Blake and I looked at each other as our faces turned serious. I tried to stay calm, but I felt my heart begin to beat a thousand and one times faster. My body started to shake and I ran forward towards the swing set with Blake right at my side.
We were breathing hard when we reached her. She looked us both in the eye for a second before her eyes brimmed with tears. "I got the test results back," she said. She looked down at the envelope in her hands before continuing with her statement. "I didn't tell you guys what the tests were fore because I didn't want you guys to worry... But they came back bad. I.. I have... Cancer," she whispered the last word.
My racing pulse slammed to a stop. Cancer? I felt the shock spear on my face as my eyes began to fill with tears. I wiped them away, "What?" I asked weakly.
Blake sat down in the sand as she pulled the papers from the envelope and handed them to me. I sat on the swing next to her and flipped through the papers. There were graphs, charts, numbers and big words that I didn't understand. I came to the second to last page and read the top. Diagnosis. The rest of the page spelled out in black and white the harmful disease that was filling my friends body.
I flipped to the last page and gasped as I saw the black and white pictures of her insides. In the biggest one, a picture of her head and neck, there was an odd shaped splotch with a red arrow pointing to it.
I couldn't say anything. I simply handed the papers to Blake and sat there starring at the lake with tears streaming down my cheeks until Blake finished looking at the papers. He handed them back to Alyssa, and said the one word that I was feeling. "Wow."
"Yeah," I said.
We sat there silently for a while before Blake turned and looked at Alyssa, "What happens now?"
"I'm gonna meet with a doctor next week to hear the options for treatment. I might have a surgery or something," she said quietly.
We talked for a while, just sitting there on the beach. It was cold, but we didn't care. We needed to be alone with just the three of us, why? Because our world was changing drastically and there was nothing we could do about it except to enjoy the last bit of normalcy together.
We say there till long after the sunset. The world around us was calm, and the only sounds were those of the wind rustling the leaves and the water gently touching the shore.
Finally, we started to walk back to Alyssa's house. It was after eleven when we got there, but the lights were still on, and all of our parents were sitting there in their living room. All of the moms had tears in their eyes. They stood up and we all gave each other hugs.
We spent almost the whole weekend together, and when we got to school on Monday, we were unusually quiet as we listened to the whispers go around the school letting everyone know that Alyssa had cancer. It was hard to hear it over and over again, but I think what was the worst part was all of the sympathy. Me and Blake stayed by Alyssa's side and the whole day there wasn't one time that he went longer than five minutes between people coming up and hugging her or saying they were sorry for her.
At lunch Alyssa looked tired, so I asked her what was wrong. "Nothing," she said. The rest of the week went by the same as that. I slept over at her house on Friday and right before she fell asleep she whispered something in my war. "I just want to be treated normal again."
That comment kept me up for the rest of the night.
The next day I went home early because she was meeting with the doctor in the afternoon. I gave her a big long hug right before she left.
Tears filled my eyes as she walked out the door. I went upstairs to my room and locked the door and stayed there listening to music until late that night when my phone rang.
I answered it and I could tell that he was crying on the other end. "I'm going to have surgery at the end of the month, October 29," she said.
"Oh," was all I could say.
The rest of the month went by in a blur as the three o us spent every single minute together. We were inseparable.
***
Authors note:
What do you think?
