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When Lily starts feeling drained after coming home from school, mono isn’t her first thought.
She spends most afternoons with Robbie and Ray, playing basketball or riding bikes or doing any of the hundreds of things girls with boy friends get up to, so being tired at the end of the day isn’t surprising. She even jokes with her mom and dad about it, about how it looks like she’s getting old at the ancient age of thirteen, and they tell her she needs more sleep. So she starts going to bed an hour earlier.
And all’s fine and good until she starts waking up tired, too.
She’s barely coherent over breakfast and sluggish in her classes, missing teachers’ questions and skating by on the bare minimum. She stops seeing the boys after school and goes right home to nap on the couch until dinner, where she eats very little. Bedtime gets earlier and earlier, and her parents start to worry.
When the sore throat and swollen glands show up, her parents start to suspect strep. But it’s the fever that develops the morning they plan to take her to the doctor that tells them all this may be a little more serious, after all.
So when the doctor runs a few tests and diagnoses her with mononucleosis, no one’s overly shocked. Except for Lily herself, who screws up her face and tries to piece together the things she's heard about mono from people at school.
“But I haven’t kissed anybody,” she says, confused, and the doctor laughs.
“Just because some people call mono ‘the kissing disease’ doesn’t mean you have to kiss people to get it,” he reassures her, patting her shoulder gently. “Any type of contact with the virus can bring it on, unfortunately, although you’re a couple years younger than most people who show symptoms. People your age don’t usually get the full force of it. But it can happen. Usually comes from sharing toothbrushes, water bottles, things like that. Have you shared anything with a sick friend lately?’’
Ray.
She remembers him feeling under the weather a few weeks ago – a sore throat, not overly hungry. She remembers gleefully snatching food off his plate, even drinking from his glass of juice. You’re such a baby when you’re sick, she'd teased him, chomping down on his half-eaten garlic bread. One sore throat and you’re dying from the plague.
And now here she was, actually dying from the plague. Or close enough to it, in her opinion.
“Um,” she says sheepishly. “I might have.”
Yeah, she’s going to kill him.
***
“I gave you mono?” he says in disbelief. “When did I give you mono?”
“I don’t know, but now I feel like ass. You had freaking mono symptoms and didn’t tell me!”
“When – last month?” Ray asks. “I didn’t know those were mono symptoms, I just felt shitty for a few days.”
“And now I’m the one who’s been prescribed bed rest,” she says grumpily.
“I’m sorry, who was the one stealing my spaghetti because I wasn’t feeling well enough to eat it?”
She grumbles. “Get over here, I’ll show you not feeling well.”
“Not a chance, sicko.”
She flops back against her pillows, defeated. The worst part is, he has a point. If she hadn’t eaten off his plate, hadn’t drank from his cups, she’d likely be fine. And that’s the worst part about their teasing, overly-familiar friendship – sometimes, it can turn around and bite you in the ass. It isn’t really fair of her to yell at him for getting sick.
Besides, that takes way too much energy.
“I have to be out of school for weeks,” she moans, pouting a little. “Weeks! We’re three months away from graduating. I’ll die if I have to repeat eighth grade and you and Robbie get to go on to high school without me.”
Ray sighs. “You’re not going to fail. I’ll bring you all your homework, okay? And I can teach you the stuff you missed.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You can teach me?”
“Who’s trying to do a nice thing, here?” At her pointed stare, he sighs. “Fine, Robbie can teach you.”
Lily softens a little. This isn’t Ray’s fault, no matter how she wants to try to slice it, and here he is, promising to help her keep up enough that she gets to graduate with her friends. She’s lucky, and she knows it.
“Thanks, Ray,” she says with a small smile.
“What are friends for, right?”
“Getting each other sick?”
“Think of it as a present, from one friend to another.”
She laughs, shaking her head. “I hate you.”
Ray grins. “I know.”
***
Because her days consist of lying in bed and dozing, sometimes reading, and that's kind of awesome. Her parents move the basement TV into her bedroom so she can watch it without having to move to the couch, and she spends hours channel surfing, catching whatever’s on. She becomes an expert at estimation thanks to The Price Is Right, and has discovered the joys of Maury and his endless paternity tests.
For a thirteen year old, life could definitely be worse.
And then, at the end of the first week, ‘worse’ happens.
Her dad leaves his work laptop at home for her – he’ll be on the road all day, he says, won’t need it – and tells her that, so long as she doesn’t download any music or save any pictures to his hard drive, she can use it. She plays some games online for a while, going down the list on Miniclip before her attention wanders and the furious clicking of the track pad makes her thumb sore. It’s later in the afternoon when she logs into Myspace and starts poking around, looking at new pictures and reading her friends’ bulletins.
Everything is fine until she clicks onto Ray’s page.
Nothing’s changed in awhile – same Trews song on his player, same profile photo of the two of them mugging for the camera – but there have been several new comments left for him since she’s checked last. Her name catches her eye, and she scrolls down to read.
And wants to scream.
Because every new comment is about her. Oh, sure, they don’t all mention her by name, but after reading the first couple for context, she knows. And she’s not happy.
Great to hear about you and Lily! Audrey’s comment says. You guys must be so cute together.
Brennan, you dog! reads one from a guy in their science class. Kenny something. She’s pretty sure she’s never even talked to him before.
I knew Randall would never be the kind of person to kiss and tell. Good thing you are! She's barely ever spent any time around Jackson Torrence, and he somehow thinks he knows what kind of person she is?
