Waiting for Normal / DreamPunk Press (ePub)

All Cat wants is for life to go back to normal: to hate high school just because its high school, to fight with her mom over her makeup, to defend her choice of boyfriend (who's back in her life and back at school) to her dad, to sit through parent-teacher conferences due to poor grades (and nothing else), to get on her sisters nerves just because she can.

But she can't.

She's too busy waiting; waiting until she's done with all the cancer treatments, waiting for everything to go back to normal.

[CW=talk of sex, near violent incident with a parent]

At the beginning of summer before her final year of high school, Catriona is diagnosed with lymphoma, and the treatment starts. There's radiation, chemo, and her mom feeding her every healthy food she can think of. When school starts, there's exhaustion, nausea, tests, and peers keeping a distance due to fear of the unknown. When Jet, her old boyfriend, comes back to school, he's there, helping, all the time. But when dad comes back from overseas, there's a fight. He never liked Jet, and he wants to know why she isn't on the crew team. Cat and her mom hadn't kept the diagnosis from him...they just hadn't let him know just how bad it was for her.

Poor Cat just wants to make it through high school, but the ever-looming threat of cancer keeps hope at bay. What--or who--can bring it back?