Destined

Day One

I've been through a lot of serious situations in my life, and I honestly think that I've been ready and capable to handle every one that came my way. That being said, I can't seem to wrap my head around the most important thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life. I can't wrap my head around that one eight-letter word that forever changed my life: terminal. Is it any surprise, though, that I can't wrap my head around the fact that I'm eighteen years old, stuck in the middle of Dallas, devoid of any immediate family members that care just beginning my life and about to die. Being diagnosed with leukemia only two months after moving into my own apartment and starting up with a dance company that I loved had been heartbreaking but not the end of the world. Sure, I'd dropped dance to work full time at both the music store I'd worked at previously as well as the Hotel Camilla as a maid so I could afford to pay rent, eat, and pay for my aggressive chemo and radiation treatments thinking once I went into remission everything could go back to normal. My whole world just fell apart when I'd realized it had all been for nothing. In approximately six months, my life would be over, and I'd be nothing more than compost. 

The depression crushes me, but I try not to let it show as my co-worker, Wendy, and me quickly and efficiently finish up the rest of the rooms before the sun rises and all the vampires go to sleep. I probably shouldn't have gone to work right only an hour after my doctor's appointment, but I guess I hadn't figured that the results would be that my cancer had become terminal. My bad judgment means that I'd spent the last few hours slaving away cleaning a bunch of vampire's rooms, trying to pretend that my life isn't falling apart while Wendy prattled on and on about her boyfriend, Jackson, who is, apparently, convinced that vampires aren't real, just a conspiracy by the government to cover up a chain of gangs that are mentally unstable even though she tells him time and time again she's met more than her fair share while working at the vampire owned and vamp friendly hotel. I didn't have the heart to tell the blonde, big-haired girl that her boyfriend is clearly crazy and she should leave him because I was afraid that I'd go off on some kind of rant about how life is short and slips through your fingers too damn quickly to waste time with a boy who spends more time talking conspiracy theories them sweeping her off her feet. 

I didn't want to talk about my issues, so I said nothing about hers. 

"Are we going to take out break before we have to take everything down to laundry?" Wendy asks brightly as we stop our cart into the employee section. 

Pausing, I rub my fingers over my wrist absently before looking up and nodding my head. I grab my purse and offer her a small smile as I adjust my ponytail and head towards the door, "Yep. I'll see you in twenty minutes?" 

Wendy grins widely, not sensing anything wrong, "See you then, Lanie." 

I offer her a small smile as I slip out of the employee room and move up onto the rooftop of the hotel. The night air is cool and nips at my bare arms, and I wrap my arms around myself breathing in the chilly air as I study the city below me. Above, darkness reigns, the night that used to be simply a time for sleep but now seems to breed fear for some and excitement for others with the announcement of the reality of vampires. There are no stars in the sky, and I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed. I'd grown up traveling from place to place, but my favorite place, my happy place I suppose you could call it, has always been my grandmother's small home right beside the Louisiana bayou, one of the few places in the world -it seems-that one could look up into the sky an see the millions of stars out there twinkling. Grandma used to point out the constellations to me, and when she'd been curled up on a hospital bed coughing and wheezing as a result of the lung cancer that had attacked quite suddenly, she'd smiled as I cried and said, "Don't worry, pitit, I'm not really gone. I'm in you." 

I'd shaken my head and wiped the tears from cheeks, "But granmé what if I can't feel you? How can you live in me? I don't understand.: 

"You will," she'd smiled. "You'll understand later, but until then, when you look up to the stars you can always find me, because the stars never change. They're the one place where time stands still."