Mollie + Chester

Chapter One

My name, is Mollie Mocomile, spelt M-O-double L-I-E, not like the normal way. I like chocolate chip cookies and playing Mario Kart Wii and what else... Oh yeah: I have stage IV non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, in normal person speak: cancer. The thing about being sick is that you never know when it could happen. It's like when you're on a roller coaster going really slowly up the top, and you know that it's going to drop, but you never know when.
I may not live to see tomorrow, I may not live to see the Bratz clock on my desk change from 7:00 to 7:01.
I think that's the worst part; the waiting.
I lay in my big bed that made it feel like I was sleeping on a cloud, the soft silk doona enclosed me in a cocoon, trapping in all the air. The billions of pillows my Mum insisted on buying were scattered everywhere, some on the spotless clean floor and were usually extremely uncomfortable. Sequins and glitter made marks on my face if I happened to sleep on them and Seth would call me a clown.
My short, pixie cut hair was at its longest since I was five and stuck out at weird angles, making me look like a creepy elf, though Seth said I looked like a rock star.
The sun crept into my room and shone through the glass covered in rain drops making the single light split into a thousand. My window had become a diamond. The disco lights danced over my hardwood floor that Mum had made sparkle because she had spent hours running around with a mop and bucket. Today, she would probably do the same thing.
I sat up, ignoring the pain in my chest and slipped my bare feet onto the cold, icy floor, manoeuvring around the many robot contraptions Mum had attached the night before. Goosebumps appeared under my pink pyjama pants that still fit me even though I got them years ago.
There was a knock on the door and my older brother Seth came into the room holding something behind his back. His hair was messy, never gelled and styled as it used to be when he was in year eight and nine.~He wore a T shirt that had a cartoon of a pig with wings on it, the only style he ever bought.
I looked down and saw his old runners, the only pair of shoes he owned, looking dirty and flimsy. I knew there was a hole in the material from when we tried to climb the tree in the backyard when I was eight and he fell, his shoe catching on a piece of broken branch on the way down.
Seth smiled widely and I groaned as he pulled a tray complete with smelly bacon and eggs and a tiny vase with flowers from the garden.
It was my tenth birthday.
Seth went a bit overboard with my birthdays because he knew the same fact as everyone else; the chance of me living continues to get slimmer and slimmer as I age.
My brother wasn't even the worst culprit at trying to make my birthday as happy as possible. Last year, my Mum had invited almost every kid around my age in Tamwood over plus every family member who lived less than two hours away and she strung fairy lights in the backyard and hired a jumping castle. There was even a bubble machine where all the kids hung around chasing the floating rainbows trying to pop them.
A clown turned up about half an hour before lunch and got us all to play games and run around. I had run around with the other kids in my horrible poofy dress from my Aunty Clara and my chest started to close up and I collapsed right in the middle of the backyard in front of everyone.
I spent the rest of my birthday in the hospital and when I woke up, I ate a squished slice of chocolate mud cake with candle wax on it.
Birthdays didn't really work out for me, probably because we all tried to be perfect, fit in to tiny Tamwood but no matter how hard we tried, I would always be the imperfection.
"Good morning sunshine," Seth said.
I smiled, sat back in my bed and my brother rested the heavy tray on my knees. I ran my finger over the shiny edge of Mum's good tray and sniffed at the white flowers that had tiny specks of yellow, pink and blue. He pushed me over and squeezed in the bed next to me then plucked a flower from the vase and balanced it behind my ear.
"How's my favourite little sister?"
I shrugged, the flower falling from behind my ear. Seth attached it this time with one of the ribbon clips on my bedside table.
"Are you gonna talk, or does you being ten mean you gotta communicate by shrugging?" He nudged me with his shoulder gently and I pushed him, nearly causing him to fall out of the bed.
"I'm ten," I said causing Seth to laugh.
"Yeah, Doofus, I was there like an hour after you were born."
I took a bite of a bit of bacon, the kind that was a circle, not the tail part with the fat. Just how I liked it.
"Thanks for breakfast," I said eating some of the soaked in butter toast that Mum never let me have. "Where's Mum?"
"In bed, she stayed up all night cleaning for your party," he said.
I groaned. "Is it a clown this year? Or a magician?"
He wiped a bit of egg from my face and I slapped his hand away.
"A petting zoo," he said, "complete with cows and sheep."
"And how many 'close' family and friends are coming?"
"More than last year, but the list is more 'exclusive'." At the end of his sentence, he put on a fake accent that most of the respectable ladies of Tamwood had.
"How many people would I actually know?"
He shrugged. "About five?"
"Probably," I agreed, "hey!" I caught Seth's arm and grabbed the last piece of bacon from his fingers.
"Oh! I almost forgot!" Seth pulled a little wrapped present from his pocket and handed it to me.
The diamond light from the window shone on the red shiny paper as I opened it carefully. Inside was a little velvet box that contained a silver heart locket.
"I'll help you take a photo for inside," he said and I pulled him into a hug. He didn't let me go for a long time. He smelled like bacon, that horrible men's body spray and the washing powder he told Mum not to use but she hadn't listened.
"Do you realise," Seth said, "that you have lived four years past the predicted year?"
I nodded and twisted my fingers together.
"But the risk of me not living to see the next second is a lot bigger than it was four years ago."