When Nikki got done with her drink, she began asking questions. They were the insightful kind that went with her chosen profession of psychologist.
"How did that feel when he told you that?" (Shocked.)
"How did you change your behavior to help Mom and Dad cope with it?" (It is a testament to how well we now know each other that she even had the knowledge to ask this question.)
"How many things do you have on your bucket list so far?" (Around 24 I believe.)
"Please tell me that you are planning on quitting school in the very near future." (Yes Nikki that one is a no-brainer.)
"On a scale of one to ten, how would you say that you are handling this?"
The last one was the most loaded question and thus it merited a lot of consideration. Nikki knew this, so she let me have my silence while I tried to figure out an answer. Well, I thought, I haven't even had time to process this. Immediately after I heard the news, I went into salvage mode. Salvage the situation so that the damage is minimal. As soon as I was alone, I knew, it would hit me full force. And I had no idea how I would react.
Soon though, I had the opportunity to observe myself. I drove Nikki home and after promising to call her if things were really bad, I went home. Nikki knew that I would need some alone time, some space to think things through and she was giving it to me. She told me that she would call Mom and Dad and head them off for the night, saying I was with her or something. I was grateful.
When I got home, I didn't know what to do. I didn't feel like doing anything. I was numb, lost in my thoughts and not really aware of my surroundings. I remember drifting to my bedroom and throwing myself onto the bed, and then proceeding to stare at the ceiling for an hour.
I thought about death. Everyone, no matter what they look like or what their beliefs are, fear it. But as I laid there on my bed, I realized I didn't really fear death. I was ok with dying, in fact, I had even wanted it to come. But that was another story. What really scared me was obscurity. The thought that I had and never would do anything worth remembering with my life.
Some people had overcome this by doing something that would land them in a history book for all eternity. Others would strive to make an impression on their friends or family. I had always thought that I would have to have my college degree or something in order to make a difference in the world. Apparently, I did not have that kind of time. So what did that mean for my life? Was I going to go down in history as one of the last people who had the Unbreakable Killing Curse put on them? Because when I thought about it, though I would be in the history books and my name would one day be the answer of a trivia question, I didn't really want to be remember like that. So what was I going to do?
Mom and Dad had tried very hard to give Nikki and I a normal childhood. It helped that we were essentially in witness protection, which meant that none of our friends or neighbors knew that we were a part of the royal family. My friends thought that my grandparents had won the lottery and then died shortly after, leaving the new wealth to my family. Dad worked, but it was more of a hobby for him than something that he had to do. Same thing with my mom. But we always had enough to live comfortably with. We had also tried very hard not to do anything that would give us any notice. This has now come back to bite me.
I was never that good at school, I really wasn't that great of a runner or athlete, I didn't have any special talents, nothing that would make me stand out. Like no one would say, "Oh hey, remember that girl who had an amazing singing voice and would get the lead in every musical? Yeah she died yesterday." What I enjoyed was more along the lines of reading and knowing trivia on every movie and tv series that was worth watching. For example, there is nothing that anyone can tell me about Harry Potter that I don't already know. But the thing is, it isn't something that many people will remember me for. Turns out, fandom knowledge isn't really a legitimate career choice either. Something I had wrestled with when I began college two years ago.
If all I had done with my life so far was memorize every actor in every Marvel movie ever, it had been a pretty sorry life by everyone's standards, except my own of course. And this was my biggest problem, my fatal flaw so to speak. I really did care what other people thought of me. And I was only realizing this when death was staring me in the face.
As I laid there on my bed that night, I made a few decisions, just to start out this journey that i would be taking. First, I would never shy away from the word 'death' or the idea of it. Just because I had the extra advantage of knowing my death date didn't mean that I had to dance around that fact. I was going to talk about it, it was going to be something I and everyone around me became comfortable with. The Unbreakable Killing Curse may have the power to kill me, but it didn't have the power to kill the way that I lived my life, straight and to the point.
Second, I was going to accept that there was nothing that I could do that would make me into any more of a legend than I was already destined to be, so I wouldn't even waste the last months of my life trying. I was going to do what I wanted to do, which granted wouldn't be all that exciting, but it would be fine with me.
Third, I would deal with my family as I saw fit when I saw fit. I would be very surprised if Mom and Dad hadn't already had a long chat with Uncle Terr and Aunt Steph, my dad's siblings. They were the only family we had. We didn't talk to my mom's family. My cousins Nova and Addie, Aunt Steph's kids, were pretty close to us too, so I wondered how they would take the news. Nova, who was my age, would probably sit there and soak it in, much like Nikki had, and then she would come up with creative ways to tackle the problem, probably with a lot of humor involved. Addie was a few years younger than me and was a high school senior. She would more than likely send me a text in the morning that said something along the lines of: "I heard the news. I just wanted to let you know that it is not ok that you are dying on me and thus we should hang out more. It is totally unfair and I will help you track down that ruffian and make him take back his stupid curse."
Nova was a lot like Nikki, Addie was a lot like me. It worked out and we were good friends, all of us. They were the closest friends that I really ever had. All my friends at school were, to put it nicely, self-absorbed jerks. I had a few friends that I had kept up with when I started college, but we had drifted apart and we hardly ever talked anymore. I don't know why Nikki was the sister that got all the nice, loving, funny, awesome friends and I got stuck with the oh-my-gosh-I-am-going-to-die-if-I-don't-have-a-boyfriend, uptight, fashion-obsessed girls. But such is life I suppose.
It was only when my stomach started growling that I realized that I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. I settled on ice cream, deciding that if I was going to die anyway, this meant that my health really didn't matter anymore, thus I was going to eat whatever I wanted from now on. Even as I sat with a blanket on the couch, eating ice cream and watching Netflix, I didn't really keep track of what I was doing. My mind was still elsewhere, thinking about everything that was about to change.
I was looking at my bookcase, which was right next to my TV, when it hit me. There are billions of people that have died since humans started roaming the earth. And they all had one thing in common. Their names were in a book. History books, genealogy books, biographies, works of fiction that are based on real events, it was the only way that anyone was remembered at all. So this was how I was going to be remembered. I wouldn't wait for some researcher to put me in a book of their findings, I was going to make my own story.
I went to my bedroom and I found an empty notebook that I had not used for school. And I spent the night writing down everything I could remember about the worst day of my life. Because if I'm going to be remembered as the last victim of the Unbreakable Killing Curse, it was going to be on my terms.
