I hate my life with burning intensity. Like every sixteen year old, I know. But I like to think my hate is special.

I don't particularly hate any person in my life. My family is, well they're fine for the most part. I used to have friends, but every time they spoke a word, their sincerity was always in doubt because who acts normal with a cancer kid. I don't hate them, though.

My hate is directed towards my life, and why I hate it is because my body is trying to kill me. Every cancer PSA is either trying to get you to give money to foundations that give less than they lead you to believe or it's trying to portray us cancer kids as the same as everyone else.

That's bullshit, but it's always nice to imagine.

I hate how I have scars that somehow cross over my entire body like ropes. I don't know how I got half of them. They just keep appearing. With every dialysis another one appears in a place randomly. The doctors say bruising is normal except I never bruise. I scar. I know they're worried about the scarring. I asked one of my nurses about it once only to be greeted with an ostensibly reassuring pat on the head. It ended up feeling like I was being treated like a toddler who was still scared of needles. You can't be scared of needles when you've had them stuck in you in every nook and cranny your body has, most unknown to even you.

That's another thing I hate. Being treated like I'm not sixteen years old but instead like I'm six. I've had my chart say I was six once. If you were curious, I was twelve at the time and experiencing my third relapse. At that point, I was falling, but I still remember they sent that saccharine nurse to my bedside with a lollipop and sweet whispers only to be slapped by an irritable seventh grader. At least, I would've been a seventh grader if I went to school.

School is a foreign country where I can't even begin to comprehend the language. The girls are more vain than me, the boys more fake than margarine with the teachers giving up on those who can't keep up while illusioning the superintendent by slowing down the pace of the class to an insufferable crawl. It only makes the smart kids hate you with a burning passion since you're somehow in the highest class despite having only four years of actual schooling.

The movies make it out like high school is a rumor mill, but nobody dares to crack a joke about any illness with a cancer kid right next to them. No whispers trail me in shame; no one speaks to me for fear of offense. I wish someone would call me a bitch or a fag or something to be honest. That kid would probably be expelled though.

The teachers all treat me like I'm an antique china doll. I don't have to do homework or take tests. I'll always pass. I don't say anything during class. I like eyeing the other kids instead. There's this one cute girl, Delilah, who works furiously. She's four foot four precisely. That's a beautiful height. A boy sits next to me with the most splendid eyes. A dark chartreuse while his lashes curl like a ribbon's. It's not just his eyes. His mouth also has this habit of puckering like a child's when he's lying. His cheeks have a cinnamon tint to it while the rest of his skin is a pale, dusty color. I love his face, and I also notice how his wonderful eyes turn to a blueberry mash once he spots Delilah.

I love faces in general. The curve of the nose, the blunt plateau of the brow; whenever I meet someone, I'll stare at it before even glancing in any other direction.

The teacher's faces let me predict which ones would let me skip class and which ones would try and make me pay attention. Mrs. Golder is this thirty something psychology teacher who pretends she 'gets' us teenagers. Her face is sharply swooped with no room between her upper lip and the blunt hook of her nose. Still, she paints her face with a foundation that's just a touch too dark.

"Now, Kate, do you know the answer?"

Everyone's head swivels my way. Twenty two pairs of eyes look at me expectantly. I open my mouth only for nothing to come out. I hear a whisper, then a slap.

"She's got cancer, dude!"

"She's incompetent, though. Why is she in this class?"

They're not wrong. Mrs. Golder tries, vainly, to silence them. Then she raises her voice, gives me an apologetic look, and tells the class the answer herself. Something about baby monkeys.

The school day ends on Mrs. Golder saying how I need to listen in her class.

I remember when Anna was born. My first memory was the day after it. I just had the cord blood pumped into me, and was recovering in the hospital bed. Mom brought her over to me in her own hospital gown. She had specially requested it match mine. Anna screamed when I looked at her face, but looking at the ugly cries made me happy in some subconscious way. Someone else was suffering alongside me, though in retrospect, the thought was unfair to Mom. She seemed to take my suffering personally. She still does.

Anna never cried once we brought her home. We were in the hospital for another day, and we came home to an exhausted house. Floorboards creaked, faucets leaked out drips of water, and Dad was at the center of it all with a relieved smile.

We were like a perfect family.

Jesse wasn't there. Dad was home to watch over him. He was four and was already starting to carve out our parents' image of him. Isn't it funny how we somehow formed a complete picture while missing a part of the puzzle. We were a perfect family without a piece of reality. But Jesse was always the one that madd trouble. I don't think he liked it, but he did it. There was no spot for him in the board, so he threw his head back and made his own island. Perseverance had never been his forte. I respect his irreverence with calculated distance.

