Counting Thyme

G
.
P
.
P
UTNAM'S
S
ONS

an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

Copyright © 2016 by Melanie Conklin.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

G. P. Putnam's Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

eBook ISBN 978-0-698-41173-9

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Jacket credit: Cover art © 2016 by Pascal Campion

Cover design by Theresa Evangelista

For my mother, the truth-teller

NEW YORK CITY

WHEN SOMEONE TELLS YOU YOUR LITTLE BROTHER MIGHT DIE,
you're quick to agree to anything. You give up after-school activities because no one can take you to practice. You start eating kale chips instead of regular sour cream 'n' onion because your mom says kale is rich in antioxidants, which means healthy. You even agree to move across the country, if that's what it takes.

That's how I ended up in New York City.

We came for my brother, Val, and the drug trial that might save his life. I didn't know if the treatment would work or when we would go home again. All I knew was that Val needed to be in New York and we had to go with him. So I came.

It was November. Thanksgiving Day, nine months since we'd found out that Val was sick. Dad met us at the airport. He'd flown ahead to meet the movers while we spent our last week in San Diego with Grandma Kay. When I spotted him at the baggage claim, he looked older—his beard grayer, his face thinner than just a week before. But he was still tall as a tree and he smiled like he was glad to see me.

Which was nice, considering Mom had hardly looked at me all day. She'd been too busy taking care of Val, making sure he washed his hands to avoid germs and ate granola to keep his energy up. When our bags arrived, she didn't notice that I took Val's suitcase, too, or that I almost got lost in the crowd on the way to the taxi stand. I guess I should've been used to it by then, but something about being in a strange airport in a strange city made me wish the old Mom would come back just long enough to give me a squeeze, like she used to before Val got sick.

Instead, when our turn came, she just said, “Hurry up, Thyme,” like I was the one slowing us down, when in fact I was being way more helpful than my big sister Cori, who was so busy reading her city guide that she almost got left on the sidewalk.

Sitting in the back of the taxi, I tried to remember the order of the flowers Grandma Kay and I had planted before we left. Sugar-bush, hummingbird sage, and thyme, of course, tucked right up against the fence where Mom would see them from the kitchen. It was supposed to be a surprise for the spring. Something to look forward to. Only now, the thought of leaving all of those plants behind just made my stomach twist, so I put them out of my mind.

Val was curled up against my side. He had to be tired of sitting, but he'd barely complained all day. He was actually pretty tough for a five-year-old.

I tapped his shoulder and he looked at me, his little blue eyes curious. “Back rub?”

He nodded eagerly, laying his skinny body across my legs so I could run my fingers over the back of his Batman costume. His hair was finally starting to grow back again. Brown and fuzzy, like baby's hair. And over each ear, a plastic loop connected to a pale blue battery pack—the hearing aids he'd started wearing a few weeks earlier. He still wasn't used to them. Mom was always checking his volume to make sure he didn't crank them up too high or turn them off completely.

Next to us, Mom had her checklists out again. She frowned and marked something off, her eyes never leaving the page even when Cori shouted, “Look! It's the Empire State Building!”

Dad was up front with the taxi driver. They were talking about construction on East River Drive, wherever that was. It was hard to believe we were actually in New York. It had only been a few weeks since Val got into the drug trial and Mom and Dad told us we were moving. The plane had crossed the country with no problem, but my mind was having trouble catching up.

“Tell me about the trains again,” I said, and Val's eyes brightened.

“There are twenty-four subway lines,” he recited from memory. “Each line has a different letter or number, and there are ten different colors.”

“Which one is your favorite?”

He thought for a moment. “The A train.”

“Why?”

“Because it's the longest ride.”

I made a face, and Val giggled. He knew I wasn't super excited about riding the subway.

“I want to ride them all,” he said, the way other kids said they wanted to fly.

I rubbed his back some more, and he relaxed against me. After a minute, he said, “The hospital's on the green line. It's two stops from 86th Street. I counted.”

“I guess that doesn't sound too bad, then.”

He shut his eyes, and I looked out the window. Streetlights glinted off cars and buildings. Signs flashed and people hurried by in heavy coats. The city was alive.

As the taxi bumped down the street, I tried not to think about what I was missing at home. Grandma Kay had made us an early turkey dinner, but it still didn't seem right to leave her alone on Thanksgiving Day. My best friend, Shani, had a soccer game on Saturday. Plus, we were right in the middle of our big social studies project. Shani said she was fine finishing it on her own, but I wasn't fine. Not at all. I felt like I'd left my own skin behind.

According to Mom, they didn't know how long we had to stay in New York. Which meant either she really didn't know, or she wasn't telling me the truth.

Val's new treatment would last a week out of every month—but for how many months? What about Christmas? Would we get to see Grandma Kay? Would Shani and I celebrate our birthdays together, like we always did? Or would I still be gone?

That's when Mom said she didn't have all the answers and
could I please stop giving her the third degree. I'd wanted to know why she wouldn't talk to me, but I was pretty sure that if I asked one more question, she'd explode.

“I think the doctor said three months,” Dad had said, before Mom gave him a look. “But it's a drug trial, so we don't know for sure,” he added quickly.

Three months meant December, January, and February in New York.

“So we'll be back by March?” Shani's birthday was March sixth. Mine was March twelfth.

Dad had rubbed at his beard, thinking. “Well . . . the thing is—”

“You don't need to worry about that,” Mom said. “What matters is that your brother has this opportunity. Just because he's stable now doesn't mean we're done. The cancer could come back.”

We all got quiet then. That word is so loud, it's hard to talk over it.

After a minute, Dad took my hand. His fingers were long and thin, but strong, like the rest of him.

“Our family is like a printing press,” he said. “You remember how complicated they are?”

I nodded. Dad was in advertising. He worked at a company that made special handmade posters on big machines that gave the colors just the right look.

“There are lots of parts that make a press work,” he said. “Rollers, wheels, clamps. If one of the wheels is broken, the whole operation stops. You've got to fix the broken part
before you get the print you want.” He looked at me like he'd made all the sense in the world, instead of talking about the machines at his office like they were people.

But the truth was, I knew what he meant.

Val was the broken wheel.

He was the one who counted.