The Story of a Dying Girl
This is probably not very good and I suck with technology and wrote a bunch of chapters on word, so I'm trying to figure out how to upload them. I think I figured it out, but I am probably gonna end up doing it in a way over complicated way. This is one of the first stories I have ever written so, it's gonna suck. Also, if the characters don't seem so much like themselves, I'm sorry. And, another fuck up I made: It takes place in America, but they all use British slang so...
There are probably a shit ton of typos. I really suck at this.
I'm just gonna apologize in advance. Enjoy! Or don't.
Chapter 1:
It was the month of October of my senior year of high school when I was told, or really informed that I should spend time with Emily Fitch.
I, of course, did not know why. I had nothing against Emily Fitch, but we were merely acquaintances, just like everyone else I knew.
I didn't really have too many friends, but I was on pretty good terms with everyone. I figured that no one could really know me well enough to hurt me, and no one could hate me if we were all on moderate terms.
The only person to really break this mold was a loud boy named Cook, who was known as a bit of a slag. I don't know why he was my best, and only, friend, but he was, and I didn't question it, because it was easier not to.
But back to Emily Fitch and the month of October.
Emily Fitch was, for those of you who don't know, a pretty girl with long red hair, who was smart. There's probably more to say than that, but that's typically how people are classified, so that's how I will classify her.
October, for those of you who don't know, is the tenth month in the year.
It was also the month in which I sat at my computer in my room, at my desk, trying to write an essay for a class that I did not really care about.
And while I tried to add more to reach the five page limit, my mum knocked softly and opened the door slowly with an unsettling squeak.
"Honey," and with this she sat on my bed and motioned for me to join her, "I have some bad news."
No one likes to hear that there's bad news, unless you're some sort of sadist. I guess in that case, bad news suits you just fine.
I moved to sit next to her on my old twin bed.
She motioned for me to take her hand, so I did, but not without first giving her an odd look.
"Emily Fitch, you know Emily Fitch right?"
"Uh, we're acquainted."
"She's been diagnosed with cancer."
And she closed her eyes and I saw a few tears fall.
I, on the other hand, did not really know how to feel. Sad, obviously, but I didn't really know her, and I wasn't about to pretend like she was my best friend and scream out asking, "Why her?! Why her?! Oh god, why?!"
I didn't see the point in only really caring about this girl after learning that she might die.
It didn't really seem fair to her.
"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry."
I don't know why she was apologizing to me. I didn't have cancer. I wasn't her mother, or her father, or her twin or even her friend, but I accepted her apology all the same and told her that I was too, because in that moment there really wasn't that much else to say.
"Her family must be devastated!" My mum continued to cry, but still, I didn't really know why. My mum had never met Emily Fitch.
And we stayed like that for a few moments, with my mum crying into my shoulder and I just took it, sitting on my bed and staring at the ceiling high above.
"Maybe you should go over and cheer her up some time."
Like I was saying before, it didn't really seem fair, only now to really care about Emily Fitch.
But I couldn't exactly tell my mother that no, the girl who had just been diagnosed with cancer will not be receiving any cheering up from me and that I would not go see her.
"Yeah maybe."
And that was the day in October in which I learned that Emily Fitch was dying and that I should do something about it.
The next day at school wasn't really a whole lot better. It seemed like that was all anyone was talking about.
Everyone suddenly started caring. Everyone flocked around Emily, some crying, some not, and gave her condolences. And it really wasn't fair, to see these people start caring when most of them probably couldn't give a shit about Emily Fitch before.
Her twin sister, Katie, spent the whole day crying. It was a bit distracting in math when I was trying to learn formulas and all I could hear was sniffling and sobs, but I wasn't about to tell her to stop crying about her sister with cancer.
It didn't really seem appropriate.
Even Cook seemed somber. And part of it annoyed me. She wasn't dead. Why was there already a funeral? She was alive, and for the most part well, but we might as well have been dressed in black, burying her body.
