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Elliot picked up the kitchen phone, and was immediately punished by the sound of two computers screeching at each other. He quickly hung up, but he knew it was too late.

“Elliot? Did you just try to use the phone?” His sister’s voice rang accusingly through the house.

“Yeah - sorry!” He shouted back.

“Damn it!” Sydney answered. “I’ve been trying to get through to that BBS for ten minutes!”

Elliot killed time with a magazine until Sydney joined him in the kitchen. “Okay, you can use the phone now,” she told him, wearing a lopsided frown.

“What’s wrong?” He asked. Sydney couldn’t be blamed for any emotions she might be feeling lately, but Elliot hadn’t seen her this frustrated in quite some time.

“Mom and dad totally screwed me over,” she said. He raised an eyebrow, and she continued: “Remember how I arranged a meet-up with the other kids from the Apple Users Group bulletin board? We were all going to meet face to face at Big Surf? Remember how I had it on the calendar for three weeks that I had to be there, today, before 11:00?”

“Yeah...?”

“Well, Mom and Dad dropped me off at 11:25,” the teen girl vented.

“Oof,” Elliot sympathized. “Were you able to find your friends?”

“How could I?!” She exclaimed. “I didn’t know what any of them looked like! I missed the only meeting time, and so I spent two hours at the water park, totally alone! It was horrible!”

“What did Mom and Dad have to say about it when you told them?” Elliot asked.

“That’s the worst part!” Sydney said, at this point stomping around with renewed anger. “Mom yelled at me like it was my fault! She said we should have had a backup meeting time planned. What were we supposed to do, wear watches and somehow not get them wet?”

In an instant, the elf-faced teen went from angry to sad. “That’s not the worst part of it,” she said. “I really like this one guy - Jeremy - even though we’ve never actually met. I was hoping that maybe I could have my first kiss. You know, since I might die in a couple days.”

“You’re not going to die,” Elliot reflexively told her.

That set off her anger again. “God! Stop it!” She said, stamping her foot. “You know, when you and Mom and Dad feed me these protective lies, it makes me feel like you’re not really here for me!” Tears began to well in her eyes. “And I need you!”

Elliot hugged his sister. “Sorry. I won’t do it again.”

Sydney wiped the tears from her eyes. “What do you know, anyway?”

Elliot sighed. “You know doctors. They won’t ever give you a straight answer. Dad says they give it a thirty percent chance of ‘major complications during surgery’, whatever that means.”

Sydney smiled appreciatively at her brother. He’d be going to college soon, but not until the end of the summer. He’d be there to visit her when it was done - either in the hospital or the funeral home.

“It might not be too late...,” she told him. “Can you please drive me to Jeremy’s house tonight? It has to be tonight. He’s got church in the morning, and then his family is going to Sedona. He won’t be near his computer so I won’t even be able to talk to him again. He lives in Mesa.”

Elliot did the travel math in his head. “Um, okay, yeah. I’ve got someone I’ve got to see tonight too, and then we’ll hit your friend’s house. You’ll look up his address? Figure out how to get there?”

Sydney nodded.

“Okay. I just need to get in touch with Barry first,” Elliot said, reaching for the phone on the kitchen wall. Sydney left him to make his arrangements.