It was Tuesday of the next week when a call across McKeldin Mall stopped me in my tracks.
"Hey, Shaw!"
I turned around to see Geoff grinning at me in the slightly worried way I'd come to dread.
Oh, damn. Someone had told him that I was sick. Now I was going to find out just how much he knew.
"Hi, Geoff," I said, pausing so that he could catch up more quickly. I mostly took the bus to travel between my south campus apartment and my classes now, but I wasn't heading home quite yet.
"Headed to lunch?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I've got some extra Terp Bucks to burn before finals are over, so I was going to The Dairy." The Dairy had a decent selection of sandwiches, pizza, and, of course, ice cream made on site, and with my dining money expiring at the end of the term, it was time to use it or lose it.
"Me, too," he said. "Join you?"
"Sure," I said.
We walked along in an awkward silence for a couple of minutes. I watched Geoff out of the corner of my eye. He was visibly struggling, trying to come up with a polite way to ask me about being sick.
I sighed and stopped, turning toward him. He took one more step forward before he realized that I was not beside him anymore.
"So, what have you heard?" I asked. "And who did you hear it from, because I want to know who I should kill?"
Geoff looked uncomfortable. "Cancer?" he said. "For real?"
I let out a puff of air and started walking again. I was too tired for this. "Yeah. For real," I said.
"I thought you'd gotten some kind of eating disorder or something," he said. "I mean, your hair-"
"Yeah, thanks, you and half the world," I said. "It's the wrong kind of cancer to be treated with chemo that causes all your hair to fall out."
"So, you mean like...." He made a vague cupping motion at chest level.
I punched him in the arm. "Seriously, what is wrong with guys? You find out I have cancer, and the first thing you think about is my tits? Really?"
"Well, what other kind of cancer do girls get?" he said, but he was grinning now.
"That had better be a joke," I said. I knew it was. And if Geoff could crack a joke, I might survive this conversation. "And no, my boobs are fine. It's leukemia. And the first treatment didn't work, so my doctor's going to have me on something new soon."
"But you're going to be okay, right?" Geoff's face went serious. "We were getting along so well at the end of last year, and then when this semester started, I thought we'd be able to pick up where we'd left off...."