And this went on for a little bit. Everyone started caring, and mum told me to go cheer her up, but I didn't because I didn't really think that she would want another phony griever.
It was the second Wednesday of October when my mum stopped suggesting and grabbed my phone from my hand, telling me to go to her house now.
I tried to argue.
"Mum, I don't really know her though."
I tried to reason.
"Her family probably doesn't want any visitors."
I tried to protest.
"I'm not going."
Mum didn't budge.
So there I found myself walking the few blocks to her house.
Leaves fell from trees and squirrels still jumped and did whatever else squirrels typically found themselves doing. I wondered if nature had gotten the memo, that they had to start acting sad now, and stop their usual routine.
Emily Fitch, the pretty girl with red hair, had cancer. The sun shouldn't shine. The stars should disappear. The trees should fall and leave ugly stumps in their place. The squirrels should weep.
But they didn't stop, because they did not care about Emily Fitch.
And I guess that maybe the world did not care about Emily Fitch, and maybe the world doesn't really care about any of us.
If I keeled over and died, the country of China would not find themselves weeping and Russia would not hold a minute of silence in my honor. Africa would not hold a ceremony for me and Australia would not give me a parade, because to the world I am one person out of over seven billion.
The leaves crunched under my feet and I found myself knocking at a bright red door, which seemed a little unusual, but I wasn't really sure what color a door had to be in order to be acceptable, so I just knocked and waited.
Mrs. Fitch was crying when she opened the door, and she pulled me in for a tight hug that felt out of place because I had never met Jenna Fitch. But I guess her daughter having cancer was out of place, as was their red door, so I accepted her hug.
She squeezed too hard, like she wanted the air to go out of my lungs, and it that was true, than she was succeeding.
"Emily will be so happy to have you. You are a good kid."
I wanted to ask her how she knew I was a good kid when she had never met me. I could have escaped from prison and been there to kill her daughter by smothering her with a pillow.
But this didn't seem appropriate to ask so I let her hug me and tell me things like that. I was so kind. Emily was lucky she had friends like me. I was a great kid.
And when she had deemed me hugged enough and told me that Emily would be in her room, she sat down on her very nice looking couch, and her husband, a tall, strong looking man, hugged her tightly and she cried into his shoulder, like my mum had cried into mine. Only, Jenna Fitch had a much better reason to cry than my mum did.
I went up the stairs. There were 17. And with each one I grew more anxious and more nervous to see her, as I knew she probably wouldn't know why I was there, just like I didn't really know why I was there either.
And when then 17 stairs were behind me and now there was a long narrow hall way I walked to the door that had a piece of notebook paper taped with "Emily" written in neat handwriting.
I knocked once and then twice.
"Come in mum."
I wasn't her mum, but I decided to come in anyway.
"Listen mum, I'm okay, really, I'm- You're not my mum."
And there stood, or I guess sat Emily Fitch, in all her glory. The first thing I noticed in her room was that there were a lot of flowers, covering her desk and the floor and her dresser and everywhere that flowers could be put.
The second thing I noticed was that there were also an alarming amount of cards. Cheesy cards in bright colors that were meant to cheer up this girl who was sick.
I guess nothing screams I care about you like a cheesy Hallmark card joke. Or a heartfelt prewritten paragraph that could also be given to someone with the flu.
"Yeah, I'm not your mum," I said because I didn't really know what else to say.
She sighed.
"Hi Naomi. Are you here to tell me that you feel bad for me and that you're sorry? Just like everyone fucking else."
"No. I'm here because my mum told me that I had to."
I realized maybe three seconds later how that was so much worse than being like everyone else.
"Great."
She didn't mean it.
"There sure are a lot of flowers here. What did you rob a flower store?" I laughed, and then I realized that this was a wildly inappropriate thing to say to this girl.
And she looked at me like she couldn't believe that I had said such a thing, and then slowly, but surely, a big toothy smile broke out and she laughed. I liked her smile.
"No, everyone has suddenly begun to care. Flowers seem to convey that."