The hospital has become an integral part of my life. I'm in it for ten hours every week for my dialysis. Hooking me up to the machine makes me feel like crap; the actual process isn't much better. But I am asleep for most of it. I can't do much else.

I always feel anemic while my blood gets clean, and my nurses don't help. They're different every time, and most never bother to learn my name. I don't blame them, but; actually, yes, I blame them for it. They chose this caretaker profession, so they better do it well.

Fuck them, am I right?

I can be bitter. I love the catharsis in the simple act of feeling spite. I hate the aftermath of guilt. Mom has this way of looking at you and reading your mind: be a good child, Kate. You are the good one.

Jesse is off in his own personal hell with his endless visits to his girlfriend while still somehow spending most of his day in the house, holed up in his hovel of a room. Not that I would ever say that aloud. Mom would look at me and shake her head while muttering some excuse for Jesse. She only does it because she knows it's her and Dad's fault he's like that. They forget about him so often.

Anna's a mile away from everyone off in her own, no doubt monologuing about the travesties of character. Her face is always neutral while the dip in her brow is almost nonexistent. Her face is almost perfect with how wonderfully it embodies everything and nothing at the same moment.

She'll absentmindedly write something down on a piece of loose paper without ever noticing. She writes more words than she says. I have a binder full of all those scribblings. I'll give them to her once I leave for college. I thought that at the time I started. I'm not making it to college, but the habit sticks. Opening it up, one would see the way Anna called Mom and Dad "Sara" and "Brian". I'll never bring it up, knowing my inability to speak my mind, but I always have it stored in the back of my mind when Anna speaks with that condescending inflection that sneaks its way into everything she says. I sound like her, don't I?

"I need to watch my show. Sorry, Anna."

I said that to her when we were younger. I had disinterested in everyone around me then. Certain I was going to die so what did it matter. Anna was going to a hockey game, and Mom had asked me whether or not I was going. Jake was going to propose to Kelly that night. I don't even remember what show it was that had caught my attention. It had been so long.

Anna quit hockey after that tournament, and I didn't find out until Jesse told me a year after it had happened.

She still keeps all of her equipment under her bed. It keeps her old dolls company.

Dad has this way of bottling everything up until he starts venting in front of the bathroom mirror when he thinks everyone is asleep. He does it quietly as to not wake anyone, but he does it at least once a week. He'll stand there and soliloquy about his work, about everything.

"Today Marty got a call for a cat in a tree, and the woman was a sweet old lady. She told us all about how her cat had just had kittens. She let Darryl adopt a little grey one. He named it Misty and gave her to his niece.

We had a call for a fire in an entire neighborhood. We thought it was abandoned, and we didn't hear anyone, so we never bothered to look inside. We had another call on the line and couldn't afford to spend too much time on this one. I hosed the fire out, and we sped off, leaving Eileen and Rob to clean it up a little. But Eileen found a burnt body. It was a little baby. Even though the little tufts on his head were charred, it looked a lot like how Anna looked when she was a baby. She had that stoic silence. She never cried, and we thought she was a stillborn for a moment when she didn't squabble once outside.

Sara doesn't listen to me much. She thinks she knows best for everyone. But sometimes, I feel like she just tunnel visions everyone out. I don't know what she's thinking anymore. I can only guess."

He sighs and looks at his reflection in the eye. He doesn't see me right behind him, a wisp of a shadow just barely visible in the dark of the parlor.

Dad turns away from the mirror, flicks the light switch, and goes back upstairs to where Mom is.

The next day, it's just like any other. Still, we're not much a well-oiled machine, more like a cobra ready to strike at any notice. I'm the prey in the metaphor. I'm pretty bad at metaphors.

"Pass me the cereal."

Dad passes it to me and goes back to reading through the mail.

"Where's Jesse?"

Dad looks up at my question for a moment. He has a surprised look on his face. He knows I never talk to Jesse. I can almost see his question of why I care about Jesse. The answer feels distant or us but is obvious in retrospect.

"Off at Edith's home."

Mom puts down a plate of eggs for herself and Anna. Her eyes are always fatigued with black lacing her eyes. She never has very good sleep. Dad will talk about that sometimes, while speaking to the mirror.

"Can you please pass me the cereal, Kate?"

Anna takes the cereal without an answer from me.

"Thank you."

"Your welcome."

We don't make eye contact during the entire exchange.

We eat in silence. There's nothing to talk about with each other. Mom only wants to talk about me, but that makes her feel guilty about leaving Anna out. Dad just wants everything to be normal, but he doesn't get that normal will never happen, not with us. Anna doesn't want to talk. Jesse isn't even here. And I can't help but think that this is all my fault.