"We used to talk about the future all the time. I mean, at the time, the past was only about seven years long, and we didn't really remember the first three years so we didn't have a choice to look to the future. You were so hell-bent on becoming a musician and performing on stage all the time, but you'd never even sat yourself at a piano.

But then again, I myself had never flown or saved the world, and yet I still wanted nothing more than to become a super hero."

"Laura, watch out! He's gonna get ya! Woosh, woosh" Ross runs around the yard, tucking and rolling under the swing set and pushing Laura off her bench to the ground.

"Hey! I'm trying to read!" Laura says, waving her book in Ross's face. "You're not really a super hero you know that?"

"Maybe not yet!" Ross retorts, standing up and wiping the grass and dirt from his knees. "But just you wait, some day when I am one, you're really gonna need saving and I won't even come!"

Laura stands up and returns to her spot on the bench. "Well, lucky for me I won't even need saving. Musicians don't get hurt, they can do anything. I'm going to live in a big house with a prince and play music everyday, and all you'll be doing is flying around in your little tights."

"Ok, but that's the future. What about now?" And with that, Ross grabs Laura's book right from her tiny hands and continues running around the yard. "Haha! Catch me if you can!"

Even though Laura tries to act mad, she can't hide her giggle, and neither can Ross, even though "boys don't giggle."

"I miss those days, the ones where we could just play and not care about anything. We were so damn eager to grow up but I would give anything to get them back. Or to just relive them.

We were told to live in the moment but all we did was think about the future.

That is, until the bad thing happened, and all suddenly, the future was way too painful to think about, and we only focused on the present."

"Well, Laura, we have your test results," the doctor says while walking in the room and shutting the door behind him. He sits down next to Laura and her mother, looking Laura right in the eye. "I'm afraid you have a type of blood cancer called leukemia" At this point, he switches his attention to Laura's mother. "There are several treatment options, but with the time this has been left untreated, none have a very high survival rate. I understand that you came in as soon as you thought something was wrong, but this type of cancer is a very dangerous one, and even if we had caught it the day the mutated cell arose, it's very tricky to treat. We'll start the chemo therapy on Tuesday and go from there? Does that sound good?"

But Laura had zoned out. She stares at the linoleum floor and wishes it would swallow her up. In it, she can see her reflection, but it's different. It's not the Laura she had seen a thousand times before, with the bright smile and brighter future. Now she was Laura, the girl with cancer. She tried to see herself ten years down the road, on stage behind her piano, looking out at a sea of people who all came to see her, but the more she tried, the harder it was to see.

"Laura, I know things seem really bad right now, but I bet once you start treatment things will start looking up." Ross is on the phone with Laura later that night. She's just told him the news. "You're strong, I know you can beat this," he continues, almost more for his own sake than for hers. He can't stand the idea of losing his best friend of almost ten years. He'd gotten over his dream of heroism and moved onto a new one. One that included Laura.

"But Ross, you didn't hear the doctor! It doesn't matter how strong I am, the cancer's stronger. Ross what if this is it?" He cringes and bites his lip, but it doesn't matter. The tears start to flow anyway.

"Well then, we sure as hell gotta make the most of it, don't we?"

"And we did. Everyday you didn't have chemo, or weren't feeling completely run-down, we were out living life to the fullest.

It started with the impromptu trips to the beach, and the sleep-overs your mom didn't know about, where we would stay up till four playing games and watching movies and playing music.

It continued with going to every single concert that came to the area, and into the trip to Ireland, a place you'd always wanted to see.

But then things got worse. The rare over night hospital trips came more frequently, and lasted longer than just two days. Our biggest trips we made after that were to the park, and even that didn't happen often at all.

We were making arrangements for you to receive home treatment when things got even worse, In those weeks, we only talked about the past."

"Remember that time we went on the field trip to the museum, and we didn't realize it was time to leave so everyone was looking for us for an hour?" Ross says with a smile. He's sitting next to Laura with his feet up on her hospital bed with a book in his lap pretending to be doing homework.

"Or what about the time you convinced me it would be a good idea to leave school during free period and get frozen yogurt, but then when we tried to get back into school, all the doors were locked, and we had to skip the whole rest of the day? We got in so much trouble!" Laura laughs, remembering that day clearly.

"Laura, we got a warning," Ross starts, "it wasn't that bad."

"Well for me, if a teacher is disappointed in you, it's pretty bad." Ross just chuckles and shakes his head.

"I love you Laura." Ross says, not even thinking about it. Though he'd never said it out right like that before, it was so natural.

"I love you too."

"But that night, things got really bad. Even worse than before. That was when they started calling every one in your family, and the words, "by morning" and "final goodbyes" were in everyone's mouth.

You were scared.

And in those last few hours, we didn't discuss the past, and we didn't discuss the present.

We had to discuss the future again. Your future, and mine, which wouldn't include each other."

"Promise me you won't forget me?" Laura whispers through her tears.

"Are you crazy? Laura, you're my best friend, you always will be, forgetting you would be like forgetting how to breathe. You're a part of me." He replies, clutching her hands in his.

"Well can you promise me something else?"

"Of course Laura. Anything."

"Promise me you'll move on. Ok? You'll mourn for me and you'll slowly move on. You'll go to college and fulfill your dreams and fall in love and live your life to the fullest, just like you've helped me to do."

"I promise Laura."

And then it's quiet. Quiet except for the sobs Laura is trying to choke back.

"It'll be ok. You're going to fall asleep, and when you wake up all this will be over. You won't be in pain, or tired all the time. You'll forget what it feels like to be scared or worried or sick at all. Things will be better like this. It's ok to fall asleep. It's ok to let go. Really, I won't be mad, none of us will be. It's ok."

Laura nods, and although her tears continue, she relaxes slightly. Ross leans down to kiss her forehead, and as he pulls back, her eyes slip shut. Pretty soon, the grasp she had had on his hands fades to nothing, and the rhythmic beeping from the monitor slows to a solid noise.

"It's ok."

"So you never got to be a musician. You never got to spend every night playing in front of your adoring fans. But then, I didn't get to be a super hero either. I couldn't save you."