Five Feet Apart(29)

She shakes her head, her face serious. “But I can’t, Will. Not now. I have to make it.”

I’m confused. “I don’t under—”

“I’ve been dying my whole life. Every birthday, we celebrated like it was my last one.” She shakes her head, her hazel eyes shining bright with tears. “But then Abby died. It was supposed to be me, Will. Everyone was ready for that.”

She takes a deep breath, the weight of the world on her shoulders. “It will kill my parents if I die too.”

It hits me like a ton of bricks. I’ve been wrong all along.

“The regimen. All this time I thought you were afraid of death, but it’s not that at all.” I watch her face as I keep talking. “You’re a dying girl with survivor’s guilt. That is a complete mind-fuck. How do you live with—”

“Living is the only choice I have, Will!” she snaps, standing up and glaring down at me.

I stand up, staring at her. Wanting to step closer and close the gap between us. Wanting to shake her to get her to see. “But, Stella. That’s not living.”

She turns, pulling on her face mask and bolting for the door.

“Stella, wait! Come on!” I take a few steps after her, wishing I could just reach out and grab her hand, so I can fix it. “Don’t go. We’re supposed to be exercising, right? I’ll shut up, okay?”

The door slams behind her. Shit. I really screwed that up.

I turn my head to stare at the mat where she was just sitting, frowning at the empty space where she just was.

And I realize I’m doing the one thing I’ve told myself this whole time I wouldn’t do. I’m wanting something I can never have.





CHAPTER 11


STELLA


I slam open the door to my room, Abby’s drawings all blurring together in front of me as all the pain and the guilt I’ve been pushing further and further down rears its ugly head, making my knees buckle under me. I crumple onto the ground, my fingers clutching at the cold linoleum floor as I hear my mom’s scream ringing in my head just like it did that morning.

I was supposed to be with her that weekend in Arizona, but I was struggling so hard to breathe the night before our flight that I had to stay behind. I apologized over and over again. It was supposed to be her birthday gift. Our first trip, just the two of us. But Abby waved it off, hugging me tight and telling me that she’d be back in a few days with enough pictures and stories to make me feel like I’d been there with her all along.

But she never came back.

I remember hearing the phone ring downstairs. My mom sobbing, my dad knocking on my door and telling me to sit down. Something had happened.

I didn’t believe him.

I shook my head, and laughed. This was an Abby prank. It had to be. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. I was the one who was supposed to die, long before all of them. Abby was practically the definition of alive.

It took three full days for the grief to hit me. It was only when our flight back was supposed to land that I realized Abby really wasn’t coming home. Then I was blindsided. I lay in bed for two weeks straight, ignoring my AffloVest and my regimen, and when I got up, it wasn’t just my lungs that were a mess. My parents couldn’t talk to each other. Couldn’t even look at each other.

I’d seen it coming long before it happened. I’d prepared Abby for what to do to keep them together after I was gone. But I hadn’t expected to be the one doing it.

I tried so hard. I planned family outings; I made dinner for them when they couldn’t do anything but stare off into space. But it was all for nothing. If Abby came up, a fight always followed. If she didn’t, her presence suffocated the silence. They were separated after three months. Divorced in six. Putting as much distance between each other as possible, leaving me straddling the in-between.

But it hasn’t helped. Ever since then it’s like I’ve been living a dream, every day focused on keeping myself alive to keep them both afloat. I make to-do lists and check them off, trying to keep myself busy, swallowing my grief and pain so my parents don’t get consumed by theirs.

Now on top of all that, Will, of all people, is trying to tell me what I should be doing. As if he has any concept of what living actually means.

And the worst part is that the only person I want to talk to about it is Abby.

I angrily wipe away my tears with the back of my hand, pulling my phone out of my pocket and texting the only other person I know who will understand.

Multipurpose lounge. Now.

*

I think of all the drawings around my room. Each one a separate trip to the hospital with Abby there to hold my hand. And now there are three trips. Three whole trips without a drawing to go with them.

I remember the first day I came to Saint Grace’s. If I hadn’t been afraid before, the size of this place was enough to make a six-year-old feel overwhelmed. The big windows, the machinery, the loud noises. I walked through the lobby, clutching Abby’s hand for dear life and trying so hard to be brave.

My parents talked to Barb and Dr. Hamid. Even before they knew me, they did their very best to help me feel like Saint Grace’s Hospital was my second home from the moment I got there.

But, of everyone, it was Abby who really did that. She gave me three invaluable gifts that day.

The first was my stuffed panda bear, Patches, carefully hand-selected from the hospital gift shop.