Chapter Thirty Seven:
Last Times Ever:
~Ryan~
Christmas came quickly. It seemed like we were just getting home from the TV show, and the next morning we were waking up on Christmas morning.
The donation thing the Morning Show had set up for Danielle was constantly growing even a month after her appearance. I had checked it a couple of days ago, and it was up to $11 000. It was amazing. Danielle had gotten a couple of magazine and other talk show offers, but she didn’t accept any of them. She said she didn’t want to dress up the fact that she had cancer. She said the donations in her name was enough.
The last month had been hard. Danielle still refused to up her chemo dosage, so every day she was getting worse and worse. Not by much, but still enough that I noticed. I just hoped that the cancer can leave her alone long enough to allow her to enjoy Christmas.
My parents were allowing me to spend Christmas with Danielle. They also agreed to get up early so that I could get to Danielle’s pretty early.
I got a new iPod from my dad, and $200 hundred from my mom as a sort of sorry-I’ve-pretty-much-ignored-you gift.
Dad drove me to Danielle’s house and I was there by nine. Danielle was just waking up when I walked in. She stretched her arms over her head and turned to face me. She placed an empty glass on the bedside table and I knew she had just taken her pain pills.
“Merry Christmas,” Danielle said, her voice thick with sleep.
“Merry Christmas,” I said sitting next to her and kissing her. Abu jumped up on to me and licked my cheek in greeting.
“And Merry Christmas to you too Abu,” I said speaking directly into his face. He just cocked his head and gave me his happy little puppy dog look.
“Now get out so I can get changed,” Danielle said poking me in the side.
“I’ve seen you naked before,” I said with a shrug. “Many times.”
Danielle frowned. “I don’t want you to see me now. I’m so… sickly.” We hadn’t done anything for a while now, the cancer had been too relentless to allow Danielle that.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind,” I said.
“But I do. So leave so I can change.”
“Why? You can at least open your presents in your pyjamas, and then get changed when the rest of our family shows up,” I said.
“Bubu, this mean man won’t leave, can you make him leave for me?” Danielle asked.
Abu barked quietly and then licked my nose. “Even Abu agrees with me that I’m not a mean man,” I said triumphantly.
“Wait, I said no presents,” Danielle said angrily.
“Well with the peek I took under the tree, I can see that is one wish that is not about to come true.”
Danielle groaned and flopped onto her back.
“I’m waiting for my parents,” she said. But I knew she was just trying to stall.
“Actually they’re waiting in the kitchen drinking coffee. I already said hi to them,” I admitted.
“Fine let’s get this over with,” she said sitting up.
“Hey now that’s not a very good Christmas spirit,” I said.
“It’s the best you’re going to get.”
“What happened to the perfect Christmas? It snowed yesterday just for you, so everything outside is all perfectly white. Your family is all coming over today, and we’re going out for dinner with your friends, now you just need to smile.”
“I don’t want any presents,” she pouted.
I leaned over and kissed her. “Smile please?” I begged.
“No.”
I kissed her again. “Now?” Her face wavered but she stayed strong.
“Please?” I said kissing her once again. She finally cracked, and her whole face lit up in a smile.
“You’re almost as impossible to say no to as that little thing there,” Danielle said pointing to the little thing in question. Abu leaped up onto her and licked her face happily. I guess he did get whatever he wanted.
I placed Abu on the bed and held out a hand for Danielle. She took it and stood up. We went past the living room where the Christmas tree was, into the kitchen to where her parents were.
“Merry Christmas,” Lilly said sipping her coffee.
“Merry Christmas,” Danielle repeated taking the glass of milk Greg held out to her. I shook my head when he offered me one.
“Let’s get this present thing over with,” she said with a huff. She had a slight milk mustache on her upper like. I smiled and kissed her, licking away the milk.
“Danielle! It’s Christmas! Smile!” Lilly chastised.
“Dan, do we have to go through this again?” I teased.
“You know I quite liked that. I wouldn’t mind it again,” she teased back. Greg raised his eyebrow at me.
“Come on! I can’t wait for you to open my present,” I said.
She glared at me. “You shouldn’t have spent money on me.”
“This time, I can honestly say it didn’t cost me a penny.”
Danielle nodded. “Wait does that mean you spent more than a penny on it, or you actually didn’t spend any money on it?”
