Aspire

Chapter 9

   "I'm home, Mom," I called as I entered the house. "Hey, Crys. How's Lil?" Mom asked from the living room couch. "She's fine." I responded, and I plopped down onto the couch next to her. "We had a lot of fun." Mom smiled and rubbed my arm. "That's great, hun." I nodded and smiled back at her. 
Soon after, Tyler walked into the room and sat in the chair opposite from the couch, looking at his phone. "How was Lilly, Crys?" He asked, still staring at his phone. "We were just talking about that," Mom responds. "She's doing fine." I told Tyler, and above the glow of his phone screen I saw him start to smile.

"All these colleges are bull." I told my mom as I browsed websites on the laptop. My shoulders leaned on the kitchen table, and my eyes strained from the bright screen and the dim room. "C'mon, Crys, don't say that. There's gotta be somewhere." My mom sat down onto a chair next to me. "Yeah, and that somewhere is too expensive for us." Mom sighed and stood up, walking to where our coffee mug cabinet was. "Want some tea or something?" I nodded while still squinting at the laptop screen. I hear my mom fill up our kettle with water from the sink, and then I hear the subtle click of the stove as she set it to a boil. "One summer break won't be enough time to figure all this out. I think I'm just going to take a year off before going to college. I don't want to make any wrong choices about where I go." Mom nodded. "I understand, Crys. I don't want you to make any wrong choices either. I just want you to be happy."

I decided to go to bed afterwards. After taking a shower and brushing my teeth, I crawled into bed and fell asleep almost instantly. Thinking about college and Lilly made me really tired, and I've found out now that stressing will just make it worse. Even so, it's hard to avoid these topics; my future and my best friend.

•

   I sat straight up from my bed with a gasp. Nightmares had taken over my mind and all I saw was Dad, Lilly, and a future of mine I didn't want.
'Why don't you torture someone else's sleep?'
"Is everything good, Crys?" My mom leaned against the doorway of my room. I sighed and looked towards her. "No, everything's not good. I feel like it's all slipping away, and I'm not doing anything about it." Mom walked towards me and sat on the edge of the bed. She reached over and hugged me tightly. "I know the feeling, babe. But you gotta stay strong. For Lilly, for Tyler. For me." I looked at my mom, and for once I really studied her face. I didn't see just a single mom caring for her kids, I saw a hurting person, in the same situation as me. "I will, Mom. I love you," I hugged her tightly, then she left my room to make breakfast.

   I went to the kitchen to get some cereal for breakfast, knocking on Tyler's door and calling for him to wake up. I stepped onto the cold kitchen floor, scrunching up my toes and then traveling to the pantry and grabbing the first box of cereal I saw. I poured it into a bowl, added milk, and grabbed a spoon. I sat down next to Mom, who had an English muffin with jelly. Digging my spoon into my cereal, I watched as Tyler walked into the kitchen.
"Hey, Ty. How'd you sleep?" I asked.
"Pretty good, I guess. I had another dream about Dad. He sounded so... reassuring. I almost left with him."
"What happened that made you stay?"
"I woke up."

•

I rode my bike to Lilly's house, where she was staying for the next few days instead of the hospital. I felt kind of glad, because it sounded like she could get better now, and she didn't have to stay in the hospital for a while.

Soon, I had arrived at Lilly's house and set my bike on her driveway. I knocked on the door, and Lilly's mother answered. "Hey, do you mind if I give Lil a visit?" Ms. Gaines nodded and let me in the house. Taking a deep breath, I slowly traveled down the hallway to Lilly's room.
"Hi."
Lilly looked up from her bed.
"Hey, Crys."
"How do you feel?"
Lilly just stared at me for a while. The light in her eyes was replaced with nothingness. No emotion.
"I feel pretty disappointed. Life has cheated me."
We both started to cry then.

•

"The truth," Lilly started, "is that I'm not going back to the hospital." I looked up at Lilly from the magazine I was flipping through as we lounged on her bed. "Why not?" My heart started to race as I anticipated the answer. "I'm not going to get better, Crys. Even I've accepted it. It was my and my doctor's choice to stop the treatments. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a hospital." I looked back down at the magazine, curling the bottom corner of the glossy page with my finger. "Are you just giving up?" I asked her. I started to get angry, but I didn't even know if it was at her or something else. "You don't know how this is. Chemo is the roughest thing I've been through... and it's brain cancer. I'm done, Crys. I'm... giving in. Cancer wins."

I took in a breath and looked up at her, tears swelling in my eyes. "But... y-you're Lilly, you're always p-positive, and you never stop f-fighting." I choked out the words I had been holding back for a while. "I know it's rough, but you have to stay strong. You keep me going, Lil. You have to keep going."
Lilly started to cry as well.
"It's time to be strong for yourself. I don't know how much time I have left, Crys. No one does. Now you need to give it your all." I nodded, wiping my cheeks that were wet with tears. "I'm just so... angry. Not at you, just at how unfair this life is." Lilly sighed and answered, "Tell me about it."

•

It's been two days. I've visited Lilly for both days. We made more memories, shed more tears, and laughed until our stomachs hurt. But all of this has made me realize how fragile humans are. Something like a disease can break a human. Not just the physical illness, but the person's whole being. Their personality, their soul. And that's what hurts me the most about this.

"I'm going to sell some art pieces to that store I love. There was a flyer and they want more local art to put out." I told my mom about my plans as I sat down at the kitchen table, biting into an apple. "Lilly told me I should, so I'm going to try." Mom smiled as she sat down at the table as well. "That's great, Crys. She'll be excited to hear that."

I decided to go for a drive that night, to look at all the signs and lights in the town. I invited Lilly to come with me two days before, and we had a great time. But this drive was just for me. I needed time to focus. Just me, my thoughts, and some music. I connected my phone to the car's Bluetooth and listened to my favorite playlist. I backed out of the driveway, drove out of the neighborhood, and started traveling in the roads lined with stores and restaurants. I heard a train pass parallel to me, the rails right next to the road. Lilly and I used to count each of the cars of the train and kept track of them in a notepad.

I pulled into the parking lot of a coffee shop and walked in. As I pushed the entrance doors open, I accidentally ran right into a guy walking out, making his coffee spill across the floor. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry," I said while awkwardly picking up the dripping cup. "Uh, it's fine. I didn't need that caffeine this late at night." We both laughed and he introduced himself. "I'm Jayden, by the way." I smiled and responded, "I'm Crys."