Yesterday I would never have considered shaving my head. But guess what? Today I’m bald!
This morning I woke up and I hated my hair. It was long, knotted and ugly. I grabbed my brother’s hair razor and just chopped it all off. It only took a few minutes.
I had never cut my hair before; I guess it was part of my identity. People recognized me as the hippy-girl with the poofy hair. The reason only a few people talked to me. My friend had been begging me for years let her to cut it but I wouldn’t even let her touch it.
I put a hat on, grabbed a jacket and walked to school. My family didn’t even notice. Like always, I arrived to school late. I walked into first period five minutes after the bell rang, everyone noticed. But no one recognized me.
“You have the wrong class!” someone shouted.
“No,” I sat down in my seat.
“Who are you?” the guy next to me asked.
“Rachel, can’t you recognize me?” I joked
“What the ‘truck’ happened to your hair?”
“Cancer.” I said tearfully.
Ryan jumped up on his chair and screamed it to the whole class. I played along. Ms. Suzuki stopped the lesson and Ryan dragged me to the front of the room. “Rachel has cancer! She is going to die!” I didn’t say anything I just ran back to my seat. But people came up, cried and said they cared so I decided not to tell the truth. I’d never lied like this before, but I’d never had that much attention either. What was the worst that could happen?
An hour later the whole school knew, even the teachers and my mom, who worked in the cafeteria. Everyone thought that I was going to drop dead right in front of them. People I didn’t know hugged me. It was pretty much the best day of my life, until fifth period. Ms. Takeshi, the vice principal, called me down to her office. She was a shorter then me by about a foot, with wrinkles and a squeaky voice. Therefore she was hard to be taken seriously.
I walked into her office and sat down. She glared at me. “I was talking with your mother today, and she does not agree that you have cancer.”
I gulped.
“What do you have to say?” She kept glaring.
“Sorry?”
“You are going to apologize to the whole school.” she squeaked.
“No. I’m not going to do it.”
“Then I’ll do it tomorrow during announcements. Go back to class now.” If it wasn’t so serious it would be funny, Ms. Takeshi was still glaring and her face was scrunched up. She looked like a bulldog.
I left the office and walked back to fifth period. Suddenly feeling dizzy and cold, I leaned against a wall, almost falling over. I felt like fainting but I stayed conscious. There was no way I would go back to class. Obviously, I was sick. Maybe I really did have cancer!
I started walking home. I had never ditched school before, so today was a first. The next few days I also missed school, I was still dizzy, but I was cold and my skin had turned blue, but I had a fever.
I told mom that I was fine but she wouldn’t listen, she forced me into the car and drove us to the emergency room.
I hate the emergency room. I had only gone there once, three years ago when my brother broke his leg. The whole family had to wait for six hours. There were fifty other people in the room meant for thirty, all moaning in pain. It smelled bad. All the sick people in there made us even sicker. My mother was freaking out the whole time and my brother wasn’t give pain medication.
This time was exactly the same, but it smelled worse. And I was the sickly one. After the usual six hours, an extremely tall doctor, must’ve been six and a half feet tall, walked out of a door in the back.
“Rachel McKeithan.”
Finally! We followed him through a purple door into an office. There we waited for another thirty minutes. Then another doctor came in, he asked us ordinary questions about my overall health. The tall doctor came in and took a blood sample.
My mother was really freaked out. She paced in circles with Dad on the phone. I was really sick and didn't feel like talking, so I fell asleep.
Two hours later, after Mom’s phone had died, the second doctor came back with the results of the blood test.
He told my mother to sit down. She gave him a look of terror and did what he said.
“I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you, but I’m going to be blunt. Rachel has been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, a type of blood cancer.”