"Oh shit, I should have gotten you something."
I was now in alarm, because I had nothing to show I was sorry. Because I was, and saying, "Sorry 'bout the cancer. That blows," didn't really seem to cut it.
"Naomi, it's alright."
"No, wait, close your eyes."
"Uh, okay…"
And she did. I quickly grabbed purple tulips from the floor.
"Open them."
And she did.
"Here you go."
She reached out and grabbed the vase in which "my" flowers sat in.
"Thanks, but these say, 'From Aunt Wendy,'" she laughed and pointed at the tag.
"What? Wendy's always trying to steal my fucking flowers."
And Emily Fitch laughed again.
And it was a beautiful sound.
"You can go Naomi. Really, it's okay. I don't need another person pretending to be sorry."
"But I am sorry. And I can't go. My mum will kill me if I go."
And she sighed.
"Okay then. I guess you can stay."
"Thanks."
I looked around and decided that the chair in the corner was a safe place.
Emily Fitch did not look like a sick girl. She did not have tubes strapped to her arms and her fingers were not white and frail and she wasn't in a cold sweat.
She did, however look sad, and maybe a bit broken, like sick people usually do, or maybe most people usually do.
She looked at me for a bit and then she laid back on the bed.
I did not say anything to her. And she did not say anything to me. And maybe we were supposed to, and maybe we weren't.
I didn't know because I had never really been around someone with cancer, other than the lady who worked at the cash register at the local grocery store when I was little.
She had long brown hair and a permanent smile. And as time went on she came in less and less and then she stopped coming in all together.
She never came back.
"You have a lot of posters," I said after a little bit longer of uncomfortable silence.
She sat up and looked around, like she had just noticed that her wall was covered in all these posters for movies I had never heard of.
"Oh, yeah, I like a lot of old films, but most of them are unheard of and hard to find, so, you know."
"Yeah," I said, but I didn't really know.
It was just easier to agree.
"Is this the part where I say that I'm sorry you have cancer?"
She smiled, maybe it was a bit sad and maybe it wasn't. I couldn't really tell.
"I guess so."
"Sorry that you have cancer."
"Yeah, me too."
And then we went back to the deafening quiet that had consumed the room and had engulfed us.
"Everyone is treating me differently, like I'm gonna die, and like I mean something now, because I'm supposed to be dying," she laughed but it was more disbelieving than humorous.
"Even you, I mean, would you have ever come to see me if I didn't have cancer?"
No.
"I suppose not," which was really just a nice way of saying no, I would not have even considered hanging out with you if you had not been diagnosed with a disease and my mum had not made me.
"See?"
And I did see.
I didn't really know why Emily had told me something that seemed kind of personal.
So instead I shrugged.
"Yeah, that's probably kinda annoying."
And once again there was silence.
I felt like I had to break it, after all my one job had been to cheer up this girl who was sick.
"What's this movie about?" I asked pointing to a black and white poster where a man looked at the woman like she was the only one there.
"That one's about a man and woman deeply in love."
"Aren't they all?"
Because that's all movies are really about anymore.
"I guess so, but this one's really good. It's not really cheesy and it means something more than just kisses in the rain and red fucking roses. It's my favorite movie, but I've only seen it once, I can't find it anywhere, not even online."
"That's cool, though."
"Yeah, it is."
And once again there was silence and my immediate thought was that for someone who was supposed to be cheering someone up, I was really shit.
"It's so different now. Everyone's being so annoying."
"Like the girl who says everything happens for a reason?" I asked.
"Yes!"
"And the guy who tells you to stay strong?"
"Him too!"
"And the teachers who tell you stories about how they knew someone who believed and is now healthy and that you can be just like them?"
"Especially them!"
"Just tell them to fuck off," I said like it was the easiest thing in the world.
"It's not exactly that easy Naomi."
"Then just play dead."
"What?"
"Here, act like an annoying person."
And so she did.
"Hey, Emily, I believe in you," she said in a higher pitched voice and she fanned her hands at her eyes as if to dry her tears.