I chuckled. “I didn’t spend any money at all on it.”
“Good.” I took Danielle’s hand and we went into the living room, her parents following behind us.
Danielle took down her stocking from the fireplace and began to unwrap the small presents inside. I was surprised that there was also one with my name on it. I tried not to accept it, but they wouldn’t let me try to give it back.
We both got just a bunch of chocolates and Scratch and Win tickets.
“We weren’t sure what to get you, but I hope you like this,” Greg said handing Danielle a brightly wrapped box.
Danielle opened it and she let out a gasp. “Oh this is so cool!” She said pulling out another box. It took me a moment to realize that is was an electronic picture frame.
“Since you’re always changing your mood so fast, we thought that being able to choose a picture to match might help,” Lilly said.
“So when she’s mad, you want her to stay that way?” I asked.
“No. When she’s mad maybe she can look at a picture of you and feel better,” Lilly said in a duh voice.
“Oh that makes sense,” I said. “Okay, my turn baby,” I said going to the tree to get my present for her. I had dropped it off yesterday.
“Nope you’re opening mine first,” she said. I looked under the tree until I found it, and then I brought both to where Danielle was sitting on the couch.
“Can’t we open them at the same time?” I protested.
“Nope, you’re opening mine first.”
“Okay.” It was a weird shaped present. It was flat on the bottom, and the top was slanted so one side was taller than the other. I opened it slowly because I enjoyed the excited look on Danielle’s face.
The paper fell away and I saw the navy blue cover of a small photo album. In silver letters the words ‘Until the Day I Die.’ I flipped open the book and the first picture was of Danielle and I when we were in kindergarten playing with a couple of my toy cars and some of her Barbies. The pictures continued. There were tons of them. Some were of only Danielle, some were of both of us, and some were of Danielle and her friends.
The pictures started when we met, and then as the pictures went on, we got older and older. The last one was really recent. It was a picture of us laughing while decorating her Christmas tree.
I think in total, there were maybe a two hundred or so pictures.
“This is awesome Danielle,” I said with a huge smile.
“Oh there’s a part two as well. I couldn’t fit all the pictures in there so there is another album with my less favourite pictures,” she said.
“I really love it,” I said giving her a quick kiss.
“There’s room for some more pictures at the back, but not much because…” she let the sentence run off. It didn’t really need to be finished. “And on a lot of the pictures, on the back I wrote where it was taken and what year if I could remember them. Just so in future years you won’t ever forget.”
“Okay, now open mine,” I said thrusting my present into her hands. She smiled and opened it. It was really flat and thin, it was a small present, but I think she would appreciate it.
“Oh and please don’t hate me,” I said before it was fully unwrapped.
“Uh oh, that’s never good,” she commented. She took off the last of the paper and she looked confused for a minute.
“Look there,” I said pointing to the top left corner of the magazine.
“’Danielle Everard Gives the Most for Cancer in 2011,’” she read. “What is this?”
“You kept turning down all those offers and I knew you wanted to leave a mark on the world. So I called back on of those offers and I gave them permission to print an article on you. It covers four pages and it’s supposed to be about how your appearance on the Morning Show is sending thousands of dollars towards cancer research. But part of it is also on how much you had to give up because of the cancer, and about how you are donating all the money you receive at your birthday and Christmas to cancer research.”
Danielle stared at the magazine blankly. I couldn’t tell or not if she liked it. “This is an advanced copy, they don’t start selling them until tomorrow.”
“This is amazing Ryan,” she said flipping open to the section on herself. It did cover a whole four pages. There were also a couple of pictures that I had submitted of Danielle both before and after chemo. There was one of her dancing, and only one of her sitting in a hospital. The rest were all pretty happy pictures.
The article started with explaining how she had been diagnosed and everything she had given up. Then it went into her plan to donate the money she was given to research and then because of her appearance on the Morning Show and how lovable of a person she was, thousands of dollars were being donated each week in her honour.
“I also sent messages to all of those people who keep bugging you for an article or appearance. I asked them to stop bugging you because you had more to worry about than some stupid publicity thing.”
“Eek! Thank you Ryan!” Danielle squealed throwing her arms around my neck and kissing me. The magazine dropped from her lap and onto the floor. Greg picked it up and read over the article.
