Bella

The guy next to me was staring at me. Or well, glaring at me was more like it.

It was the same guy from the cafeteria. He was sitting with the really skinny girl with the black hair and the blond guy that was wearing cowboy boots. The guy with the oxygen.

The guy with the hands.

I had asked Jessica – this girl that had latched onto me in second period like I was some project that she didn't realize she needed until just then. I ignored her mostly. She was puddle-shallow and mostly talked about herself – about him.

"That's Edward Cullen." She said. "I have first period with him. He and his sister Alice," She pointed to the girl that was straddling the table's bench seat, one skinny leg curled to her chest. "have some sort of thing." She made a motion with her hands like conjuring up the name for this thing was going to take more brain power than its worth. "It makes them cough or something. I don't know." She rolled her eyes. "The blond one is Jasper, Alice's boyfriend. He's a little weird. Like, does war-reenactments-on-the-weekend-weird." She made a noise. "It's like the island of misfit toys over there."

At that point, Edward coughed – a harsh, painful sounding noise – and of course my brain decided that it would be a good idea to stare at him.

And he stared back.

Come on brain. I chanted to myself. Don't look at him like that.

But, my brain had a mind of its own.

He blushed – darkening his pale face in a hue that was a couple shades lighter than his bronze hair - and broke eye contact. And I felt like a complete asshole.

And now he was glaring at me in biology. I felt my face heat up as I felt the lasers of his gaze on my skin, prickling it like I was being poked with a cactus. I glanced out of the corner of my eye at him – and his hard green eyes were staring at me like I was some sort of puzzle he couldn't figure out. Like I frustrated the hell out of him.

I went back to focusing on my drawing in front of me, my hand gliding over the page almost on its own. I was drawing his hand, holding his pencil.

Sometimes, he would drop it and reach for this bottle that had a picture of a milkshake on the front. Sometime it would go to his chest as he tried to clear his throat. Once, he laced them together on the table as a video on the history of genetics played on the PowerPoint.

I liked his hands. They were different. His last digits were wider than the rest of his fingers and he had a splotch of a birthmark that was in the shape of Ireland on one of them. They were dusted in freckles. Different.

He was different. I glanced at his face through my hair at his face. He had a nice jawline and nose. He was a little thin, but he had nice broad shoulders. And an excellent head of dark red hair. As someone who has lost all of her hair three times in her life, I had appreciation for hair.

I glanced at the oxygen around his face – a cannula that sat in his nose, connected to his portable concentrator that hung from the back of his chair. That made him different too. But, I didn't like dwelling on those differences.

I wished I knew what I did to make him so upset at me.

"Heterozygosity is the-,"

I blacked out for a split second and then blinked in confusion as I came to. My pencil was still on the page of my drawing, Mr. Molino further along in his sentence than what I expected. I grimaced at myself when I realized it was a seizure that caused me to space out. Damn stupid brain-

A sudden noise startled me. I jumped, my hand jerking across the page, digging into it and almost causing me to rip it. It took me a second to realize the noise was a cough.

I instinctually looked to my left and found Edward, the hand I was drawing holding a tissue to his mouth as he coughed into it. His shoulders hunched and popped like he was trying to force something up that didn't want to come up.

"Gross." Some obnoxious high schooler said behind us and I fought the urge to twist around and say something rude.

I also fought the urge to run my hand down Edward's back, in-between his shoulder blades – in comfort or help, I wasn't sure – but instead I watched him breathe in and out of the cannula in his nose as he got himself under control. His eyes glanced over to meet mine and he blushed and dropped them to the counter top.

His eyebrows furrowed as he kept his eyes trained on his notes, the tissue wadded in his hands and little coughs still popping his body in the seat.

I bit my lip and looked back down at my drawing. I realized that maybe he was glaring at me because he thought I would treat him like the kid behind us. I stifled a laugh. If he only knew what I've been through. A teensy bit of coughing is like a skip through the meadows.

At the same time, I felt bad. Diseases shouldn't define people, but they did. And when you had a disease that people could see – a difference that marked you as imperfect – then it was all people saw.

Maybe I could introduce myself? I thought. I wasn't looking to make friends this school year, being it was my last year on earth and all, but Edward seemed like the type of person that would be a good friend.

