Bittersweet

April 19th, 2013
San Diego, California

I look out the window and watch the trees flash by in a green blur. Mia sits next to me, winding and unwinding her fingers. Her hazel brown eyes are darting around the car, examining everything from the wheel to the specks of dirt on the mat. She looks so hopeless right now, like a doll that’s about to be broken.




My dad’s dying.

He has been for a while now, so this comes as no surprise. Three years ago they diagnosed him with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. In other words, cancer. The doctors have tried everything to save him, but nothing’s worked. He’s reached stage four now, which means that there’s nothing they can do to save him except feed him lots of disgusting green juices that smell like urine.

They think he’s going to die tonight.

Strangely I haven’t cried yet. It’s like someone injected a ton of Botox into my skin, and I can’t move my facial features. I can’t do anything but sit here, and hope that heaven is better than this world.

“ We’re almost there,” my mother whispers under her breath. I can’t tell whether she wants to be there or not. On one hand she wants to see my father. On the other hand she doesn’t want to see him die. It’s a double edged sword, our situation.

“ Mummy, is Daddy going to be okay? The doctors have said he was going to die before,” Mia says. She looks so much like him, it hurts. I can tell she wants nothing more than the father she used to have; the one that checked her math homework and played tag with us.

My mother doesn’t answer.

I reach into my backpack and grab my new book. I haven’t started it yet, but it’s part of one of my favorite series.

The wolf watched as the small girl with the pretty red cape made her way through the woods. She would make a delicious meal, he thought to himself.

I slam the book shut. There is no point in reading now, not when my own life feels like a story someone else is writing. I just hope the author spares my father, for Mia and my mother’s sake.

I look up and start to speak, but the words are lost in my mouth as my mother slams on the breaks, throwing me back into the leather seat. Mia lets out a strangled cry as the car behind us rams into the bumper, throwing me forward and through the glass window. I hear the faint sound of shattering, and feel the pain in my hands before the world turns black.







...............................................


I pull myself off the road. The cold bites against my bare skin, making me shiver. Blood and glass lie around me. I can hear the faint noise of the sirens speeding towards us. I look down at my hands, which are covered in bright red scratches and clench my fists, trying to make myself feel something.

They say that when something tragic happens you become immune to what’s going on around you. The pain is too much so you brain blocks it out. I have experience with that feeling; that feeling of hollowness that seeps into your body like lotion. When they first diagnosed my father, when my beloved pet hamster died. As I stare at the wrangled wreck that was our Volvo, I get that feeling.

So much for the safest car on Earth.

A strew of ambulances, cops cars and firetrucks pull up. The police get busy setting up the road blockers, and the EMTs rush over to the bodies. A few people stuck in traffic have gotten out of their cars. I can hear them whispering.

When I watch as they pull out my sisters mangled body, pain come crashing into me like a tidal wave. I always thought she was the prettiest of us, with light brown hair and kind hazel eyes. Now you barely tell who she is. Her hands look like they’ve been through a blender and her face is bloody and bruised. I stifle a sob.

Then I focus on another body that looks almost like me. One of the EMTs notices the body, my body, which is hidden in a gutter. His hands hover over my neck. I almost swear I can feel his breath on my face.

“ Dead,” he yells to the others.

Dead? I’m not dead.

“ I’m over here!” I yell.

“ Name?” one of the cops yells.

“ Lauren Holden. I think she’s the older daughter,” the EMT responds.

So I’m a ghost, I think, like Casper.

This is all too weird to be true. Am I supposed to accomplish a task on Earth? When’s an angel going to come down and give me my mission? If whoever’s up there really cares about me, why is He showing me this?

“ Inform the rest of the family,” I hear a cop call out.

“ On it,” I hear someone else yell out.

“ Sir,” the man in charge of informing my family of my death says. “ They’re all dead. The father died from cancer tonight in the hospital, and it’s highly unlike the mother will make it. The sister has a chance but....”

I don’t hear the rest of what he’s saying.The words spins around me. A bright white light flashes before my eyes. Before I know it I’m standing in a field of grass and fruit trees.It looks unreal; the grass a little too green, the fruit a little too colorful. The air smells like a Fresh Spring Morning candle my mother used to get from Bath and Body Works. I breath it in, savoring the sweet air. Heaven. My father stands next to me, and my mother too. Mia’s image flickers next to us, like she’s slipping between worlds.? I laugh. In some cracked up way we all got to be together. Was it only thirty minutes ago I was worrying about never seeing my dad again?

Mia’s image settles and Mum smiles,“ Together forever,” I whisper with a small smile. “ Together forever,” I repeat.