Her face crashes. She hasn't dealt with a single transfusion or lumbar puncture. She wasn't allowed near me for the bone-marrow transplant, but she could have been there for any number of diagnoses, and wasn't. Even her promises to visit more often have faded away with Christmas. It's her turn to taste some reality.

I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things.

Keep breathing. Just keep doing it. It's easy. In and out.

The inside of the door is glossy white. A total re-paint. I touch it with my fingers, but it stays the same. It's so bright it makes the room waver at the edges. Every few years we disappear.

Sometimes if you want something badly enough, you can make it happen. If you miss someone so desperately that it wrecks your insides, you say their name over and over until you conjure then. It's called sympathetic magic and you just have to believe in it to make it work.

Then she says, ‘I love you.’ Like three drops of blood falling onto snow.

It's really going to happen. I really won't ever go back to school. Not ever. I'll never be famous or leave anything worthwhile behind. I'll never go to college or have a job. I won't see my brother grow up. I won't travel, never earn money, never drive, never fall in love or leave home or get my own house. It's really, really true. A thought stabs up, growing from my toes and ripping through me, until it stifles everything else and becomes the only thing I'm thinking. It fills me up like a silent scream.