I simply slid out of the chair and landed on the floor, not moving, arms to the side, eyes unblinking, mouth slightly open.
And she laughed again, the melodious sound filling the room.
After a bit she quieted down.
"You want to know the funny thing?"
"Sure." Because I did want to know the funny thing.
"I don't feel like I'm dying," she said quietly and the moment was suddenly serious.
"Maybe, you're not."
"I'm supposed to be. That's what the doctors say."
"Well fuck the doctors."
And she laughed again, but I'm not really sure if she meant it.
A little while later I left.
And that was the second Wednesday in October in which I better acquainted myself with one Emily Fitch.
News of her cancer spread like wildfire.
And the kids at school still seemed overly sad and I noticed that Emily always seemed a bit annoyed, especially when people like Amanda Horite came up to her with tears streaming down her face and told her that it should have been her instead of Emily. Funny thing is, Amanda had spoken to Emily maybe three times before, and their conversations probably consisted of, "Hey can I borrow a pencil?" and "Sure."
I didn't visit Emily again until Monday, when Cook sat next to me on the bus and asked me if I was coming over after school like I almost always did.
I would have said yes, but then we passed the Fitch residence, and I watched as the door opened and Jenna Fitch tightly hugged Emily and she had tears streaming down her face.
"No, sorry man, I think I have plans."
"Okay, that's cool."
I didn't really want to visit Emily, but I felt like she had shared too many personal things for it to just be a one-time thing.
So classes passed as usual. Teachers taught things that weren't really that important and kids were teased and assignments were given.
And it kinda felt like maybe the school hadn't gotten the memo either. Why is everything like usual? Shouldn't things be different?
I sat on the bus quietly, watching the outside world speed past and the kids screamed and laughed and threw things and the bus driver yelled and told them to knock it off, he threatened to, and I quote, "Turn this fuc-freaking bus around!"
The kids didn't stop and the bus driver did not turn the bus around.
I got off at the stop by my house and walked the blocks to Emily's house, where her family was probably crying and engaged in a tight group hug or something.
They weren't.
Instead of that, Jenna gave me a tight hug and then left to hug her husband, and they were still crying and I wondered if it was possible to cry yourself out.
Emily was still in her room and this time she was in the same chair I had sat in and she was reading something, but she seemed bored.
There were still flowers, but most were dying, just like she was supposed to be, and the cards were not neatly stacked on her wooden dresser.
"Hi."
She looked up, almost surprised.
I wasn't sure if she was excited to see me and if she didn't care at all, but I think that that's how it was supposed to be.
"Hi Naomi. What are you doing here?"
I could tell her that she had told me a lot and I felt I had to return. I could tell her that she seemed like she needed a friend, even though she had plenty.
I instead decided to tease her.
"I thought you'd miss me significantly and crave my presence desperately."
It worked. She laughed and seemed to accept that.
"Alright, please, grace me with your presence."
And she eagerly put down the book by tossing it on to her bed, already forgotten.
"You're putting way too much presence on me."
"Oh, am I?"
And in a way there was truth to that. There was pressure. I was supposed to be something happy, something to distract her I guess.
And soon the silence settled over us again, the same uncomfortable, unbearable one.
I stood awkwardly, kinda just looking around at all those posters than were taped heavily to the otherwise perfectly white wall.
"Can I guess what the movies are about?" I asked after a little bit longer of the silence.
She looked a bit caught off guard, but nodded all the same.
I walked over to a brightly colored poster where a man looked straight ahead, looking right at whoever looked at the poster.
"Okay, well this one is obviously about a guy who has a bad case of constipation, and you can even see the pain in his eyes. The whole movie is about him trying to take a shit, and in the end, he just sits on the toilet and cries."
She laughed and I really thought that I could get used to hearing such a beautiful sound.
"And that one?" She pointed at a bright green poster, where a cartoon dog looked to the side.
