A/N: I don't own RENT and the sad truth of the matter is that i never will. Anyway, if you don't recognize someone, they belong to me. Enjoy the chapter and Review. By the way, i'm still looking for some names.

The night was young and dying. She was the night. At only fifteen she learned she was dying. The doctors said she had time, that although it was a setback, it wasn't a death sentence. At sixteen they told her she'd die in a year. She waited 365 days to die, no such luck. At seventeen she started using drugs. At eighteen she was told to stop getting high because it was draining years off her already expired life. At eighteen and a half drugs were all she lived for. At nineteen she fell in love. At twenty she ran away to die on the streets. At twenty she learned she was pregnant. At twenty one she gave birth, to twins, a boy and a girl. At twenty two she opened up the blood test results, one child healthy, the other dying. At twenty two she learned how serious the disease was. At twenty three she wrote a book. This is the book.

When she woke up her ankle was throbbing and her head was pounding. She glanced at the clock, 3 am. She hoisted herself up off the rocking chair and crashed to her knees. Normally she would fight this, stand up and ignore the pain emanating in her foot. She would stand up and ignore her obvious weakness. But this morning she resigned and accepted it. She crawled into her bedroom and to her private bathroom. She started the water, a hot bath would make her feel better. It usually did.

Just as she started the bath, she had an urge to throw up. She crawled over to the toilet and waited until it came. She hadn't eaten much that day so all that came up was stomach acid which burned her throat. She wouldn't have much of a voice tomorrow. She leaned over the toilet for a few minutes afterwards just in case she hadn't finished. When she was sure that she wouldn't throw up again, she flushed the toilet and pushed herself up to her feet. Her foot throbbed in pain. She ignored it. She grabbed her mouthwash and proceeded to gargle away the nasty taste of bile. After she spit out the mouthwash she took off her clothes, her bath was nearly full of water and bubbles. She didn't remember putting bubble bath in the tub. She didn't question it, she was losing her short term memory.

The water was hot and burned her skin at first. The heat was relaxing and comforting. She was so tired of always being cold.

Chapter 1

My older brother Rafael and I were always close. My mother thought it was cute, that he was like my best friend. She would always tell me that Rafael would scare away all my future boyfriends. She smiled at the thought of me being single for my whole life. It had something to do with keeping her little girl young and innocent. Things didn't work out like that. My father was weary of my relationship with Rafael. My father would always tell my siblings and I about visions he would have. Her said that he once saw our mother in a dream, her black hair blowing in the wind.

"Sure, enough. The very next day I saw her and her hair blowing in the wind. She stepped off her motorcycle and gave me the biggest grin." He would smile from cheek to cheek as he said this even after they divorced.

When I asked my father about his dislike of me and Rafael's relationship he told me of a vision he had when I was born. He squirmed in his seat as he told me this, I was only about six. He didn't know how to phrase it so I could understand. He basically told me that I would be a victim of rape and incest. As it turned out, he was right. But it wasn't Rafael. When he told me this, I didn't understand no matter how he dumbed it up.

"But papa, I like playing with Raffe. He's fun." My father sent me to my room so I could think about what I had done. Really, he needed time to think and wanted me gone from his sight. He never again questioned my bond with Raffe.

Raffe always protected me. When our parents were fighting, he would pick me up and take me to his room and we'd dance to the Beatles. When our mother was crying after our father finally left, he'd scoop me up into his arms and we'd listen to the words of John Lennon. When our sister Lucy, the middle child, was in the hospital with appendicitis, he taught me how to roller blade. And when I fell and started crying so loud that little old ladies were adjusting their hearing aid to a lower volume, he rushed me to the emergency room. I had broken my arm and as a result my parents grounded him for the whole summer. He never let me apologize when he missed Cathy McGibbs summer swim party, or his best friend Tony's camping trip. Rafael was a good person, a great man, and the best brother ever.

