I Fell in Love with Hope(24)

“Yeah,” she says, but it’s a lie. “Have you ever been hiking?”

“No.”

“Oh, it’s amazing, Sam. You have to try it.” She pokes me for emphasis. “I was so close to the top of a mountain, you know. I could see the ocean from up there and everything.” Her voice gains a breathy quality, wondrous, like rather than a drearily lit hall and a trio of steel elevator doors, the sea folds out before us.

“I wish I had wings,” she says, like a kind devil that used to have them on her back. “I could’ve flown free over the water forever.”

I find this intimate. Listening to someone get lost like that. It’s akin to reading Neo’s words that he lets too few people see.

Sony grins, chocolate staining her teeth. “You should come hiking with me one day.”

Sony and I talk most of the night. I discover hiking and chocolate for the first time. Chocolate, as Sony and my tastebuds teach me, is one of the greatest things in the world, right up there with Wuthering Heights. Sony says she doesn’t read much. I tell her about Neo. At first, she doesn’t believe that he’s a real person. She tells me about her mother, a temperate woman who raised a beastly thing. Sony laughs at herself some more. When she grows restless, I show her around the hospital. By the time dawn stretches through the windows, Sony returns to her room and presses endless kisses to her mother’s face.

After that night, Sony is discharged. I don’t see her for some time. That vending machine misses our nightly conversation. I let myself trail the scuff marks in her memory. I even show Neo chocolate. He tells me chocolate isn’t a discovery and that I’m dumb. I ignore him, and we share candy bars while watching movies.

A few months later, while I sit barnacled to a bench on the third floor, reading through Lord of the Flies, a familiar fire crackles.

“Where’s Sam?”

I look up, red hair and a backpack colored with markers standing at a decentralized unit.

The nurse working at said station, not in charge of Sony or me, cocks her head to the side. “I’m sorry?”

“The person yay high, sort of weird-looking,” Sony says, motioning with her hands. “C’mon, you can’t miss ’em. I mean, the kid’s never seen chocolate before.”

“Sony?” I call.

She turns around.

“Sammy!” A cheery giggle shakes through her chest at the sight of me. “Hah. That’s a nice smile you’ve got.”

“You look good,” I say. Her face is void of cuts–freckles dance across her nose, not a dull mark to taint her color.

A wink couples her whisper. “Bus just missed me.”

Swinging her backpack off one shoulder, Sony rummages through trinkets, clothes, and whatever else crammed in there, pulling out a chocolate bar. “I got you this just in case you were here.” She pats my head like a puppy’s.

“Sony.” A woman appears behind her, matching freckles and older brilliance coloring her skin. “We need to go see the doctor now, honey.”

“Bleh.” Sony’s mother rolls her eyes, wrapping an arm around her daughter. Sony melts into the touch. “I’ve gotta do boring crap now. But I’ll find you afterward. Let’s have fun!” She unfolds my palm with force, writing her room number with a pen from the bottomless backpack. Her tongue sticks out between her teeth, her handwriting crooked, unsteady like a toddler’s.

My neck cranes to read it, Sony’s fingers smoothing over the numbers.

“Don’t leave, okay?” she whispers. An oxygen therapy tube sits around her neck, and her voice is frailer than it was the night we met. But Sony’s joy doesn’t falter even when her breathing hollows.

As she goes to follow her mother, I squeeze her hand and watch her disappear down the hall.

Two nights later, Sony has surgery. It takes six hours, so for six hours, I sit outside Sony’s room with her mother. She asks if I’m Sony’s friend. I nod and tell her Sony gives me chocolate. A pleased expression takes her, the one mothers wear when they remember their children’s idiosyncrasies. The memories soothe her for a moment, but the thought of those memories being all she has makes her foot tap, quickens her heartbeat, and chews her lip. I ask Sony’s mother if she’d like to walk with me. She nods. I take her to Sony and I’s vending machine.

Six hours later, Sony wakes in her bed, silly from the anesthetics. Her mother doesn’t wait for doctors’ approvals. She goes to her daughter’s side, pressing endless kisses to her face. She tells her she’s proud of her and that she can have all the chocolate she wants. Sony hums, hooked up to so many machines, her body exhausts from merely being awake.

I’m not sure what Sony has exactly. So many different illnesses target respiration. Suffocation is one of death’s favorite methods. Sony’s disease ravaged her lung and left her with infection after infection that her body couldn’t handle on its own.

But Sony isn’t the kind to submit to anything.

She still has wings to grow.

“Sammy!” A smile greets me as I walk into her room, rounding her bedside. Sony takes my hand, the same one with her room number, and presses it to her chest. “Feel! Oh, sorry, that’s my boob. But look!”

The breaths beneath my touch are hollow, Sony’s mouth open to take them.