But then - like a cosmic sign sent from the gods – my field of vision was cut with a zig-zaggy, bright white light. Shit. All my muscles on my left side contracted through the partial seizure. I looked down and found my hand trembling on my notebook and I picked it up and put it under the table so Edward couldn't see.

I watched the clock, waiting for the period to end. With an aura, I knew that the partial seizure was just the opening act and that the worst was on its way. When the bell did ring, I jammed everything in my backpack and high-tailed it out of the class so I could get to my truck in time for the main attraction.

"You finish your homework?" Charlie asked as he jammed a chopstick into the container of moo goo gai pan.

"Yep." I said as I nibbled on some Asian-flavored broccoli.

"How many drawings did you do today?"

"Twenty-seven."

"Seizures?"

"Just one and half."

Charlie and I were eating takeout at our dining room set that only sat two. We still had some boxes to unpack still, but for the most part we were completely moved into our new place – this rental house that was built in the sixties. It was kind of cool – we didn't have any neighbors, instead surrounded by green forests. It was definitely an upgrade from our two-bedroom apartment in Olympia.

"How was your first day at school?" He asked.

I shrugged. "It was okay. I met some people."

"That's nice." He nodded, his eyes widening at me. We had the same set of eyes – brown discs that were slideshows of our inner thoughts. His glistened with slight, hesitant excitement. "Anybody worth your time?"

I shrugged again, my mind going to Edward. Suddenly, my takeout box of mixed vegetables seemed really interesting. "I don't know. I don't know if I was to waste the energy, you know?"

That disappointed Charlie. He was hoping that I would meet someone that would make me change my mind about refusing treatments. Someone to make me see that life was worth living again.

But, he didn't have to live a half-life where my brain misfired like a faulty car engine. And he didn't have to live through beating cancer three times only to relapse and start all over. He didn't face five to six seizures a day without medicine or needles in my leg or numbness in my feet.

Life was worth living – if you didn't have a brain tumor ruining it.

I didn't tell him that, though. It sucked having a kid you know was going to bite it from cancer soon. He felt bad enough as it is.

Instead I excused myself from the table. "I'm going to go to UWMC." I announced as I tossed my food container in the trash.

"Jacob?" He guessed.

"Yep."

I went up the stairs to my room. I had covered almost every square inch of walls with pages of sketches and drawings and paintings in my old room.

I only had one up in my new room now – my drawing of Edward's hand holding a pencil. I had taped it a couple of feet over my pillow. Even though it was ruined, I still kind of liked it. It was like it was signed by him, somehow.

I put on my shoes and jacket, grabbed my laptop and my sketchbook and headed out to my elderly truck and drove the familiar route to the large, gray building that sat smack dab in the middle of Seattle, where I - unfortunately - had wasted a lot of my short life. I always cringed when I walked through the automatic doors and was hit in the face with the smell of hospital-grade antiseptic.

It was Movie Monday, though, and I couldn't disappoint my favorite osteosarcoma patient in all of the northwestern United States.

"Bells," Jacob hopped up and down in his vinyl lounger that matched the other twenty that sat in a lazy semi-circle formation in the outpatient chemo clinic that was hooked up to the main hospital. "Guess what?"

I looked at my friend of almost three years now – a tall, Native American with a lovely russet complexion. He had an Orioles ball cap covering his bald head and his arm ended under his elbow, right where cancer claimed his hand and most of his forearm. That's how cancer worked. It claimed pieces – arms, legs, brains – until there wasn't anything left to claim.

"What?" I asked and sat down at the chair the oncology nurses had ready for me, right next to his IV that had chemo dripping into his central line hooked into his chest.

"The annual salmon festival is this weekend." He said and showed me on his phone.

"That sounds ridiculous." I said, my eyes flashing at him and my smile creeping up on my face. "Let's go."

He grinned, his teeth white against his skin. "It looks absolutely random."

"More random than the Seattle nude bicycle races?" I asked and set my laptop on the roll cart in front of his chair.

"No, nothing tops that." He laughed.

