What wakes me so abruptly is not the intense pounding from deep within my skull, nor is it how every muscle in my body seems to scream in protest with every slight movement that I make. Nope, neither of these pain in the ass cancer symptoms could awaken me from my weak, pathetic state of fatigue that has me sleeping my last few days away and wondering if my body has decided to finally just quit on me.
What does wake me up, however, is Kelsie beating her closed fists on my bedroom door.
"Demi is at the front door, and she's a mess!" Her words are so rushed, so panicked, and the knocking on my door ceases so quickly that I almost allow the reassurance that I dreamnt the entire thing to lull me back into a restless, painful sleep.
The one thing forcing me to keep my heavy-lidded eyes open? Demi inviting herself into my room.
She hovers in the doorway, as if trying to be obscured by the shadows and dim lighting.
"Are you sick?" I think I would laugh at her question if the burdening fatigue and pain wasn't a constant answer. Even though she seems to be trying to hide, I can clearly see the sheepish expression on her face - a red glow in the darkness. "Sorry. Stupid question. You just -"
"Look like shit," I finish before she can ramble. "I know. I probably look as bad as I feel." Gritting my teeth, I force my weighed-down body into a sitting position, my back pressed against the wall. From this angle, the light illuminates her face in a way that reveals her puffy eyes tinged with red and her cheeks that still tell what path her tears had fallen.
"Why were you crying?" I blurt.
"How are you feeling?" she asks, almost as if she didn't hear me, but I know that she did.
"I pretty much told you that I feel like shit. Why are you avoiding my question?" I sigh when she doesn't respond, doesn't show the slightest hint of remorse or guilt or anything. "Look, don't you think it's at least a little bit fucked up that you avoid every single one of my texts and phone calls for over two weeks, then show up at my door as if nothing ever happened, as if you belong here, and proceed to interrogate me?"
I hear her swallow harshly, as if trying to rid herself of the guilt and remorse that I know she is now feeling. But then she sniffles and I mentally replay all of my spoken words. I suddenly feel like such an asshole. I mean, I made her cry for fucks sake! And after weeks of not seeing her at that!
"Demi, I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"
"I'm not crying because of you, idiot." I can't help but to feel a slight sense of relief at her words, but I'm still left wondering what made, and is still making, her cry.
"Demi, what happened?" With another sniffle, she wipes away her tears and steps further into my room.
"I hate her, Banner. I want out. I can't do it anymore."
"What happened?" I repeat. "I can't help you if I don't understand -"
"She's a fucking psycho bitch," she snaps, barely keeping a restrain on her voice so that she's not yelling. "That's what happened." With a huff, she sits beside me on my bed, pressing the heel of her palms into her eyes. "Adaliah sent me those," she mumbles, passing me her unlocked phone, the screen lit up to reveal a thread of text messages and two hours worth of disturbing images flooding Demi's inbox.
The first of many disturbing photos, sent just over two hours ago, features a razor shattered against off-white bathroom tiles. The plastic, purple remains of the razor are in a separate pile, on a separate tile, from the sharp razor blades.
My stomach clenches as I slowly scroll through the next few photos. A single blade resting in Adaliah's open palm. That blade hovering over a blue vein on a perfectly good, clean wrist. That blade being pressed down, dragged across, blood gushing from a single cut.
I scroll through the rest of the photos fast, feeling dizzy and nauseous from the sick flipbook that they create.
"She cut herself," I say more to myself than to Demi.
"No, she destroyed her arms. Almost a hundred cuts total. I counted." She studied the pictures. "I told her that I'm done, that I don't want to see her anymore. Then she sends me those. She has never gone this far before to make her point or to try to gain my attention. She sent me those pictures not even caring how they would affect me."
At that last sentence, I glance at her through my peripheral vision, zoning in on how the fingernails of her left hand are digging into her right wrist. I reach for her wrists, but then she stands and heads for my bedroom door. I mentally curse twice - once when I realize that the bathroom is on the other side of that door, and again when a wave of vertigo nearly sends me to the floor just after I've managed to force myself up onto my feet. She has barely opened the door a crack when I stumble over my own two feet, causing me to collide with her. I hold my hands out to brace myself for the impact, curling one around her waist and using the other to push the door shut a tad harder than I intended. When I know that the door is indeed shut, I grip Demi's wrists from behind and link our fingers together so that her nails can no longer pierce her skin.
"Did I hurt you?" I murmur against her skin, my lips just barely grazing her earlobe.
She shakes her head, overloading my senses with that familiar warm vanilla scent. "It's getting worse, isn't it?"
I chuckle humorlessly into her ear, knowing that she's referring to my cancer. "It's been getting worse since day one, Dems."
She breaks free from my grasp and turns around so that she's facing me. I immediately relink our fingers.
