Thanks to touchofsunshine, Dani, Sophie, WakeMeUpWhenItsYesterday, FishFace4Life, omgitskristen, gallaghergrl, and Torqueo Animadverto for all reviewing! I promise to be consistent with updates on this one because unlike Young Westchester, I have the ending for this written out.

I arrive at the hospital at 10 AM. Like Massie said, she's in a suite now. It has green carpeting and mahogany wood paneling. There are several windows and a little sitting area in her room, as well as a nicely sized TV. A bathroom's next to her considerably softer bed. She seems happier. I walk into her room, her parents greet me and then leave.

"They understand that I want privacy while you're here," she says.

"Do they know what we're talking about?" I ask.

"No."

"Okay."

"My laptop's by the window, could you get it? You'll be typing my stories on it." She points to a colourful laptop case by the window near the couches. I pick it up and bring it to her bed, settling down next to her. We both watch it hum to life.

"The same time I got sick, it got sick," she says, patting the keyboard of her purple Dell. "My dad said he wished we could send me into the shop to get fixed, too." I laugh, and she coughs. Hard.

"Well?" My fingers are poised, waiting to put words on a blank Word document.

"I don't know," she admits. "Should I start with the first boy? Or with the one who made me the happiest? I don't know if going chronologically will make it easier to understand."

"Go with the one who comes to mind first."

She pauses for only a moment. "Okay, today we're talking about Todd Lyons."

Todd Lyons. I knew that kid. He was a sophomore now…he was a little off.

"The first time I saw Todd was in my theatre class when he was a freshie and I was a sophomore. He was adorable. Adorable."

I let my fingers flow over the keys. I let her talk.

"I was captivated by him. I couldn't stop my eyes from wandering over to him. I couldn't gather the guts to talk to him, although I always went with Layne—she was in my class too—whenever she walked over to go talk to him. I actually kind of hated him for awhile because he didn't really acknowledge me and I wanted him to acknowledge me so bad.

"And then one day he talked to me. We were all sitting around, waiting for our teacher to start the class and he turned around, looked straight at me, and said, 'What's my next class?' I froze, because he was actually talking to me. I didn't know what his next class, so I just kind of stared at him, and he was like, 'Oh, sorry! I was just staring off into space.' I said something really stupid like, 'I don't know what your next class is,' but then he said 'Oh! It's Geometry! Thanks for your help.' Then he winked at me and turned around. And I just kept sitting there, because this boy I had been secretly madly in love with for a week had just talked to me.

"Things kept getting better. Maybe a week or so after that, we were playing some kind of game and we all had to link arms and Todd was standing right next to me so I had to link arms with him. And he was all like, 'Yeah, hot stuff, you have to touch me.' It made my day.

"A couple of classes later we were all in one of those rooms in the back of the fine arts hall and I was sitting in one corner of the room and he, Layne, and a couple of other kids were in another corner. They were messing around and I was just watching them and all of the sudden Todd sat down on Layne's lap, clenched his butt cheeks, and starting jumping up and down on her lap. She shrieked and pushed him off and looked up and saw me laughing at her. She waved me over and had Todd do the same thing to me. I shrieked and pushed him off, just like she did. Then he just sat down and rested his legs on me. One of the other kids in the corner was like, 'Are you going to be one of those people who's a parent by age 18?' and Todd said, 'Only with her,' meaning me, and it more than just made my day. It made my week. So I just blurted out, kind of jokingly, 'I love you Todd Lyons.' Luckily, I don't think he took it too seriously.

"But he wasn't totally in my life now, not the way I wanted him to be. I mean, he still talked to me, and one time he picked me up and carried me around the theatre classroom for some reason, but we weren't friends.

"And then…Dumbledore's Army happened."

Dumbledore's Army. I remembered that. Massie Block had an amazing drive.

"Dylan and I were reading My Life is Average one day and there was one about a kid who put up sign-up sheets for Dumbledore's Army. Dylan dared me to do it. And I did—well, we did, really. We posted them all over OCD. And then Dylan had the most ingenious idea ever. We would get Todd to help us put DA sign-up sheets around the school. He agreed. He stopped being that boy I had a crush on and became my—and Dylan's—friend. It was like, mission accomplished, you know? And after he helped us put up all those signs, I gave him a hug. I just did it. I needed one.

"I looked around for more opportunities to hug Todd, but then I remembered how much I hated touchy-feely guys, so I tried not to throw myself all over him. I dunno, though. One time in theatre I was sitting down, talking to Layne and he came over and hugged my head to his waist and told Layne how much he loved me and started rubbing my face. Normally that would freak me out, right? But I liked him too much to push him off of me. I didn't want to push him off of me. I could have stayed that way forever.

"He was just so intuitive, too. Like I got my hair cut for the first time in a while and I came to school but nobody noticed—except for Todd. I went down with Layne to the fine arts wing during lunch for some reason and he was there and he saw my hair and he was like, 'Massie Block, did you get a haircut? It's pretty! Almost as pretty as me.' I was so happy for the rest of the day, just because of one thing he said.

"I love that boy. Love him. Even though everyone else in my theatre class kind of hates him because he got kind of full of himself after awhile, I'll always love Todd Lyons."

She pauses, and turns to look at me. "I think that's it."

"Really?" Todd Lyons only takes up a page and a half. She looks at it and frowns.

"I remember the last time I saw him."

I start typing again.

"It was my last day of school. I was looking visibly sick and my parents were going to pull me out and get me a tutor until I was well enough to go back—or at least that's what they said. They knew I wouldn't be getting better. But anyway, Inez, our housekeeper, had baked a batch of cupcakes for me to bring for my homeroom and I was walking to science, banging the cupcake pan on my knee—bad idea, I ended up bruising later—and I heard Todd say my name. I turned around and smiled at him and he asked me if I had eaten all those cupcakes in the tray by myself. I laughed and he waved goodbye and kept on walking."

"You should tell him," I say. "About—about what's going on. He'd want to see you."

"You're going to be saying that about all of these boys."

"It's true."

"They'll see me when I want them to see me," she snaps.

I exit out of Microsoft Word. "I think we're done for the day."

"No, we're not," she insists, reaching over me to pull Word back up. "I still want to talk."

"About what?"

"Death."

"No."

"Yes. I sit here in this goddamn bed all day and the only people I talk to are Dr. Hope and my parents, and if you even imply the d-word near my mother she'll burst into tears and lock herself in the bathroom. So you'll sit here and listen to me talk about death if I want you to."

Options run through my head. I could tell Massie to screw herself and walk out of the room—for good. I could call the nurse and ask for more painkillers. Or I could sit here like she wants me to and listen to her talk.

But you don't tell dying people to screw themselves, and I know she's kind of doped up already, so I sit and listen.

"I told my dad—because my mom won't listen—that I want to be cremated and fed to the whales in Hawaii," she says. I don't type this. "I don't think they'll do it, though, just because they want some tangible form of me left. Which is stupid. I'm not going to rise out of the grave, am I? When I'm gone, I'm gone."

Massie says this without regret or sadness. I blink at her.

"They're emptying out my entire trust fund, too. They're donating most of it to charities—I got to pick which ones I wanted to donate to, which was cool. The rest of it gets donated to OCD—like, the Massie Block Fashion Design Wing or something like that has already been commissioned."

"How are you so okay with this?"

She's quiet for a long time.

"I've had a long time to accept this," she says. "You're just getting started."