"Somewhere"
"Are you scared?" I whispered to him, clenching my jaw directly after the words came out, fearing that a sob would slip through my lips. I looked intently at him, willing him to make eye contact with me. To just look at me once, let my eyes sink into his soft brown ones.
"Of what," He questioned, "scared of being sick, or scared of dying?"
"You can't think like-"
"Don't. Please, Patricia, I don't need the pep-talk from you too. I've heard it from everyone; My mom, my dad, the doctors... They all tell me that I have to keep my head up, look at the situation optimistically. But fuck that, Patricia, fuck that. How am I supposed to shed any good light on this? I'm gonna die. There's nothing to stop it, it seems nearly impossible to even slow it, so why the hell should I smile and act like I'm not becoming a hopeless corpse more and more each day?"
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I remember the day he told me... He had kept it from me for so long. "Waiting for the right moment" he had called it. When's the right moment to tell someone you're dying and there's absolutely nothing they could do about it and they just have to accept that in less than two months, they would no longer be part of your life? I guess I understand what Eddie had been trying to do. He didn't want me to look at him differently, treat him differently... He didn't want me looking at him with pity in my eyes, to only see the boy who was falling apart at the seams. He wanted me to be my regular old self and to see him as regular old healthy Eddie... To be quite honest, that sounded very nice right now.
Xxxxxxxxxxx
"Are you sure there's no treatments they can do?"
"Patricia, you have to understand how rare this is. They have no solution to it. They offered to put me on trials for experimental drugs, but... I'm not a damn science experiment. I'm a 17 year old kid who got dealt a bad hand in life and was forced to face the consequences. I don't want to go through all that, Patricia." He explained, getting louder with each word he spoke. Frustration was written all over his face and he let out a sigh of exasperation, shoving his head down on his knees and placing his hands atop his head. I looked at him pursing my lips. I was biting back tears, not from his yelling, but from his confession in general. I focused my eyes on the dusty wood floor of his room, following the lines between each plank. I did this until I realized that I had limited time left to look at Eddie, so I shifted my eyes to him.
"You don't care that you could extend your life, even a little bit, by doing the treatments?" I asked timidly, not wanting to upset him again.
"I would spend my days in pain. Yes, I would get extra time, but it would be spent miserably. That might be selfish, but the way I look at it, it gives you less time to become attached to me anyway." He said with a shrug.
"Too late..." I whispered, tears threatening to spill over once more.
Xxxxxxxxxxx
I watched his cracked lips breathing in and out gently and listened to the quiet wheeze that accompanied each breath. It took so much effort to do one basic task. The constant beep of his heart monitor continued, my brain dreading the moment that those short beeps would turn into one long one.
"What are you thinking about, Yacker?" I heard him ask. It didn't sound like him though; I mean, it did... Just a very weak and old version of himself. It wasn't my Eddie, but at the same time it was.
"Nothing in particular." I said nonchalantly and moved a hand from my armrest to his thin hair, stroking the blonde hair that had managed to hang on. "Do you need anything?"
"A kiss would be fantastic." He said with a slight smile, looking up at me. I stared into those deep brown eyes and saw the boy I had grown to love more than anyone staring back at me.
"A kiss, eh?" I teased. He nodded weakly, though winced like the movement hurt him in some way. I leaned forward and kissed his hollow cheek softly. "Are you happy now?"
"You know what I meant," He whined, puckering his lips towards me. I laughed lightly and leaned down to his lips, pressing mine to his. Over the course of his sickness, his lips had grown very dry and cracked all the time. He tasted like medication being concealed by orange juice and though it sounded repulsive, I didn't mind one bit. I'm not going to lie and say that his lips tasted magnificent as long as I was kissing him, like they say in movies. The truth was that the taste was awful and I couldn't imagine how he dealt with it constantly. Though now that I think about it, the flavor of his lips seemed to be the least of his worries. And it was seemingly low on mine, so when I pulled away I smiled genuinely at him and he smiled back before shutting his eyes slowly.
Xxxxxxxxxxx
"You still haven't exactly answered my question though," I told him, "are you scared of dying?"
Eddie thought for a moment before he spoke, "Yes and no. I'm scared of not knowing. Which technically isn't death. I'm scared that an afterlife is something we say to make ourselves feel better. I'm scared of just... Ceasing to exist. That's a concept I can't wrap my mind around, no matter how much I think about it." He told me truthfully. I could say one thing for sure – The threat of death had made Eddie sound much more wise than he was two weeks ago.
"I think there's an afterlife. Maybe not some world where everything is happiness and no one feels pain... But I think there's something. Somewhere where you go to be born again... A parallel universe." I thought aloud. Eddie nodded, thinking about what I had said.
"Well I'll make you a deal – When I find out what this something is, I'll send you a letter telling you all about it." He said with a slight smile. "When I reach the all elusive "somewhere", I'll make sure to have enough room in my house so that when you get there, I'll be waiting for you, ready to spend my afterlife with you."
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He had been so sentimental that day. So... Un-Eddie. I think it was his way of comforting me. I'd be lying if I said it hadn't worked.
"Eddie?"
"Mmm?"
"I'm... I'm not going to forget you, you realize that? I'm gonna be seventy years old and telling my friends in the nursing home all about my love, whose name was Slimeball, and how I was waiting for his letter that would tell me about the mystical afterlife that was awaiting me. I'll tell them how I was excited to see the new house he promised me, though I knew to expect the house filled with his favorite decorations and none of mine. And when I get there, I'll surely have to redecorate the entire house because it would just be so horribly masculine and American. By the time I'm seventy, I'm sure I'll be a master at knitting so I'll knit blankets for the sofas and add my old little granny knick knacks to the whole place. And then our picture perfect little house would finally be just that, ours." I finished quietly. I had rambled quite a bit and I looked to Eddie sheepishly. He had a large smile on his face, though his eyes remained closed.
"We'll have to discuss the blankets and knick knacks, but that sounds like something I'll look forward to."
"I love you, Eddie." I whispered.
"I love you too, Patricia." He whispered back. I had heard him say the words a thousand times, but I still got a happy flip from my stomach every time I heard them. I kissed his forehead softly and walked out of the room.
I wish I could say I hadn't known. I could lie and say I wasn't expecting it, but from the second I closed that door I knew it would be the last time I would see him. And surely enough, at four o'clock in the morning the next day I got the call from Mr. Sweet. As expected as it was, I cried. I would be heartless if I hadn't cried. I cried for days upon days upon days.
It would have been easier to have never met him. It would have been easier to have no memories of this blonde haired boy who I had poured milk on and teased relentlessly and had fallen in love with. It would have been so much easier. But I would not have given up my memories or my pain for anything. Instead, I mourned my loss and looked ahead to my future. I would live my life with a missing chip off my heart and when the time came, I would go to this "somewhere" and I would knock on the door to our little house and the chip would be put back where it belonged. Until then, I would live and breathe and pray for a letter about "somewhere" that would never come.