I didn't make a bucket list. I didn't want to focus on the fact that I was dying or had a brain tumor or cancer in general, really. My last wish was to have a normal year – go to school, live life, and not think about the time bomb in my head. Jacob, as my best friend in the whole wide world, had decided that should include spontaneous weekend trips so he could bank memories for when I do actually kick the bucket. "I have to have a fire eulogy for you, Bella." He explained. "So, I have to have some fire stories to go with it."

However, his condition made it difficult to do things outside the immediate area. So, we found local absurd, niche festivals and events and went to those.

I looked at my friend as he pulled off his ball cap and rubbed his bald head before replacing it, backwards. If I was going to miss anyone when I crossed to the other side, it was going to be Jacob.

"What are we watching?" He asked and picked up the DVD I had grabbed and then groaned. "Bella, we've already seen 50 First Dates."

"I know." I said as I opened up to a clean page in my sketchbook. "I just like it."

"You just like Drew Barrymore's character." Jacob joked as he got the case open by setting it flat on the table and holding down the little finger nitch with his amputated arm and popping the cover up with his finger. He loaded the disc into the computer.

"Hey, she's beautiful and brain damaged." I said with a grin. "I can relate."

"Beautiful and brain damaged." Jacob squinted. "Why does that sound like a name for a cologne?"

I opened my mouth to respond, but Jake doubled over the pink, mass-produced hospital bucket and noisily vomited the contents of his stomach into it. I put my hand on his shoulder as he spat and wiped his nose. "Gross." He groaned and then glanced up at the chemo bag.

"Chemo's a bitch." I empathized.

"Not even a hot one, either." He set his bucket on the table next to my laptop and started the movie, turning the volume to low so it wouldn't disturb the other cancer patients here to get their weekly dose of chemicals.

There was another reason I chose 50 First Dates. I've seen it a million times and could focus on drawing while it played it in the background.

I started sketching Edward's hands again.

The act of drawing helped keep my misfiring brain from causing me pain – which usually shot down the left side of my body in needles. It also kept my compulsions at bay, keeping me from doing self-destructive behaviors like pulling my hair out or picking at my skin. It had something to do with synapses and the way my electrical processes talked to each other and how my multiple tumors over the years have ruined them and that's all I really knew.

This picture was big and took up the whole page. Edward's hands, laced together as they rested on the table.

"Hands?"

I looked up to Jacob, who had twisted in his seat to watch me draw. He always complimented on how talented I was. But, it wasn't talent. Before I was ten years old, I couldn't even draw a stick figure straight. Practice is what made me good - practice against my own will.

"Yeah," I said as I bit on my lip. "This kid in my class that I sit next to in biology."

Jacob cocked his head. "How's that going by the way?"

I ran through my day in my head – uneventful up until fifth period. "Okay." I managed and shrugged.

"No boyfriends?"

I thought of Edward – his glare at me - and blushed. "No." I scowled. "You know that." I used my finger to start smudging in the lowlights around his knuckles.

"Yeah." He said, his chin on his arm. He sighed. "I wish I could go back to school."

I patted him on the arm again. "You're not missing much."

He made a noise and turned, watching Adam Sandler make his way across the small screen. I watched his eyes go dark.

"What's wrong?" I stopped drawing.

"Did I tell you that they're talking about amputating my leg?"

I dropped my pencil and looked at him, taking in his high cheekbones and brown eyes that were so dark they were almost black. "What?"

His lips rolled into a pout. "Yep, right at the knee." He made a slicing motion across his right leg with his hand, over the black brace he wore around it. "I feel like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. 'They tore my legs off and threw them over there!'" He quoted.

"I'm sorry, Jake." I said, my hand clasping with his.

"Yeah. 'tsucks." He said and tapped his toes on the tile floor. "I wish I could just say 'no' like you. You know? Just be…" He shrugged, his amputated arm coming up. "Done."

"No you don't." I said quickly. "Just because I can't fight my cancer anymore, doesn't mean you can't fight yours."

We lapsed into silence for a moment. I watched Adam Sandler's character try to get Drew Barrymore's character to fall in love with him, only to wake up and do it again because her broken brain reset her at night. I felt my eyebrows furrowed. Again and again and again.

"You can, you know." His eyes flicked to me.

"I can't," I shook my head. "and I won't and I'm not having this conversation." I let go of his hand and went back to my notebook.

