Age 11
Mesa, Arizona
Ally knew the news wasn't going to be good.
She could see it in her father's posture, in the way her mother stared at the floor.
Mom has cancer, they said. Stage 3 peritoneal.
The doctors told her she was lucky. That peritoneal cancer is usually only discovered through autopsy. That she should thank her lucky stars that it was found at all.
Her brothers are 10 and 8, old enough to understand what cancer is, but not what it means. They sit on the couch with uncertain eyes and fearful hearts.
Ally herself feels the weight of the world on her shoulders. She loves her mother more than anything. She couldn't bear to lose her mother, not now, not ever.
The doctors set a treatment schedule involving three consecutive rounds of intense chemotherapy.
Ally watches her mother's hair and enthusiasm fade away. Her mother takes a sick leave from her job, and soon is too sick to do what she wants around the house. Her father works overtime, trying to alleviate the hospital bills. Ally is thrust into maturity, learning to cook and clean and keep up the housework that no one else can do.
The Pernix family lives on edge for months, waiting for the world to end. Somehow, it doesn't. The world keeps turning. It turns for a whole year.
Chemo ends. Doctor visits don't. Just one more test, they tell her mother, and we can declare you no evidence of disease. And eleven tests later, they do. Ally's mother is in the clear. She starts growing baby fuzz on her head. Ally feels safe for a whole month. The weight of the world is gone.
Ally turns 12, but is already closer than anyone her age to being an adult. I can do everything but drive, she jokes.
But after a month, her mother goes to a different doctor for a different thing. And Ally ends up on the same couch with her brothers, older now, but still naive.
Because the thing about cancer is that all it takes is one malignant cell in the wrong place. And if you give that one cell the right conditions, it can make more. And if you give it a month, it can infect whole organs.
The weight of the world returns with crushing force. The doctors say that they can fight it. But Ally doesn't have much faith in doctors anymore, not that she lets it show. Instead she bottles it up. She doesn't let anyone see how much it hurts. She cleans the house and keeps her brothers in line and their spirits up. She helps her father out any way she can. She takes everything in stride because somebody has to keep them all together.
Soon, Ally's mother is at the hospital full-time, her job forgotten, her dreams fading. Ally wishes she were four years older, so she could drive herself to the hospital and sit by her bedside. Instead, she has to content herself with phone calls and texts and knowing that her father gets off work in an hour and can take them to go see her.
But it isn't enough.
Time finds Ally at the foot of her mother's bed, crying softly. She can't let her brothers know, and she has to pull herself together before her father gets home. But that day, it's too much. Ally can't stop. She cries until her father comes home. He pulls her into a hug and they cry together.
Ally has never seen her father cry.
But it's not the most intriguing thing that happens on the last day that Ally remembers.
She remembers her father letting go, suddenly angry. She remembers him opening a drawer and pulling out a box.
She remembers him opening it and looking inside.
My mother told me to never use this. She remembers him saying softly. There's only one occasion that you ever should, and it should be the darkest of days.
Ally remembers being confused at his words and even more confused as he throws the box at the wall.
The world ends, and Ally succumbs to the weight of the world.