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"Keep going," Kate says

"Has that been hard for your family to deal with?"

"Well, yeah But I don't really think it's soets noticed, you know? I ine what it would be like if you were a squirrel living in the elephant cage at the zoo Does anyone ever go there and say, Hey, check out that squirrel? No, because there's soers up and down one of the tubes sprouting out of her chest "So drunk Last year, it was an anthrax hoax That's the kind of stuff Jesse does"

"And Anna?"

Kate starts to pleat the blanket in folds on her lap "There was one year when every single holiday, and I mean even like Me planned, of course, but that's the way it happened We had a tree inhunt in the cafeteria, and we trick-or-treated on the orthopedic ward Anna was around six years old, and she threw a total fit because she couldn't bring sparklers into the hospital on the Fourth of July--all the oxygen tents" Kate looks up at ot to the lobby before so to find herself another family, she told me Like I said, she was only six, and no one really took it seriously But I used to wonder what it would be like to be normal So I totally understood why she'd wonder about it, too"

"When you're not sick, do you and Anna get along pretty well?"

"We're like any pair of sisters, I guess We fight over who gets to put on whose CDs; we talk about cute guys; we steal each other's good nail polish She gets into et into her stuff and she cries down the house Soreat And other times I wish she'd never been born"

That sounds so patently farin "I have a twin sister Every time I used to say that,an only child"

"Could you?"

I laugh "Ohthere were definitely tiine life without her"

Kate doesn't crack a smile "See," she says, "ine life without me"

SARA

1996

AT EIGHT, KATE IS A LONG TANGLE of arht and pipe cleaners irl I stick , to find her in yet a different outfit This one is a dress, white with red cherries printed across it "You're going to be late for your own birthday party," I tell her

Thrashing her way out of the halter top, Kate strips off the dress "I look like an ice cream sundae"

"There are worse things," I point out

"If you were me, would you wear the pink skirt or the striped one?"

I look at them both, puddles on the floor "The pink one"

"You don't like the stripes?"

"Then wear that one"

"I' to wear the cherries," she decides, and she turns around to grab it On the back of her thigh is a bruise the size of a half-dollar, a cherry that has stained its way through the fabric

"Kate," I ask, "what's that?"

Twisting around, she looks at the spot where I point "I guess I banged it"

For five years, Kate has been in remission At first, when the cord blood transplant see for someone to tell me this was all a mistake When Kate complained that her feet hurt, I rushed her to Dr Chance, certain this was the bony pain of recurrence, only to find out that she'd outgrown her sneakers When she fell down, instead of kissing her scrapes, I'd ask her if her platelets were good

A bruise is created when there is bleeding in tissues beneath the skin, usually--but not always--the result of a trauma

It has been five whole years, did I mention that?

Anna sticks her head into the room "Daddy says the first car just pulled up and if Kate wants to co a flour sack he doesn't care What's a flour sack?"

Kate finishes hiking the sundress over her head, then pulls up the hem and rubs the bruise "Huh," she says

Downstairs, there are twenty-five second-graders, a cake in the shape of a unicorn, and a local college kid hired to make swords and bears and crowns out of balloons Kate opens her presents--necklaces littery beads, craft kits, Barbie paraphernalia She saves the biggest box for last--the one Brian and I have gotten her Inside a glass boioldfish

Kate has wanted a pet forever But Brian is allergic to cats, and dogs require a lot of attention, which led us to this Kate could not be happier She carries him around for the rest of the party She names him Hercules

After the party, e are cleaning up, I find ht as a penny, he swi nowhere

It takes only thirty seconds to realize that you will be canceling all your plans, erasing whatever you had been cocky enough to schedule on your calendar It takes sixty seconds to understand that even if you'd been fooled into thinking so, you do not have an ordinary life

A routine bonebefore I ever saw that bruise--has co around Then a polymerase chain reaction test--one that allows the study of DNA--showed that in Kate, the 15 and 17 chromosomes were translocated

All of this means that Kate is in molecular relapse now, and clinical symptoms can't be that far behind Maybe she won't present with blasts for a month Maybe on't find blood in her urine or stools for a year But inevitably, it will happen

They say that word, relapse, like theythat happens so routinely it has become part of your internal calendar, whether you want it to or not

Dr Chance has explained that this is one of the great debates for oncologists--do you fix a wheel that isn't broken, or do you wait until the cart collapses? He recommends that we put Kate on ALL-TRANS Retinoic Acid It comes in a pill half the size of my thumb, and was basically stolen fro it for years Unlike che in their path, ATRA heads right for chromosome 17 Since the translocation of chromosomes 15 and 17 is in part what keeps pro correctly, ATRA helps uncoil the genes that have bound the further

Dr Chance says the ATRA may put Kate back into remission

Then again, she ht develop a resistance to it

"Mo on the couch I've been there for hours now I can't sees I a school lunches or he bill?

"Moet, did you?"

I look at hi Greek "What?"

"You said you'd take o to the orthodontist You promised"

Yes, I did Because soccer starts two days frorown his old pair But now I do not know if I can drag myself to the orthodontist's, where the receptionist will smile at Kate and tell me, like she always does, how beautiful oing to Sports Authority that seeht obscene

"I' the orthodontist appointment," I say

"Cool!" He set the cleats?"

"Now is not a good time"

"But--"

"Jesse Let It Go"

"I can't play if I don't get new shoes And you're not even doing anything You're just sitting here"

"Your sister," I say evenly, "is incredibly sick I'm sorry if that interferes with your dentist's appointo buy a pair of cleats But those don't rate quite as high in the grand scheht now I'd think that since you're ten, you h to realize that the whole world doesn't always revolve around you"

Jesse looks out the here Kate straddles the arht, she's sick," he says "Why don't you grow up? Why don't you figure out that the world doesn't revolve around her?"

For the first tiht hit a child--it's because you can look into their eyes and see a reflection of yourself that you wish you hadn't Jesse runs upstairs to slam the door to his bedroom

I close my eyes, take a few deep breaths And it strikes et run over by cars People crash in airplanes People choke on peanuts There are no guarantees about anything, least of all one's future

With a sigh I walk upstairs, knock on my son's door He has just recently discovered ht at the base of the door As Jesse turns down the stereo the notes flatten abruptly "What"

"I'd like to talk to you I'd like to apologize"

There is a scuffle on the other side of the door, and then it swings open Blood covers Jesse's mouth, a vampire's lipstick; bits of wire stick out like a sea, and realize this is what he has used to pull off his braces "Now you never have to take me anywhere," he says

Teeks go by with Kate on ATRA "Did you know," Jesse says one day, while I aiant tortoise can live for 177 years?" He is on a Ripley's Believe It or Not kick "An Arctic clam can live for 220 years"

Anna sits at the counter, eating peanut butter with a spoon "What's an Arctic clam?"

"Who cares?" Jesse says "A parrot can live for eighty years A cat can live for thirty"

"How about Hercules?" Kate asks

"It says in oldfish can live for seven years"

Jesse watches Ka