"Well the dog's obviously a robot sent from aliens in space to try to kill everyone. He just barks and wags his tail, but he's actually a classified, stone cold killer."
"How does it end?" She laughs.
"He learns to love."
She smiled.
"What about that one?"
This time there was a woman who held an umbrella over her head.
"This one is about a woman named Stupid Sally. The movie's like 30 seconds. Basically, there's a piano falling, and Stupid Sally is using an umbrella to try and protect herself instead of movie. In the end she gets crushed, but she's alright."
And we did this again and again until there were no more posters, and she was laughing so hard tears streamed from her eyes.
And I thought to myself that maybe I wasn't so bad at cheering her up.
"Everyone is so focused on the fact that I'm sick, and that's all they remind me of," she said quietly and once again the moment became serious and the laughing was gone.
I still wasn't really sure why she shared so much about herself, but I concluded that Emily Fitch must be a pretty open person.
And I didn't really know what to say. What do you say?
Maybe I was supposed to tell her that she would be fine and maybe I wasn't.
So I didn't. Instead I stood there like a twat and I listened, because that's what I've always been best at.
And I left a bit later, when it felt appropriate to.
As I walked home I wondered if she really was sick. A sick person should look sick, I guess.
Maybe they should be too skinny and have hands too cold. Maybe they should have hair falling out and be coughing up blood.
But she wasn't any of those things and none of those things were happening to her. So how could she really been sick when this Emily Fitch looks exactly like the Emily Fitch from five months ago that sat ahead of me in science and would ask if I had a pen to borrow? I usually didn't.
But this Emily doesn't really seem too different. She looks a bit sadder maybe, but maybe most people look kind of sad.
She was well enough to laugh and smile and ask important questions and do well in school and maintain lots of friends, so how could she be sick?
It really wasn't fair I guess, but it never really is fair, whether it's Emily Fitch, or an old man in Australia, it's never fair how these things work out.
But if she doesn't seem sick, then maybe she's not dying. And if she's not going to die than her parents should stop crying and Amanda Horite should stop pretending to care and mum should stop telling me she's sorry when it was never her fault to begin with.
People should stop giving Emily flowers and cards because she will be fine.
And that is what I choose to believe because I know it in my heart to be true.
I didn't visit Emily the next day or the day after that.
I went to Cook's house like I did before everyone started to care about Emily.
We sat on the couch and we watched shitty movies on a shitty small TV. His younger brother, Paddy would sit between us and his mum would be passed out somewhere. And when Paddy got bored he would leave and Cook and I would talk about fuck all because that's just what we did.
I didn't really think too much about Emily Fitch until Cook mentioned her on Thursday.
"Do you think that she'll be okay?" He asked in a blunt, yet somehow caring way that Cook can ask things in.
And I knew immediately whom he was talking about.
"Yes, I think she will be fine."
I said this with no hesitation because it was what I believed.
And he seemed to accept that and he turned back to the TV and I watched as fake blood squirted from a bad guy as the main character shot him.
I wondered if Emily would like a movie like this and I quickly came up with my answer.
No, she would not.
And it was a fair judgment from what I had learned to be true about her.
She would not like a movie that probably had a budget of less than $5,000.
And I couldn't really blame her.
I didn't really know if I was supposed to visit her again. My mum wasn't making me. She wasn't really a friend of mine. She probably had a lot more people who would be fine taking over my position.
But I liked spending time with her I guess, even if I had only spent a little bit with her, and we spent most of that in an uncomfortable silence.
I decided that maybe I would go see her soon.
If that's what she wanted.
So I didn't visit her on or Saturday, and not on Sunday when I sat at my desk trying to answer last minute questions about history that I didn't really care about.
But I never really cared about them.
Monday was the day I decided, and part of me thought that it was a little unfair of me to just decide when I would come over, that I wouldn't let her know or ask if she wanted me too.
Part of me thought that was really selfish, to impose myself on a girl with cancer.
The other part of me didn't really care because I wanted to see her, to hell with being a selfish fuck.