"Alright." He said, knowing that I wasn't going to have this fight. Again and again and again. He grinned as he went back to the movie. "It can be your slogan, you know."

"What?" I asked, confused.

"Bella," He turned back to me, his smile wide. "Beautiful and brain damaged."

I grumbled as I made my way down the stairs on a quest for a cup of coffee, my anti-seizure meds and to tell Charlie good morning before he left for the day.

"Hey, Bells." Charlie was in his uniform, leaning against the counter, his coffee cup in one hand and his cell phone in the other – probably scrolling the news.

"Good morning." I muttered and then tripped, my foot and leg numb. Charlie went to catch me, but I got myself before I completely face planted. That would be fun – coming into school with a black eye. Wouldn't be the first time.

"Weakness?" Charlie asked.

"Numbness, actually." I said as I opened the fridge and pulled out the bottle of half n' half.

Charlie cleared his voice. "It snowed last night." He said. "I put chains on your tires, but please be careful."

I looked at my dad as I poured myself a cup of coffee. "Yep. Sounds good."

"Doing anything this weekend with Jacob?"

"The Seattle salmon festival."

Charlie shook his head and sipped his coffee. "You kids find the craziest things, I swear."

"That's the point, Dad." I grinned at him. "The crazier, the better."

He put his cup in the sink. "I'm going to be working a little late tonight to cover for another officer. You okay for dinner on your own?" His eyes flashed with remorse. He hated spending more time at work than he had to, given that I had an expiration date now and all.

"Yep." I said as I fished my daily dose of Dilantin out of its bottle.

I waited until I heard Charlie's cruiser pull out of the driveway before heading back up the stairs to change. While I was on a quest to not let my brain tumor affect me – there were still some things it had a say in. Showering while sitting on my shower chair was one in case I had a seizure.

The intermittent pain in my side was another – this sharp, shooty ache that encased the left side of my body. It felt like I was being pelted with a nail gun, but, like, on the inside. I fixed my hair with one hand and got dressed with one hand made my way back down the stairs, only to take some pain meds and pray that I would be okay by the time I got to school.

I drove to school in my elderly truck, gawking at the snow, which covered everything in a thick, soft blanket of white.

When I pulled in, I had an internal debate – handicap space or not? I had a placard because of my screwed up brain making it difficult to walk. I watched a kid slide on the ice, almost skidding himself into another car and decided that the handicap space would probably be best to save myself from an early demise. For today, at least.

I pulled into the last space, watching a flash of red and black in front of me.

Edward and his sister and friend were playing with snowballs. He had a big smile over his face, which hitched up higher on the right than the left. He was smacked with a snowball right against the side of his head, and I watched his eyes scrunch close with his laugh.

The stopped when the slight girl, Alice, put her hands to her face and coughed. I watched him shake the snow out of his hair before before turning to the blonde guy, his crooked grin still wide and his green eyes flashing.

I killed my engine and picked up my placard and hung it from my rearview mirror. I stomped my left foot to shake the pins and needles out of it and then let myself out of my car.

The ground was slippery. I made a mental note to thank Charlie for putting on the chains later and carefully made my way to the front of the school, my hand gripping my truck. I got to the sidewalk and stepped up.

I happened to look up at the same time I stepped up and locked eyes with Edward's jewel-colored ones. The smile had slipped off his face and his eyebrows were furrowed, like he was concerned over me, even though we hadn't even spoken one word to each other yet.

For a split second – one brief flash – I saw a different future than the one that was written for me. I saw myself standing on the edge of the cliff, the wind whipping through my hair as I watched the ocean below me – a swirling pool of gray and green and blue. I saw the sun setting, a warmth in my chest knowing that I had a thousand sunsets to look forward to.

And I saw Edward next to me.

And in that brief second, a swirl of regret churned in my stomach. It's not too late. A voice said in my head. You can fight it.

But, then I crashed back to earth like the Apollo 13 with a hard reality check in the form a hard spasm in my leg and I blushed. Hard. I raked my hair out of my face, grazing over the scars on my head from my many surgeries.

I tore my eyes away from Edward's and walked towards my first building, knowing the ending to my story was already written.

So, fair warning: this story is going to be sad af. Be ready to cry. Also review. Thanks.