Later in the day, after Danielle was dressed, the rest of her family showed up. A lot of them I had either heard of or seen pictures of, and some of them I had met at other gatherings.
It was slightly awkward because a lot of them were watching Danielle and I closely, but I guess they were just worried about her.
If my math was right, I think Danielle got little over $400. Then when we went out with her friends, and mine, she got another $300.
People were really generous when they knew it was going to be Danielle’s last Christmas ever.
That’s the part that I couldn’t stop thinking about all day.
I would live through decades more of Christmases, yet Danielle wouldn’t even live long enough to start preparing for next.
There were so many things Danielle wasn’t going to have again, things that I would have lots of.
Danielle would never get another first day of school, never have another Halloween, never eat another turkey on Thanksgiving, never experience the first snow fall of the year, never have happy birthday sung to her again, never have another Christmas.
Then depending on when she died she would also never get the chance to go boxing day shopping again, never stay up to midnight on New Year’s Eve, she’s never had a valentine on Valentine’s day, and she won’t ever unless she makes it that long this year, she’ll never laugh again on April Fool’s Day, she’ll never count down to the last day of school, never lie on the beach in the summer with her friends, never be able to have children, never get married, never have gray hair, she might not ever have hair ever again!
~Danielle~
On New Year’s Eve, Ryan came over. His friend Evan was having a party, but I was too weak to handle an actually party. My parents went to a party as well, and my friends came over to keep my company.
We just played games and had fun. Then when it got close to midnight we flipped between channels for the most interesting New Year’s show.
When midnight came, Ryan kissed me and he tasted of the chocolate we had been eating all night, and surprisingly, Nolan kissed Nicole, I had not been expecting that. Clearly no one else had because everyone just stopped to stare at them.
When Nicole pulled away her face was red in a blush and she just giggled.
“Sorry! I had been thinking about asking you out for a while but I always chickened out, and I just got so caught up in the moment and-” Nicole cut off Nolan’s apology with another kiss.
“Did you know about that?” I asked Anna.
She shook her head and looked just as confused as her twin looked happy. “No idea. But now that I’m thinking about it, he has been texting lots lately, I just never thought it was Nicole.”
Then the party continued on.
When one o’clock hit, I took extra pills so that the caffeine we were drinking couldn’t counteract them too much.
We tried to stay up all night, but by three I was the first to stumble into bed.
In the morning, Ryan was lying next to me and keeping me warm, Nolan and Nicole were crashed on the floor in the living room, Anna and Jenny were sharing the spare room bed, and Diane was on the couch.
“How was your New Years?” Ryan asked as he helped me make a new pot of coffee and clean up the mess we had made last night.
“Pretty good except I woke up to this total creep this morning,” I joked.
“Oh really? So are you going to kill him?” he asked.
“Nah, I think I’ll let him live a little longer.” Ryan kissed me putting his hands on either side of me on the counter.
“Just too bad it was my last,” I said sadly.
“Just try to be happy Dan,” Ryan said kissing me again.
“Dan, Dan, Dan,” Nicole said suddenly appearing at my side and pulling on the t-shirt I had slipped on for bed.
“Yeah what’s up?” I asked looking over Ryan’s shoulder at her.
“I had this amazing dream and I’m starting to think it was real,” she said with a scared look on her face.
“And what was it about?” I asked having a pretty good idea.
“Did I kiss Nolan?”
I laughed. “Yeah you did. How could you now remember that?”
“Well, I’ve been dreaming about it for a couple of weeks. And I wasn’t sure if last night was just a very real dream, or if it was real.”
“It was definitely real. You can go kiss Nolan, I’m pretty sure he likes it.”
“Yay!” she cheered.
“Nicole, how did you get Nolan’s number?”
“Well at the beginning of the summer he asked me for it in case something happened to you and he wasn’t here. Then we just started texting lots and…”
“I’m happy for you guys,” I said with a big smile.
“I’m going to go and wake him up,” Nicole said bouncing away.
“Nolan and Nicole, that doesn’t make you mad at all?” Ryan asked.
“No. Only that neither of them told me they liked the other. It’s Anna you should be asking if she’s okay with it.”
“I’ll make sure to do that,” Ryan said kissing me again, taking advantage of the fact that almost everyone in the house was still asleep.
****
And anther chapter done.
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