Following Chase Haven

Chase

//+Chapter One+// And Just Like That I Wasn't Dead

The story I will tell you now is not for the faint of heart. Not for the hopeless romantics that believe with enough love any story can have a happy ending. Not for the ones don't like to cry.

It is for the ones who lost their way. For the ones who have there own sad story. For there are stories far sadder than this.

*****

I fell in love with a boy who wanted to die.

I fell in love with a saint, a soldier who couldn't go to war. A boy who was too young and too sick to do the only thing he ever wanted.

He wanted to die, he got his wish, some would say he was lucky.

I never liked sad stories. Always hoped the ones I would tell would be ones about love and hope and wisdom. About happy things, I'm wiser now. Wiser for what I have learned. Wiser for what I have known that many will never know. I have learned that a happy story does not always have the ending that one would hope for, but the best ending it could have had.

*****

I don't know how I woke up that day and got dressed like it was a normal one. Did everything I always do while Chase was in the hospital. We had known that he was terminal for a month now but today he would find out how long he had left. If the cancer that was spreading through his body hadn't stopped then it would surly be well under a year. I can't imagine how I even got out of bed that mourning. I wasn't tired or sad or scared. I didn't even think about what my only friend could be going through.

It's not as if I didn't care just that I couldn't allow myself to. Because if I cared then it became real and I couldn't, can't face the reality of what was happening to him. There was a sickness eating him from the inside out. Consuming him by turning his own body against itself. By literally making his own cells the enemy. And when the enemy is yourself it's at its strongest because it knows you to well to let you win.

*****

The last day of high school. The last real day, the one where every teacher says they are still going to teach but they never do because everyone is talking and is so exited that they can't stop. We all know that day. Chase Haven walks into Writers Workshop. No one looks up, we all got used to it a long time ago. He has no hair, none. Even when it starts to grow back he shaves it again. I don't know why, something about acceptance, I asked once but I can't remember.

"Hey Chase," I say softly as he sits down next to me on the floor in the front of the classroom. I think sometimes that I'm his only friend. People have a hard time talking to him. They don't know what to say or how to say it of if they should feel sorry for him.

"Hey Riley, are you going to go to the ceremony tomorrow?" He looks at me inquisitively. His eyes at blue. Grey now, aged the way you would expect the eyes of a man in a nursing home to look. Like they have seen a million things lived a thousand lives. Old eyes, wise eyes. To old looking for a boy of 18.

"No."

"Why?"

"Because we don't have to and I don't want to."

"We'll I'm going. We only get to go to high school graduation once." Again I am reminded of mortality, a thing I would have liked not to think about, but I thing I am forced to think about often.

"Chase stop avoiding the subject," my voice becomes suddenly softer, a thing I can usually avoid, "How long."

"Three months, four if I'm real.lucky but I don't see myself making it that far."

"Ace don't say that."

"I'm tired Riley, I'm done, I give up. I can't keep living like this no one should have to. I want to get it over with. I want it all to be over once and for all. There's no more pretending now, no more hoping, holding on for one last treatment."

"Chase come on there has got to be something!"

His voice is suddenly very soft. Quiet, so quiet I can badly hear, "It spread to my brain Riley. There's nothing more they can do. I signed a do not recessitate order today. They won't bring me back again."

My face is blank. I would have liked to have seen it. He had always told me that he would hang on with every breath. He always said there was no way the cancer would ever beat him. I don't know where the cancer started but it spread to his lungs a few months ago and now to his brain. He can't be saved and somewhere in my heart there is the power to accept what will inevitably happen.

"I've got to go to my locker I forgot my textbook," he stands up slowly, to slowly. He grabs the pass and heads towards the door but before he can leave he turns to me an odd expression on his face, "Goodbye Riley Stevens, it's nice to know that someone cares sometimes." He leaves without another word.

I sat in silence for a long time. I knew that he should be back by now but I can't move the fear makes that Impossible. After a minute or so of this I stand slowly, not as slowly as chase had but slowly.

I walk slowly over to the teacher. I tell her he is still gone. She immediately get to her feet and leaves the door open. She never comes back.

Little by little the hall fills. Students pour out of there classrooms. I know why but I keep telling myself that I'm wrong even though I know I'm right. I am alone in my classroom frozen in shock.

Then the sirens. They make a horrible noise. So load it fills my ears and I cover them frantically. I scream and the tears come hot on my face. And I cry out, I don't try to stop myself this time. I pound my fists on the ground, "IT'S NOT FAIR!" I scream and no one cares, no one comes.

Chase Haven will never go to war. Chase Haven will never fight for freedom. Chase Haven died of disease not for his country. Chase Haven will not be remembered. Chase Haven is just another poor innocent soul to go down as another forgotten victim of an uncurable disease.

Good people die of cancer. Every day and I bet most of us don't even think about it until it's us or someone we love.

Chase Haven was a good person. He died. That was the day I realized I was still alive.