CHEMICALS

two - beautiful

a/n: point of views will alternate chapter to chapter, look out for them! also, i really am so tired of having zero color in fanfictions, mine included.

unedited as hell, though. thank.

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- TYLER ROBERTJOSEPH -

My best friend and I met in high school. Her name's Rachel. She and I found each other while she was visiting her brother at the hospital, because he broke his arm falling off the side of a net-less trampoline. She's the only one outside of my family that knows I've got an incurable, brain-eating cancer.

Do you ever play games, place bets, inside of your head with yourself? Like, if you turn the television on and it's already on channel twenty-eight, you'll get up and do a cartwheel? Whether you're bored to death, or thinking about death, or actively dying? It's kind of weird, doing all of that and thinking about the chances of something, thinking about how far we're willing to go, how much we're willing to bet, even it's just a mental thing. A thought. I used to do them all the time. But, I didn't always follow through with them.

Just then, when I was speaking about Rachel, I told myself that if I managed to explain the meeting of both Rachel and I, and the meaning of our friendship, in less than five sentences, I was going to stop right where I was, before proceeding to run up to my dorm as if hell was chasing right behind me. Of course, I didn't do that one in particular, because running is on the long list of things that's not the easiest (or the best) thing for me to be doing. My mother constantly warned me about it, reminded me of the dreaded list, even though I've told her once that I can't put my entire life on one, large pause, just because I'm sick. Just pieces of it.

And I don't have brain cancer. It's leukemia. Typical, I know. But not really for a twenty-one year old.

You're finally old enough to drink! Isn't that cool?

That's what my mother said to me on my twenty-first birthday last December, and I knew it was code for thank the heavens above that you were granted another fucking birthday. So, I've got Heaven over me, and Hell behind me. Behind me is almost too strong, though, because all I see is the red and murkiness and the deep dark ahead.

And, even though I'm dying, I try not to ever show that.

"Juniors." Those were the two syllables uttered by Rachel, herself, brain moving much too slow through her fatigue for her to say much more. She was sitting across from me, tearing apart a muffin.

Nodding, I spoke. "In college."

"College. Wow," she paused. "Can't believe we stuck with this shit for so long. It's fucking tedious." She pushed her dark hair behind her ears and looked deep and through me, skin glimmering with the early sun streaming through the dirty window we sat next to. She's pretty. Mexican, with green eyes, and bronze skin. No real filter, unless she's speaking to her parents. "I barely had the patience for freshman year of high school, let alone junior year of college."

The two of us didn't go to the same high school, back in Pittsburgh. She was on one side of the city and I was on the other. Which is why it's insane that we even met in the first place. It's even more insane, because we met on two separate, personal terms. Her brother had a fucking broken arm, for God's sake. And God himself blessed me with something that wanted to kill me. And then, he sewed that thing right inside of me. Considerate.