwright High School and away games, going there in cars with friends.

A boy kissed her.

His name was Aiden. He wasn’t really one of her group, and she and her friends had to do some quick digging to discover he really wasn’t a member of any group. He had a square jaw. He was tall and thin, had a pretty good sized nose, blue eyes, brown lips, and sand-colored hair. At first, she thought he was a nerd, her friends agreed, and then they discovered he was a nerd, which blew their minds. He didn’t look exactly like a nerd and didn’t really act like a nerd, but once ‘nerd’ has been applied … well. He was weird. He had the kind of humor that was slow on the uptake but lingered. He dressed really well, which elevated his nerd status, and they found out he was a neat freak, and none of them knew what that would mean to his status.

Vanessa thought he was cute.

He invited her to a basketball game. It was a real date, and she went. They had a nice time, ate junk food on the parking lot of a fast food joint where he got along fine with her friends, and then they went to a movie a week later, and then, after that, another basketball game. And then another.

After that game, on to the parking lot of a fast food joint, laughs and fun with friends, and when he got her back to her house they sat in his car, quiet for a minute, then he got out, went over and opened her door, and said “Hey, I have to tell you something.”

That sounded exciting.

He walked around, leaned against the hood of his car, and shook his head. She stayed on the curb. “You know,” he said, “I told you my dad’s Air Force.” He had. He’d been in Wainwright less than a year. His father was stationed at Scott Air Force Base a half hour away.

“We’re moving again.” He grimaced. The words sounded like an apology, and she felt bad. She felt bad because she didn’t know how to respond. She hung her head, thought for a moment, looked up, and saw him looking at her. “Crap,” she said.

He sighed. She saw him as crestfallen, as disappointed as she was, and there, leaning against the hood of his family’s car, head down, he was more cute than she’d realized.

He pushed himself up, a motion saying he’d walk her to her front door; they walked to the door, and at the door, she reached out and put a hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am so sorry.” More? Should she say more? What? She felt sad all over.

He nodded, sighed, turned to look out into the street, and started talking.

“I saw you right at the start of school.” A quick glance at her. “And I thought you were really, really …” He stopped, paused. “I didn’t know about your … the illness. I didn’t know anybody, really, so … I didn’t know anything about that.” He turned to look directly into her eyes. “And I thought that girl … you … I thought that girl was something. I’m not even sure what that means, exactly. So, I hope I wasn’t creepy, but I just kept looking at you.”

He rolled his hands to palms-over and shrugged, raised his eyebrows. A confession. “You are the prettiest girl at Wainwright High School. Bar none. Every day.” He smiled a lopsided smile, dropped his eyes, and blushed. Without looking up, he said, “I hate this moving around we do.”

It was really quiet there, on the concrete stoop of the Hoffman house in the Wilson Park area of Wainwright. “Goodnight,” he said, and he took a few steps – Vanessa thinking say something! and thinking what do I say? – and he stopped, turned back, approached her, and twisted his head just slightly and kept on coming and she thought this is gonna be good and it was. It wasn’t her first kiss – like Vanessa Hoffman had never been kissed before? – but that kiss erased every other kiss she’d ever had.

In her bedroom that night, she cried and then slept like a log.

About the Author:

Victor Kreuiter’s stories have appeared in EQMM, Halfway Down The Stairs, Bewildering Stories, Tough, Frontier Tales, Del Sol SFF Review, Literally Stories, and other online and print publications.