"You know what I mean," she mutters. "You said that you feel like shit, but how are you really feeling?"
"I'll answer that if you answer my question first," I reason after a moment of mental debation. When she doesn't protest, I continue. "What's it like feeling triggered?"
Her eyes lock onto mine so fast, almost forming a fiery glare, before looking away, at anything else but me. "It sucks," she says slowly, mulling over every word before it can pass her lips. "The thought is always there - to act out, to do something stupid, to relapse. However, it's usually passing - there one moment, gone the next. I imagine these passing thoughts as trains running smoothly in a station. But every once in awhile, a malfunction or situation happens that causes one train to suddenly not run so smoothly. This one train represents the passing thought that becomes lodged in my brain. The one train that malfunctions creates chaos within the entire station, maybe it even causes a wreck or two. That's pretty much what that lodged thought does; it creates chaos and infects every other single thought in my head until all I can think about is achieving that rush of relief. Being triggered sucks because, while this train wreck is occurring right in front of me, all I can do is stand back and watch from a few tracks over, debating on whether or not I should risk stepping onto the tracks and getting run over if it means trying to salvage the wreck."
"So being triggered is kind of like having cancer," I conclude after giving her words much thought. When her nose scrunches up in confusion - an expression that I am slowly beginning to love - I continue. "I just meant that..." I trail off with a sigh, urging myself to collect my thoughts and get them sorted before I sound like an insensitive jerk. "They say that everyone has cancer cells inside them, bubbling just below the surface, disguised as healthy cells waiting to be set off."
"Waiting to be triggered," she mutters.
"Yeah, so, once that one single cell is triggered, you suddenly test positive for cancer. Then your entire world is flipped upside down to the point where you no longer know how to live your life. All of your decisions - every word that you say, every food that you taste, every person that you bring closer or push further away - revolve around your diagnosis. Being triggered - I think it's similar because when you're triggered to the point where you can no longer simply push the thoughts away, you walk on eggshells while you try not to fall over the edge. With cancer, you're walking on eggshells, trying to live your life normally while simultaneously trying to live your life to the fullest extent because you know that the edge - your expiration date - is fast approaching. Being triggered, it's that one single thought that has the power to infect all of your other thoughts and completely ruin you. With cancer, it's the one single cell." Her nose is still scrunched up in confusion by the time that I finish talking, causing a cold, hard knot to form in the pit of my stomach. "Did I offend you or something?"
To my relief, she slowly shakes her head with a small smile. "I don't think I've ever had someone close to me understand so well what it feels like. Not my parents, not my siblings, not even Adaliah."
"Certainly not Adaliah," I add, grinning when she giggles against her palm.
"Yeah, certainly not Adaliah..." she trails off, and I know that's my cue to answer her earlier question like I promised.
"I was being honest when I said that I've been feeling like shit lately. I have good days and bad days, I guess. Today just happens to be a really bad day - one of the worst that I've experienced so far actually." I guiltily sink my teeth into my lower lip when I realize how sad her face suddenly seems. I hate that me being sick is causing her so much heartache. "I've been experiencing sudden, intense, pounding headaches and unexpected dizziness for weeks now. Lately, though, I can't even fathom getting out of bed at all during the day, and when I manage to actually get up, my body is weak and heavy with fatigue. Not only that, but my moods have been all over the place with Kelsie - I catch myself yelling at her for no reason sometimes - and just last week she found my car keys in the refrigerator beside the milk. I couldn't and still can't remember how or why I put them there, nor can I remember where I took my car that day. I shouldn't be forgetting things like that. I shouldn't be misplacing items that I use everyday. Those experiences are for people three times my age, Dems."
"Have you told Kelsie yet, about how bad it's getting?" she wonders,pressing the heel of her palms into her eyes to stop her tears from spilling over.
I inhale a sharp breath, then release it as I admit to her that Kelsie knows absolutely nothing about my death sentence.
Before she can even open her mouth to comment on my confession - and, trust me, her confused, pissed off eyes narrowed into daggars aimed at me are enough of a response - a soft knock on my bedroom door has us both tensing. Without waiting for a reply, my sister turns the knob and invites herself into my room, leaving the door open behind her. I immediately notice how red and blotchy her face is and how she clenches an envelope and a piece of formerly-folded paper in her right hand so tightly that they both crumple.