I went with the other part of me.
So on Monday I found myself at the bright red door again and Mrs. Fitch opened the door, but she wasn't crying this time, and I realized that maybe that meant that Emily would be fine.
Or maybe she had accepted something no one should have to accept.
I knew it was the first thing though, because Emily would be fine because I knew it.
She gave me another long hug and neighbors who saw us might think that she had known me since I was born, when in fact I had seen her two times now.
Emily was in her room again and this time she didn't sit in the chair and she didn't sit on her bed.
She was on the floor, but she wasn't reading. Instead, she was on her computer.
"Hey."
She looked up at me and smiled, and once again I didn't know if it was completely happy.
"How's it going?" I asked because I thought it was a pretty normal and easy thing to ask.
"Honestly?"
"You can lie if you want to," I said taking off my green army jacket that I always seemed to wear.
"Oh, in that case I'm great," she said with a big fake smile that you show your grandmother at Thanksgiving when you eat her food and it's awful, but you can't tell her that it tastes of cat piss, so instead you give her that smile and lie.
"That's cool, I think."
Because I wasn't really sure what to say, but I guess I wasn't ever really sure what to say.
"What are you doing?" I asked sitting down next to her.
"Trying to find a movie that I love."
"Which one?"
"The one with Stupid Sally," she said, smiling. She looked down at my lips for a brief second, but when I blinked she was back to looking me in the eyes.
"Any luck?"
"None."
"Where did you even see these things in the first place?"
"There was this great old movie theater about 20 minutes from here and they would play all these old movies and I would go see them all the time. They closed down a few years ago, and I can't find any of the movies. I got a bunch of their posters when they closed, but no movies."
"That sucks," I said simply because there was no other way to put it.
"Yeah."
And the silence was beginning to become a constant theme.
"You really need to develop a better schedule," she said after a while.
"What?" I wasn't entirely sure what she was talking about.
"This is the third time that you have come to visit me. You just come randomly. You need a schedule."
"Okay…"
"Unless you don't want to see me anymore. Because, that's okay, you don't have to. Don't do this because you feel bad for me."
"I do want to visit you."
Because I did.
"Alright, so what if you come on Wednesdays."
"Okay."
"Alright."
And we were quiet once again.
I didn't really know why this whole thing was a big deal. She hadn't even started chemotherapy. It didn't seem real, so I chose to ignore the fact that she was sick all together.
I didn't know why Cook asked me if she would be okay when it had been less than a month since she was diagnosed. I didn't know why everyone in the school suddenly seemed to be ready for a funeral when she was fine.
"Why do you like that movie so much? The love story one," I asked because I couldn't take the silence anymore.
"I don't know. I just like how I feel when I watch it."
I would have asked her how it made her feel, but that felt too personal, even though I had concluded that Emily Fitch was a very open person.
So I just put my jacket on the floor and she grabbed her computer.
"Here let me try."
"Okay…"
She gave me a strange look.
I grabbed the laptop and googled, Stupid Sally.
Nothing came up except some odd shit that wasn't of any importance.
She laughed though, so it worked.
"Damn it. I really thought I had it."
"So close."
And that's how we continued. Silence would settle and then I would ask her something, sometimes it was stupid and sometimes it wasn't.
And then I walked home.
The wind still blew and I hugged my army jacket tighter.
The squirrels still jumped and did whatever the fuck squirrels did and the leaves still coated the ground and everything was still the same.
Emily was still the same and I was still the same and the squirrels were still the same and so were the trees and all their hundreds of leaves that abandoned them.
Nothing had fucking changed. Was it supposed to?
When I was little and the lady who worked the cash register got cancer, nothing really changed. The apples weren't bitter now, the chips weren't more expensive, and they didn't stop selling ice cream in large tubs.
Nothing changed. Shouldn't it have changed?
I didn't know, but I felt like it should have meant something more to the world than it did.
That night when I pulled back my comforter and climbed in I thought of Emily.
I seemed to be doing that a lot lately.