Congratulations, Ray, we think you and Lily make a very cute couple. Please check out our page, TedAndEdSnapshotsForever – we have some great pictures of the two of you that you can comment on! And don’t forget to add us to your Top 8!
Lily closes the laptop and pushes it away from herself, whimpering as she falls back against her pillows. Here she is, stuck at home with mono, and Ray had… what? Told everyone that she’d gotten it from him? Because they were making out?
And people think they're a couple?
Where does he get off, spreading rumours about her? Lying about her?
Her first instincts had been right. She really should have killed him when she had the chance.
***
“What’s up with you?” he asks.
“People think I got mono because I kissed you?”
Ray’s eyes widen, and she can practically see the colour drain out of his face. Good, she thinks. Let him squirm. “I – come on, where did you get that? That’s ridiculous,” he says, forcing a laugh.
He's always been the worst liar.
But she fixes him with another steely glare, and his laugh dies almost immediately. “It’s all over your Myspace page,” she tells him, and he groans.
“I’ll kill Robbie for making me set up that page.”
“This is not Myspace's fault!” she cries, and she’s too angry to care that she feels like shit and that raising her voice makes her throat ache. “You told everyone at school that you gave me mono because we made out! What is wrong with you!”
He grimaces and sits down on the end of her bed. “Technically Audrey assumed, and started telling people, and I just… never corrected any of them.”
Lily lets out a frustrated shriek, and Ray winces again. “Not a cool thing to do, huh?”
“You think?!”
He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Look, I know I shouldn’t have lied. I felt like a heel, but… but everybody started looking at me differently. Like they respected me, you know? Like I was suddenly someone to pay attention to.”
“Because they thought you’d made out with a girl,” Lily says. “Don’t you see how messed up that is?”
Ray shrugs, and when he speaks again, his voice is small. “I just liked people thinking that I was a somebody.”
Lily groans, closing her eyes for a moment as she leans back into her pillows. She wants to keep yelling at him, maybe even chuck a couple of her stuffed animals at his head if she can find the energy, but Ray's words stick to her. She can see where Ray’s coming from, sort of – she knows that feeling, the one of wanting to be noticed, to be appreciated. Everyone wants to feel important.
Of course, most people don't go about achieving that by spreading rumours about their best friend.
“You already were a somebody, Ray,” she says. “To me.”
Ray lowers his gaze, but not before she can see shame creep into his eyes. “And now…”
“Now you’re the guy who lied about me to become a somebody to somebody else.”
“I suck.” He sighs.
She nods. “You kind of do.”
He’s quiet for a few moments, staring at his hands. When he finally speaks again, his voice is so full of regret that she blinks, surprised. She doesn't think she's ever heard him this sincere – she's so used to jokes with him. “You’re the only somebody that matters to me.”
She sighs, affection for him tugging at her heartstrings despite herself. He’s ridiculous, sure, but at the end of the day, he’s her best friend. He’s her ridiculous best friend, in all his glory. Always has been, and always will be.
And, despite it all, he’s the only somebody that matters to her, too.
“Then you’d better get to work letting the school know the truth,” she says finally, and his head jerks up, hope shining in his eyes.
“And if I do that, you won’t hate me?”
“I’ll try my hardest not to,” she says, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “And make sure it’s completely clear, all right? No more misunderstandings or half-truths. Lily Randall and Ray Brennan did not make out, and this mono was not a present from you to me. Period.”
Ray’s face breaks out into a relieved grin. “It’ll be so clear, it’s crystal. I swomise.” She raises her eyebrows, and he beams at her. “Swomise. Swear and promise – best of both worlds.”
She laughs, rolling her eyes. “Get out of here. You have damage control to do.”
“I’m on it!” he says, jumping to his feet. “You’ll go back to being kiss-less in no time.”
“I’d better,” she says with a smile. She chucks a stuffed bear at him on the way out, though. Just for good measure.
And that’s it, really. Ray deletes the comments on his page and he obviously works some sort of magic at school, because when Audrey calls her on Monday evening, they spend an hour on the phone without any mentions of Ray at all. The rumours die down, and Lily feels relieved.
She feels a little badly that the rumour of Ashley Carrington stuffing her bra gets big enough to push any idea of her and Ray out of the school’s collective consciousness, though. Lily puts Ashley into her Myspace Top 8 to try and make up for it a little.
Five weeks of being off school and Lily’s better again, back in classes with her friends. She scrambles to catch up and has Robbie and Ray over practically every night, helping her with work and quizzing her on the things she’s missed. The school is nice enough to give her a special extension on exams, and it’s an immense relief when she graduates with the rest of her eighth grade class. Eventually her energy levels come back up, she feels like the old Lily Randall again, and doesn’t give another thought to her six-week bout of mono.
Not until the fall, when the three of them are sitting around the cafeteria table with their new friend Travis, talking about aliases for their new radio show. It’s the most exciting thing to happen to Lily in a long time, and after the humiliation of her most recent open mic night, she’s looking forward to feeling good again.
“You can’t nickname yourself, Ray,” Robbie argues. “It’s not something you just give yourself. A nickname is like a present a friend gives another friend.”
And those words, for Lily, ring a bell. Remind her of her bedroom, of ups and downs with her best friend, and of coming through the whole thing stronger than before. Better than before, together.
“Yeah, like mono,” she pipes up, and shoots Ray a grin. She’s not sure if Ray will remember his exact wording from months ago – his memory is as selective and full of holes as they come – but it’s worth a shot.
But Ray grins back at her immediately, and she can see it in his eyes – he knows. He remembers.
Somehow, when it comes to Lily, Ray always remembers.
end.