A Dying Girl's List

Chapter 17

Ring! Ring! Ring!

Lissa's alarm clock blared throughout the room.

She tried to ignore the irritating ringing by closing her ears with her pillow, but it was like it decided to annoy her even further by imitating a woman giving birth – natural birth with no epidural to ease the pain.

Lissa huffed out a breath and flipped herself around to stop that horrible, irritating, annoying ringing.

She sat up on the bed, grabbed her backpack from the floor — because she forgot to hang it back last night — and took out the List to decide what she would be crossing off today, with her back firmly pressed against the headboard.

Since she had already done, seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-six, seventy-eight, and seventy-nine, Lissa thought it would be a great idea to finish with the seventies, and maybe start with the eighties, that day and throughout the rest of the week.

So for that day, the lucky few were numbers seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-seven, and eighty.

The most important ones for the day though were seventy-three, seventy-four, and eighty.

She pushed the blanket off of her body, with her feet, and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. As soon as her feet touched the floor, a wave of nausea shot up her throat, like a volcano ready to erupt. She sprinted towards the bathroom to puke out what was left in her guts.

When the retching finally stopped, she was too exhausted to walk back to her bed, so she just rested her head on the glass shower door and sat there for, who knows how long.

When Lissa felt like she had gathered up enough energy, she pushed herself up from the floor and stared at her reflection in the mirror.

Lissa noticed that she was becoming even more paler as the days went by. She could've easily been mistaken for Edward Cullen's sister.

Her hair looked like a bird decided to nest in it, and she had dark, heavy bags creeping around under her eyes, that she never really noticed till now, because she never stared at her reflection that long. Her tongue felt dry, and her mouth had a rancid smell.

When the smell of bile drifted through her nostrils, she shuddered. She pushed her body up, and tiredly walked over to the bathroom cabinet and took out her toothbrush and toothpaste, brushed her teeth — especially her tongue — and dragged her body back into bed.

"Looks like I'll be staying inside today." she groaned.

This is why she never planned to do anything. Speakimg in terms of the present and her not-so-distant past. 'Cause, there was always something that was going, to screw it up. And with her condition, a lot more screw-ups were to be expected.

Jace and Lissa texted for the entire morning after her anti-climactic fall from grace. She told him about the nausea, and how badly she wanted to go golfing and rollerskating, but couldn't because she didn't have enough energy to even type the letter 'k', and all he replied with was,

"Ok, Lissa. Feel better soon!" with a blue heart emoji.

She switched off her phone, peeved at him, for reacting so nonchalantly when she told him she wasn't feeling well, and started writing her short story — for number seventy-three.