Total pages in book: 215
Estimated words: 199344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 997(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 997(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
I’ve been sitting outside for over an hour when I hear the backdoor open. Lifting my head from my knees, I find Zoey looking down at me, and as I go to get up, she walks right into me and steps over my legs, dropping straight down into my lap.
Her arms wrap around my neck as I hold on to her, so damn terrified to let go.
“We’re going to be okay,” she promises me, leaning right in and resting her head against my shoulder. “I love you too much to leave this world yet. I’m not going anywhere, Noah. You’re my bestest friend, and there is still so much I want to experience with you. You’ll see, you still have a million more years to drive me crazy. I’m not nearly done loving you yet.”
My hand brushes over her hair and down her cheek, feeling the wetness of her tears. I should be the one comforting her, not the other way around. “Nothing would make me happier,” I tell her. “We’re going to have it all, Zo. Just you and me until the end of time.”
47
Zoey
Well, this is shit.
I stare up through the gates of hell—East View High—and suddenly I don’t feel so brave. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking about coming back here. Maybe I was seeking some semblance of normalcy during these few recovery weeks, but I clearly wasn’t thinking straight. Perhaps the leukemia has spread to my brain and is screwing with my thought process.
Crap. That was dark, even for me. I shouldn’t joke like that.
I’ve already missed almost two months of school and am drastically behind in all my classes, though not a single teacher has pushed me to hand in schoolwork. At this point, I think it’s safe to say I won’t be graduating. It’s not like my attendance is going to get any better over the next few months when I’m in and out of the treatment center. But I figured, why not try and experience life like a normal teenager before it’s all stripped away again? Sitting in my room day in and day out, recovering from my first round of chemo, is doing my head in. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been more than occupied with the story I’m writing on my laptop, but it doesn’t keep me from going stir-crazy.
The football season finished a few weeks ago, and without Noah’s crazy training schedule, he’s been able to spend more time with me, taking his classes online and only going in for exams, which seem to be all the time. I can’t complain though, I’ll take him any way I can get him. I’m just grateful his campus is so close. If he’d taken any other offer for college, this would be so much harder.
There’s only a week before Christmas and New Year’s break, then I’ll be starting my second round of chemo straight away. And God, it makes me anxious. I know what to expect, how it’s going to make me want to claw the flesh right off my body, how my insides are going to tremble as the drugs are slowly forced through my veins. All I can hope for is that I have the mental strength to keep pushing through it.
But if this doesn’t work . . . shit. I can’t allow myself to go there.
It has to work. There’s no other choice. This is my final shot.
I know Dr. Sanchez said there’s a plan B, that I have other options if the second round of chemo fails, but at the rate the leukemia cells are spreading through my body and how quickly I’ve been declining, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I won’t have the strength to keep fighting. Especially considering how weak I’ll be following the chemo.
Like I said, I have no other choice. This has to work.
My phone chimes in my hand, and I glance down as I wait for Hope, too chicken to walk through the gates by myself.
Resident Asshole: You good? Just got back to campus.
Zoey: I think I’ve finally lost my mind!
I hit send before holding my phone up and taking a photo of the school gates, letting him know my plans for the day. I quickly attach that to a new text and wait for his onslaught to follow.
Zoey: *Multimedia Message*
Resident Asshole: What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you want to torture yourself like that? No one expects you to be there.
Zoey: I was listening to hardcore rap from the early 2000s and something just came over me, and I remembered that I’m actually a terrifying badass and none of these preppy bitches can touch me.
Resident Asshole: Zo—I say this from the very bottom of my heart—you’re the furthest thing from being a terrifying badass. You’re a good girl with a kind heart that shatters like flimsy glass the second someone even looks at you wrong.