I was never a controllable kid. Raffe was the only one in our family to get me to do anything. It was because I respected him, more so than my bickering parents and my bossy sister. When I entered kindergarten I was determined to be the best student, only I wasn't counting on falling prey to peer pressure. I was such a wild kid, wanting to live a good full life that when someone dared me to do something, I did it. By the end of third grade, I had done some pretty despicable acts and as a result the principal had asked me to not return the following year. I was without a school by the time my mother picked me up. She stayed to talk to my principal and I remember looking into the window from the outside and seeing my mother get down on her knees and beg the school to take me back. I don't remember much after that, I was probably distracted by a toy or magazine. My mother was so disappointed in me. So disappointed that I was lectured the whole way home, in Spanish, about responsibility and respect. She was so disappointed in me that she sent me to a Catholic girls boarding school for the rest of my education.

I learned quickly which rules I could break, and those that I shouldn't unless I wanted to get expelled. Well, I wanted to get expelled so I pushed the limits. I wanted to go home, I wanted to cry in my mother's arms and tell her how sorry I was, I wanted to see my father again. I wanted to get Raffe to beat up mean Sister Catherine. And I just missed Lucy. When my mother came to visit me one weekend, shortly after the start of the term, she picked me up into her arms hugging me with all her might and she was crying. She kept telling me that she missed me, that she loved me, that she missed me and loved me. I don't think she said much more than that to me the whole weekend. I never had the courage to ask to come home after that. I stopped breaking the rules just so I could prove to Mama that I could do it.

As it turns out Sister Catherine had called my mother and explained that I was acting out because I was homesick and needed some reassurance that I was still apart of my family, that I wasn't being punished. It worked. I was a good student, not a perfect one. I still succumbed to peer pressure. In seventh grade, when my roommate, Hilary, dared me to give the priest a blow job (yes, I knew what that was when I was twelve) I had nothing holding me back. I walked into the church during lunch I told Father Sebastian that I couldn't eat because I needed to talk. He asked if I wanted to confess, I shook my head.

"Talk, not confess. I haven't done anything wrong today." I told him. He nodded his head and led me to the first pew. I shook my head.

"It's private. If we talk here anybody could walk in and hear me." He looked suspicious but I hadn't done anything , really, wrong since I was in fourth grade.

"We could talk in my office if you'd prefer." I nodded my head and followed him to the little closet her called an office. He immediately picked up his bible. I smiled coyly.

"What are you going to do? Throw it at me?" He laughed at me and put it down.

"Now, tell me. What is bothering you?" I scooted my chair next to his. And I looked down at his pants. He thought I was looking at my shoes.

"Can I give you a blow job?" I got down on my knees after I said it. He looked horrified and picked me up by one arm. He practically dragged me to the front office.

I was suspended for two weeks, only because I told them I was dared, and even then only after I ratted out my roommate. I had to write a ten page paper about how sex is wrong, all sex. I had to apologize to Father S. and as punishment I would have to clean up the church after Sunday service for the rest of the year.

My mother didn't pick me up. Neither did my father. Rafael and Lucy came to get me, they had to take two busses and a train to get me, but they did. Raffe didn't say anything, he didn't judge me at all. Lucy kept nagging me, lecturing me, but I could tell she was amused with the situation. When I got home, my mother was in bed crying and my father was stark raving mad (he had come over for my homecoming). Lucy left the room immediately, Raffe exchanged some words with our Father that I couldn't make out and then he too left the room. I sat down on the couch and waited for the yelling. I didn't have to wait long. He started screaming so loudly and quickly that all I could make out was that "he didn't raise his daughter to be a whore" in which I responded "raised? You left when I was seven, you sent me to a fucking boarding school. Raised? Sister Catherine raised me, not you." I should have kept my mouth shut. He slapped me so hard that I passed out, or at least I thought I had. I was just too shocked to remember the rest of what happened. My father never laid a hand on me again. By the time I was leaving to go back to school he was laughing at about like it was some old joke.

My mother did not have the same reaction. She just cried about it, and cried about it. When she stopped crying she wouldn't talk to me. She ignored I was there. I had spent the first week trying to talk to her, apologizing, crying. I even threw a dish at the wall, hoping to get a reaction out of her.

"Lucy could you clean that up, por favor?" She responded. I left the room and started to pack my bags. I didn't know where I would go, but I refused to be ignored. I was a presence, people sure as hell better notice me.

Rafael walked in on me attempting to climb out the window. He shook his head at me. He grabbed my shirt and pulled me inside.

