The Hint Of Forever

Chapter 1-

Cassidy Irwin is me. Not Cassandra, like everyone says. I am seventeen and three quarters, estimating. My birthday is in August, about three months from now, on the eight. I am a junior at Cincinnati High. Like I said, known as Cassandra, for some reason, is the name mostly everyone in school calls me by. Except this cute guy in my science class named Seth, he calls me Cass. Still better than Cassandra, which is just absurd since it does not even sound like Cassidy. Oh, my other nickname is the "sick girl". Maybe I do have asthma, and I mean a bad case of asthma, but that does not imply me being "sick". Does it? I mean there's people out there with worse than what I'm dealing with. And, yes, I have to suddenly apply "shock badges" on my chest because of breakdowns I have. I can't remember the name the doctor gave me for it, fourteen letter medical term. No cure.

Anyway, I have to take three and a half pills eachday. Two for the heart problems and one and a half for cardiac control for physical encounters I may have. Mostly in school. I take them so frequent the kids in my school even know when I take them. And when I pass by to go to the nurse'a office, they say "Pill time!" and giggle silently.

To make things worse, I have fifty hours of community service for some extra credit thing for my university class I'm taking in the summer. I don't think anyone in the world can have a more boring vacation than me. Since my family doesn't really like to vacation, only for thrill parks and pools. Where I cannot join in too much because of my conditions.

So I decided to do my hours at the clinic downtown. A also work there, so I have my pay. Also because I feel safe there. I don't have a car because I crashed once, broke my wrist and had six staples on my leg. So I take the nasty public bus where old creepy men always stare at me and I just smile nastily back.

Most girls nowadays carry their makeup and shoes and ten phones in their bags. I just carry pills, water, and my badges. And mandatorily, my book. Any book that is about life, because that is something I don't understand.

My family is.... unique. I may say. I have an older sister, Rochelle, who lives in Hawaii with her rich husband Troy. Only visits on Christmas and July. Then it's me and then my brother, Walter. Awesome and sweet kid. He is fifteen. My family loved him very much even if he was gay. My parents are the best parents in the world. Raised us with rules, tough love and a true view of the world. Taught us about today's society and about infinities of love. Because love makes the world go around. Still too complicated for me to explain. Although I still don't know what love is. Nobody knows what love is, even with a million roses and kisses, love is found in the soul. I made that quote.

....okay.... I didn't want to bring up Walter, but I had to. He.... passed away. Six months ago. He had Juvenile Pilocytic Astrocytoma. Nobody ever knew.... he had no signs. No little hint of the monster of a sickness. First he complained he had headaches, it was actually a tumor forming. We gave him aspirin and teas. Pieces of crap. Then he began loosing his eyesight and.... I can't even remember. I begged god to help me forget that nightmare. But it was real.

When the doctor conducted a huge examination, he said he had brain cancer that was already eating up his vision. It was too late. The tumor was removed in Columbus, where red lights and sirens took him away. Rochelle came, it was the first time I saw her cry. That was the longest time she had stayed here. In the hospital, she kept going on and on about how she wished she could have been there for Walter. I just nodded and kept what I really thought of her. Ignorant and selfish.

The day before he died, we went to the hospital in Covington.

I saw Walter under oxygen masks and wires and bandages. The last thing he said to me was,

"Be happy. Because that's all you ever made me."

I cry my eyes out when I hear those words. I wish I would've been diagnosed with the illness that killed my little brother. So I wouldn't of had to experience what real pain was.

He died on a Friday, I was called out of school, I was in PE. The principal just told me there was a family crisis. I didn't ask what it was because I literally sprinted to the pickup lane where my Aunt Tiffany told me we were going to Covington Hospital. At the hospital, doctors and machines rushed into room 512. Where the beep of the heart rate machine shrieked in the hall. He had a brain attack of some sort, it made his heart stop. I remember crying for hours. At the hospital, at the funeral ,at the cemetery, at school, at home. After a month or two I began to let things go. I just loved him so much. The little brother I cared for since birth is now gone. I remember changing his diapers, making his bed for him, walking him to school. Not one day goes by without me thinking of him. Eventually Rochelle returned to live with us. She divorced Troy because he wouldn't let her come back, and Troy was with another woman.

I was depressed for a long time. Sometimes I wouldn't go to school. I had to visit a phsycologist every Sunday because I wouldn't talk or even smile. I would write strange sentences. The doctor gave me anti-depressants, talk about more pills in my purse. After a week or two, they began to make me smile. Then I started to talk and be 'free'.

Now it has been almost six months ago since Walter died. I hope you don't think this is a sad depressing story. But a love adventure. I won't call it a tale or a story because a story can have one ending, in reality. This is a journey through a love odyssey. Which has a lot of endings. And I owe it all to Eugene Campbell.

Oh, Eugene Campbell. He saved me. His love and affection towards me warmed my heart and reminded me that there is a lot more to life than what is in front of you. I can't tell you how much I love him in a paragraph. So here it is, the true one. And I am going to begin from the beginning. From the beginning of a forever.