Bubbly
chapter
11
"You laugh a lot," I
smiled.
"Well, when you live in here, you need to laugh at
little things. You need to smile. Otherwise
you'll just become depressed and angry all the time.
And I'm in here a lot," Dakota
grinned slightly.
"Oh," I looked at her, "that's a nice
way to look at it."
"Versus 'I hate life. Why me?
I'm a GOOD PERSON'?"
"Yeah, that's the normal reaction," I
winked.
"Well normal is boring. And I hate
boring!" She laughed again. She was full
of life. Just so full of happiness, it seemed to
spill out of her. I thought back to Mia, and I
teared up a little. Towards the end, she was
nothing like this. She was sick all the time, cried
a lot, and threw up nearly every hour. "Now I
have a question," Dakota snapped me back into
reality.
"What's up?" I walked her out the
back doors into the hospital's quad.
"Why did you donate?" She sat on the
grass under a big tree.
"My little sister. She died from leukemia the
year before I donated. Almost two years ago."
I sat down next to Dakota, not asking why we
stopped already. She probably needed a rest.
"I'm really sorry," She put her hand on my
arm, and looked into my eyes.
"It's not like you could've known," I
shook her hand off, "It's not like we ever
talked. You didn't even know who I was," I
spat at her. I don't know why I was mean to
her. She didn't deserve that from me. Not
with what she was going through, not if she said anything
about Mia, not for anything. What would Mia be
saying?
"Look, there's no need to be rude," She
crossed her arms, "It's like you said, we never
talked." She was right. I knew it, she
knew it, Mia knew it.
"My little brother. He's four. He
still doesn't get that Mia's dead. He
doesn't understand that he'll never see her
again."
"Won't he have pictures of Mia?"
Dakota leaned against the tree's bark.
"No, I burned them." She sat up, and a
little chunk of hair stuck to the tree. I pretended
not to notice.
"You WHAT?" She looked at me like I was
crazy, which I probably was.
"I said, I burned them. Don't look at me
like that! You don't get it! To see her,
laughing, as if nothing had happened! It hurt!
I didn't burn all of them, at least. I
burned the ones of her and me, and my mom freaked, so she
hid the rest," I laid down in the grass, inhaling
the spring air. Dakota couldn't stop looking at
me, her face was reflecting so many emotions.
Shock, confusion, even anger, hurt, and betrayal.
I galred at her, "WHAT."
"Nothing, I was just thinking that I would hate it
if my brother, Caleb, was like you." She shook
her head at me.
"Excuse me? where do you get off saying
THAT?" I sat up defensively.
"Because I would WANT him to look back on the
pictures of me 'laughing, as if nothing had
happened,'" She quoted me, "I would want to
think he would remember me like that. Not the sick,
dying girl you see before you."
"Maybe you didn't think of his whole thing from
the older brother's point of view. Maybe you
didn't think that he loves you, can't imagine you
gone, cries at night from worrying about you. MAYBE
HE'S NOT OKAY WITH YOU QUITTING. GIVING UP ON
LIFE," people turned to stare at us, so I quieted my
voice, softened it even, "Dakota, you've been
dealt a hard life. No one's denying that.
But this is hard for him too. His little
sister dying. You said you had no parents.
You're all he has. You can't quit.
You just... You just can't.
Let's keep walking," I stood up and
offered her my hand. She took it slowly, and I
pulled her up.