"You're going to fall and hurt yourself hermana." He told me as he sat on my bed. He proceeded to lecture me about how I had screwed up. That Mama was punishing me because I deserved it, and he told me to not fight it. He told me what my place in the family as the youngest child was, that I wasn't supposed to break the rules, I was supposed to learn from his and Lucy's mistakes. Well he never made any mistakes, at least not in my eyes, and neither did Lucy. She was the perfect child, not me.

I went back to school without a goodbye from my mother. I hated her so much. But she called me a week later saying she wanted to take me out to breakfast on Saturday morning, and to be ready. She showed up at midnight knocking at my door. She shushed me when I started cursing in Spanish, and helped me change into some clothes. In the car she told me that was against the rules, and technically she was kidnapping. We pretended the whole time we were fugitives. She was forgiven in my eyes.

I didn't mess up at school again for a long time. But I met Mimi a year later. After running laps one day in the locker room a couple of girls had called me fat. I wasn't but I didn't see that. So when I looked in the mirror I focused on my flaws, on my curves and my giant ass. I hated it, I hated who I was in the mirror. I later named her Mimi.

My family saw the change in me immediately after term let out for the holidays. They didn't say anything but at dinner they would always put extra food on my plate. I pushed my food around, taking a few bites. I started to become closer to Lucy as I grew farther apart from Raffe. Raffe was always trying to ask about my health and he was always so secretive about his life. Lucy, although she made it clear to me, in not so subtle hints, that anorexia is wrong and she didn't approve, taught me how to use makeup, and how to make the boys go wild.. She used hypothetical friends of friends to reiterate her point. Mama was just as discrete leaving pamphlets about eating disorders on my pillow, in my sock drawer, taped to my mirror. My papa would tell me I was beautiful and he liked me just as I was. My uncle Richard told me that curves looked good on a woman, and that they were trademark for a young Hispanic woman like myself, just as the big butt was.

I ignored it, everyone of their pleas. I went back to school only ten pounds thinner, making me 105lbs. Needless to say, I wasn't thin enough. I spent the whole semester dieting and put my heart and soul into gym class. The girls never called me fat again, they started to look scared when they could see my ribs, and every other bone for that matter. They went to Father S. and Sister Catherine and asked them to talk to me. It didn't work. The year ended and I was hovering between 89-91 lbs.

That summer my parents took action once they realized it wasn't just some phase. They had sent me to a clinic over the summer in hopes that I would get better. Two weeks into it, I had to go home. I sneezed and broke two ribs. I really was, and still am, a dreadful person to have in the hospital. I refused to eat. And when they fed the food to me through a feeding tube I learned to vomit it back up. They didn't want me to develop another eating disorder so the lovely doctors called my parents and told them what had happened.

My mother and father made coming home that summer a bitch. Sure, I was in pain from the broken ribs, and sure I was weak as hell but that didn't stop them from making sure my life was miserable. My mother moved into my room and slept with me, cuddling up real close on the hot summer night. She would handcuff me to the bed when my psychiatrist would come, forcing me to talk to her.

"When you look you in the mirror, what do you see? Who do you see?" My doctor asked me one day when I actually felt like talking.

"I don't see me." I was asked to elaborate. "I don't know. I see her and she looks like me, but she's not, she's someone else. She's fat."

"Let's name her."

"Mimi" I said after a few moments of thinking.

"So Mimi is fat?" Linda, my doctor had asked me a year later as I was still struggling with the disease, just this time I kept my weight at a healthy 95 pounds.

"Well, yeah."

"Do you think Mimi likes it when you call her fat? You didn't like it when those girls at school called you fat. Why would you make Mimi hurt like that?" Ah. Guilt. It's very common amongst us Catholics. And it worked. Once I stopped calling Mimi fat, I started to see myself again.

By the time I was in high school I wanted to go to public school. I was done with boarding school. I was starting to look healthier. I was starting to feel like myself again and I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted to see if Uncle Richard was right and to test out my new curves on the boys. It wasn't hard to convince to my parents, they felt that the closer I was to them, the closer eye they could have on me. Plus high school at Catholic boarding schools had quite the reputation, and not the one that my parents liked.