"What is it that I supposedly know nothing about?" Her words are sharp and short, hissed past her lips in an attempt to withhold anger. Her attempt fails; I can see her shaking. Without warning, she shoves the papers against my chest with all of her strength, letting go before I can clutch her hands, but after I've caught the papers. "That was in our mailbox for you. I saw the hospital emblem on the envelope, so I opened it. I wanted to make sure that nothing was wrong." Her voice cracks on that last word, and my entire body threatens to cave in on itself when I realize that not only did she read my mail, but she now knows. "When were you going to tell me, huh? Were you going to wait until you become so sick that you can no longer care for yourself? Were you not even going to tell me at all - leave me so grief-stricken with you six-feet underground and worried about what foster home I'd be stuck with that I'd no longer care or wonder about why you never told me? You know you're all that I have left now that mom and dad are gone! You know that!" She beats her fists against my chest as she screams those last three words over and over again. Even though I know her measly punches will leave faint bruising on my sickly skin by tomorrow morning, I do not try to stop her; I know that I deserve every punch, every insult, every tear, and every word screamed in anger. Demi, however, doesn't seem to agree with me, for she pries Kelsie off and away from me. My sister stares at her idol with a look of utter betrayal as she realizes that Demi is nowhere near as distraught as she is. I flinch when that look of betrayal is aimed at me. "She knew before I did? How? Why would you tell some woman that you think you're in love with before your own sister? Why did she deserve to hear the truth come out of your mouth while I had to Google words from that stupid letter to understand that you have a malignant brain tumor? I'm your sister!"
"I didn't want to burden you, Kels."
"Bullshit," she snarls. "It was easier for you, wasn't it? You decided to be a coward and -"
"How the hell do you think it was easy for me to tell Demi?"
"I didn't really give him much of a choice, sweetheart," Demi weakly adds.
Kelsie rolls her eyes. "Why else would you tell her before you told me?"
"Maybe because I didn't want you worrying about me when you have enough on your plate as is. Maybe because I wanted you to be selfish and focus on your recovery instead of worrying about me. Maybe because I didn't want you, of all people, to pity me or look at me like I'm some charity case. Maybe because, with you, I didn't want anything to change."
With every sentence that I force her to listen to, I can see the anger drain from her body, leaving behind nothing but the sad shell of my sister that first appeared after our parents died.
"But with Demi you want everything to change," she states, and I don't know exactly what it is about her statement, but it causes me to to push past both her and Demi, and, with a newfound swell of frustration and determination, rush to grab my car keys off of the kitchen counter.
"Where are you going, Banner?" I hear Demi ask from behind me.
I turn around in the foyer to face her, just as I am about to walk out the front door. "To pay Adaliah a visit." I don't realize that my words ring true until they've slipped past my lips.
"What? Why?" She stands in front of me with a look of total confusion that morphs into an expression of total shock and surprise when I curl one arm around her shoulders and kiss her far more unapologetically, far more confidently, than I ever have before. When her lips part to emit a gasp that is silenced by my own, I waste no time in allowing my tongue to explore the inside of her mouth, remnants of sweet, sticky caramel and bitter coffee overloading my senses much like the vanilla scent that always seems to cling to her like a second skin. I have to practically force myself to break apart our kiss when she clutches fistfuls of my tee-shirt and emits a soft moan.
"Because I really do not wish to share you with her anymore," I murmur into her ear.
"Holy shit." Kelsie's voice causes Demi to jump, and I snicker as her cheeks glow pink.
"Kels, hurry up and get in the car, so we can visit Adaliah," I direct before she can begin fangirling or teasing us with sarcastic comments or interrogating us with questions. She nods, and I furrow my eyebrows when she walks in the opposite direction of our front door. Shaking my head at the antics of my younger sister, I return my attention to a still blushing Demi.
"You look a bit flustered there, popstar." I smirk.
"Oh, gee, I wonder why, especially when I totally forgot she was standing right there." She rolls her eyes when I laugh.
"You forgot?" I cup her hip with one hand and place the other on the wall, right beside her head so that I can lean in enough to be heard without worrying about Kelsie's ears. "Were some of your thoughts not PG enough to remind you of her?"
She shifts in place slightly, and I suddenly find my body pressed flushed against hers, with her eyes being the same captivating shade of deep, rich brown that I've had the pleasure of witnessing only once before. "None of my thoughts were PG just then." Her words, sounding almost like a breathless whisper, have me swallowing hard and reminding myself that we're waiting for Kelsie.
"I could really get used to this side of you."
"Oh, I bet you could." She laughs, putting distance between us as my sister's footsteps can be heard echoing down the short hallway.
"Okay, I'm ready," Kelsie announces with a grin, holding her old softball bat over her shoulder.
"Kels, what's with the bat?"
"Just in case I need it." She practically skips to the car while I share a glance with Demi.
"She's your Lovatic."
Demi smiles and rolls her eyes before her expression drops into one if concern. "Does it worry you that she bounced back so quickly after finding that letter?"
I shake my head. "She prefers to hide her emotions, bottle them up until she can't handle it anymore. Plus, it probably hasn't truly set in yet."
"Do you think you'll tell her how much time you have left?"
"No." Through the door that she left open, I watch my sister mess with the stereo in my car. "I don't think so."
ns 15.158.61.23da2
