Red

1

Kiera

90 percent of people know someone who was or is diagnosed with cancer. In this town, everyone knew and wept when Mr. Harris died. He was the principal of our school, Isherwood High, a strong figure of authority that everyone followed. Not even the mayor was as respected as him. 

I bet you're imagining some sort of Hercules or Odysseus or some other heroic Grecian figure but he wasn't. At five foot three and a perpetual warm smile, he won us all over because he survived. He didn't survive some horrible disease, he died of it remember, or fought in some terrible war. Mr. Harris just survived us and all our problems. 

At school, there were fewer fights than before and every problem was solved with a sustainable answer leaving both parties happier than they were before. I don't know if it was his words or the comforting way that they made you feel that gave him that power but it was great. Teachers were more lenient around him, the people that never really smiled laughed at his jokes, and he never boasted about his charisma. 

Sometimes I would be walking to the store to pick up groceries for my mother and I would have to pass the animal shelter. Most of the time I would see him there helping the workers wash the dogs and make toys for the cats. I remember thinking that he must have been an angel sent from heaven to take care of us. 

I was only at the school for one year yet I felt as if I've known him my whole life. I was the first of many to see him stumble. Over the first few weeks of April, his skin started becoming palpable. Lots of my friends asked if he was sick but he just brushed us off and said that he was fine. In May, when the seniors were practicing graduation, a tedious task that I hope to never endure, he collapsed onto the grass. A few minutes later an ambulance picked him up and dropped him off at the hospital. The next morning the results were in. 

Terminal. That's what the doctors told us. He had lung cancer. He never even held a cigarette in his life but he still got it. More than half the town went to visit him and left gifts by the bedside. We all prayed for him to get better. I know my neighbor, Ms. Kite, prayed for him every week. He died a week after graduation. A month afterwards Ms. Kite moved out. 

It's funny how the new principal moved into that same house. He was a nice person too but there's one big difference. He brought her...