They moved me to another boarding school, it was mixed, and closer to home. We were allowed, and expected, to go home for the weekends. My English teacher Mrs. Thomas, was not Catholic, or religious at all. In fact she wasn't even married, but we were required to call her Mrs.. She was an atheist, which provided for such an interesting class. She would sneak in pieces of literature that were banned. And that was when I fell in love with poetry. When Mrs. Thomas brought in some of the beatnik poets I craved more. She would sneak some photocopies of poems to me by stapling them on the back of my papers she returned to me. One day she asked me try my hand at poetry. I wrote so much shit, and sometimes something worthy to show her. She asked me come up with a pen name in case someone found it and I got in trouble. I didn't believe I would, I did have the freedom of speech and press. I found that I wrote better though, without the feeling of being judged. So I wrote about my struggles with anorexia and peer pressure. Actually Mimi wrote about them.

The day before my quinceniera, my fifteenth birthday party, my uncle picked me up from school. I was leaving a day early to help plan everything but my parents were working and couldn't pick me up. I was so excited that I didn't notice when my uncle took me to his house, about three miles in the opposite direction of my home. I finally snapped to when we were at his front door. When I asked him what we were doing here, he didn't answer. He opened the door and shoved me inside. My father's crazy vision had come true.

I walked home that night, alone and scared. When I entered my house my parents were pissed, Raffe was angry, Lucy was shocked. She seemed to take in my appearance. When she gasped and ran to me, pulling me into a much needed hug, Raffe caught on and hugged me too. He was crying. When my parents asked what was going on, Raffe turned around and answered for me. My father ran out the door, cursing and muttering "I'll kill him." My mother backed into a corner, unable to believe her brother was a monster. She left the room. Raffe followed her and Lucy led me to the couch. She sat me down and asked if I wanted to talk about it. I shook my head. I felt so disillusioned. How could my God let this happen to me? Lucy went to the kitchen to grab her car keys so she could drive me to the hospital.

There was knocking on the door, pounding actually. Lucy dropped her keys in fright. I started crying and ran into the kitchen looking for somewhere to hide, Lucy's arms would do. Raffe answered the door. There was arguing and I knew it was my Uncle Richard. When I heard what sounded like a fist fight I escaped from my sister's embrace. Raffe needed me. But Lucy was on my heels and tried to hold me back. Raffe was screaming at me to run away. But I wouldn't. All that was going on through my head was that Richard would kill my brother. And I owed Raffe so much. I never did say thank you for all those times he was there for me.

I pushed Lucy to the ground and ran as fast as I could. I intended to put myself between Richard and Raffe. I didn't care if Richard raped me again. He couldn't do much more damage to me anyways. I wasn't counting on Raffe pushing me away. I kept struggling. And then, somehow there was a gun and it went off. I remember falling onto my back, Raffe right on top of me. This was a horrifying position for me. But it was even worse right then because my brother was dying. I was screaming. I wasn't aware of much more than that I was screaming and crying and Raffe was dying.

"I'm sorry." Raffe whispered to me before he closed his eyes. He never opened them again.

As it turned out the bullet went through Raffe's chest and into mine. As it turned out Raffe was gay and addicted to heroin. As it turned out Raffe had HIV.

When I woke up, later in the hospital, Lucy was there. She looked like she had been crying. I knew why. She told me though anyway. She told me he died, that Raffe was sick with HIV. She told me that I probably had it too now. I groaned and fell asleep. I woke up again to my mother's sobbing. I opened my eyes.

"Mama." I squeaked out. I barely had a voice.

"I wish it was you." I thought she would have said 'I love you' or something. I must have looked at her quizzically because she clarified.

"I wish you had died instead of Raffe."

I escaped from the hospital two days later when I was feeling strong enough.

As it turned out, she was right. Maria Marquez was dead and in her place stood Mimi.

Marq, feeling more relaxed and energized climbed out of the bathtub and put some clothes on. She walked over to her bed and laid down, she had at least another 4 or 5 hours of sleep before the little ones tried to wake her up. She closed her eyes letting sleep take over.

Her eyes shot open. The gifts in the car, they didn't get wrapped. She closed her eyes again. The twins were only two, like they would know the difference.

Her eyes shot open again. She spoke to Roger. Roger! Roger Davis! Her Roger. Roger, father of her children Roger, rock star Roger. Oh no. This was not good. She'd never be able to sleep now. 'Might as well wrap those presents' she thought. She picked her tired body up and hopped out of her room to her car.