Here is Cassandra;
She's 3 years old - just a toddler with a halo of golden hair, and eyes as wide as the moon shining down from the sky. She's learning to ride a bike, she's starting to discover numbers, she's starting to learn that fairy tales and happy endings are for children - and she's starting to figure out, most of all, that childhood is out of the question for her.
Here is Cassandra;
She's 12, and she's just had her first heartbreak - the first boy she doodles beside her name in a notebook, the first one who makes her heart flutter in her chest when he looks her way. She thinks she's in love, she thinks after he starts dating someone else, that she'll never fall in love again. She'll wish, eventually, that that would have been true.
Here is Cassandra;
She's 14, and she's starting to think there's something wrong with her, because whenever she talks to her best friend she can't help but notice her lips and her smile and the way she tosses her hair back when she laughs. She thinks about how this is not normal; how she needs to force it down; how her parents would look at her and say oh, Cassandra if they knew. She resists the urge to doodle, but she lets herself listen to Taylor Swift songs at 2 am and fall asleep to the image of that smile in her head. She gets used to late nights and long sleeves and the term lying by omission.
Here is Cassandra;
She's 15, and she's sitting in a hospital room. It's too white and too agressively cheerful and the painting of a rainbow on the wall is colliding with the words inoperable and quick progression and advancing hallucinations coming out of the doctor's mouth. She's vastly aware of the fact that her parents are not-looking at her with a fierce determination, and she blinks back the tears.
She's getting back to her house, and as her parents sit downstairs, she goes up to her room and starts smashing things, one by one. Trophies, framed pictures of her friends - memories. Because they're all going to be gone soon anyway, right? Her parents don't come up to see what's going on. She wonders, briefly, if she should just throw herself out the window. It would spare her the waiting, at least. She screams, she sobs; and the whole time, her parents sit at the kitchen table and ignore the elephant in the room that has stolen her name.
Here is Cassandra;
She's 19, and she's screaming at her parents. Things like you act like I don't exist and can't you see how much I'm hurting and I don't have that much time left, but I know I don't want to live it like this. When she pulls out of the driveway with three boxes of all her worldly possessions, she doesn't know where she's going. She drives all night, until she sees the sun and a now hiring sign, and then she pulls over and cries until her old life is wiped away with the tears.
Here is Cassandra;
She's 23, and she's been slowly moving away from her old home. Now she's five states and four years away from everything she's ever known, and she's more lost than she's ever felt. She gets a job as a janitor at the hospital, which is funny because she hasn't stepped foot in one since she'd left. A small part of her thinks that maybe if she ignores it, it'll go away.
(Logic has always been her strong suit, but she'll allow herself this one exception.)
Here is Cassandra;
She's 25, and suddenly she's surrounded by magic and monsters and saving the world every week (and twice before friday). She has a fleeting moment where she thinks, maybe, this death sentence in her head might be lifted, and when it disappears it's like her whole world collapses again. She makes a silent promise to herself not to let herself hope - it's her newest poison. She can't quite help it, though. She prays, every night, to a god she doesn't quite believe in. She prays that this will go away, but she prays harder that it'll be quick when it comes.
Here is Cassandra;
She's 26, and everything hurts. The headaches, the hallucinations, the feeling of Jake's hands on her waist when she can't lean into him like every nerve ending is begging her to. She can't do that to him, can't do that to herself. She goes the the hospital, and finds out that she only has six months left, tops. She cries until she's cried herself out, and then she puts her energy into not telling them. They don't need to hurt like she does, and there's a selfish part of her that wants everything to stay the same for as long as possible.
Here is Cassandra;
She's 27, and she's kissing Jake like there's no tomorrow. He's saying things like I love you and I can't lose you and she's murmuring things like I love you, too and you can't stop it and please, just hold me.
She's 27, and she's looking at the countdown on her phone to her "due date". The numbers are down to the double digits, and she still hasn't told them. She doesn't think she can, at this point.
She's 27, and suddenly her entire world is spinning and white-hot pain is flashing through her entire body and she should be seeing her life flash before her eyes but all she thinks is please and Jake and make it stop make it stop make it stop.
She's 27, and