Rocking the Pink Read Free Page A

ready.”
    â€œThanks, Pete. But no,” I responded without hesitation. “I’m never coming back.” I’d be damned if I was going to give up my cancer hall pass, my one-way ticket to freedom.
    The next week was a whirlwind of MRIs, blood tests, and doctor’s appointments in preparation for surgery. At each appointment, Brad was by my side, holding my hand or telling the technician to use a butterfly needle to draw blood because my veins are small. Brad never left my side. Literally. Every few minutes, he reached out to
touch me—my face, my hair, my arm. At night, in bed together, we clutched each other in desperation and we cried. In fact, Brad cried more in that one week than he’d cried in the twenty-three years I’d known him.
    â€œThis wasn’t in the script,” he whispered over and over, tears streaming down his face. “This isn’t how our story goes.”
    It killed me to watch Brad suffer like this—though, in truth, his passionate tears made me feel loved and appreciated like never before. And, yes, with each passing day, fear was tightening its stranglehold on me, too, as reality began sinking in and those Scary Words began embedding their insidious fish hooks deep in my flesh. But mostly, though I didn’t dare say it out loud to anyone, I felt one overwhelming emotion above all others: relief. I’d finally found my golden ticket to freedom. And, by God, I wasn’t going to waste it.

Chapter 3
    A month after I’d first met Brad on that fateful night under the stars, my fifteenth birthday was fast approaching, in October 1985, and I was becoming increasingly anxious about having lied to him about my age during the past glorious weeks of our googly-eyed infatuation.
    Maybe it won’t come up, I thought. Maybe he’s forgotten what I said.
    But about a week before my fifteenth birthday, Brad asked, “Aren’t you excited to get your driver’s license?”
    The jig was up—unless I could somehow fake getting my driver’s license. I mulled that over for a moment. That would involve an elaborate web of lies, not to mention some illegal driving on my part. No, I couldn’t pull that off.
    There was no way out. I had to come clean.
    â€œI’m actually turning fifteen, not sixteen,” I confessed, wincing. “I lied.”

    I waited for Brad to tell me that my real age, or perhaps my initial deception, was a deal breaker. But, instead, he laughed and called himself a cradle robber. “What difference does it make?” he finally said. “Laura, you’re such a knucklehead.”
    And that was that. The boy loved me.
    When prom time arrived for Brad, who was a year ahead of me in school, I shrieked at the sound of his car in the driveway. With one last mirror check—yes, my silver dress was red-carpet ready and my hair and makeup were sheer perfection—I ran to the front door to greet him with a kiss.
    â€œYou look beautiful, Buddy,” Brad said, as he slipped a corsage on my wrist.
    He was right. I did.
    At the raging party we attended before our dinner reservation, I took great care to dab the corners of my mouth with a cloth napkin after I’d gulped down a large cup of sweet-tasting, yellow-colored punch.
    â€œSlow down, Buddy,” Brad warned. “That punch has, like, four different liquors in it.”
    I smiled at him. I was fine.
    An hour later, as Brad and I sat with three other couples at an elegant restaurant, I struggled to keep my head upright.
    Does my head weigh thirty pounds? I wondered. It kept dipping down, as if I were a drowsy truck driver, and then I’d quickly whip it back up. I couldn’t follow the conversations around me; all my energy was focused on keeping my head perpendicular to the table.
    Suddenly, there was a burst of laughter from the group. I swung
my head up and looked around, trying to see what was so funny. But I didn’t notice