Her Last Plea✨

Chapter 17

As soon she entered her room, Mirabelle went straight to her balcony. Using the large oak tree in her backyard - which was situated right beside her verandah - she carefully climbed down. Stealthily, she ran across the yard and climbed over the fence. Taking help from the pipeline of her neighbor's house, she climbed up to reach her destination. Inhaling deeply, she first swung over her right leg and then her left leg to jump into Jayden's balcony. Quickly, she looked behind her shoulders to check if anyone had seen her, and knocked on his balcony door - praying that he would be inside his room.

13 year old Jayden Greene was sprawled across his bed, looking at his own pictures from his dance performance at Francesc's winter musical a month ago.

Hearing a knock on his verandah door, he closed the album and got up from his bed. Moving away the curtains, his jaw dropped open at the sight in front of him. Mirabelle Watson stared right back at him, her black hair tied back in a messy bun, eyes red and puffy.

"What the hell happened to you?" Jayden exclaimed, opening the door for her to enter.

Sniffing, she walked past him and plopped down on his bed. "I didn't know where else to go, Jay."

Slowly, Jayden went and sat beside her. "Mira.....speak," he encouraged softly. "We aren't at school, you don't have to pretend like we aren't friends here. Come to think of it, we go back next week, so you gotta speak now."

"I probably won't be going back next week," Mira replied sadly.

"What?" Jay asked uncertainty. "Seriously Mira, tell me what's wrong. It's one thing to avoid me at school, but it's an entirely different thing to not tell me what's wrong after sneaking into my room."

Mira shrugged and dropped her head on Jay's shoulder, looking away. Wrapping her arms around one of his, she started sobbing silently.

Jay sat there as still as a mouse and realized that Mira's tears had to be somehow related to her mother. Mira had started to sneak over to his room back when she was eight (right when she had learned to climb a tree), mostly after her mother had made her cry badly. Jayden, himself, wasn't a fan of Delphina Watson, mainly because, unlike his own mother, Delphina didn't seem to be very interested in being a mom.

"Okay Mira, please stop. You're scaring me a little," he tried to soothe her. Seeing that it wasn't working, he sighed and untangled his arm from her grasp, grabbing her by the shoulders to look at her directly in the eye. "Mirabelle, if you don't calm down now, I'm going to climb on top of the center table at the cafeteria during lunch hour, jump up and down like a fool and scream that you're not only my friend, but you also spend holidays with my family. Moreover, I'm gonna tell everyone that you sneak into my room at night to cry. Imagine, your friends finding out all that, especially the fact that Mirabelle Watson actually cries."

She gasped and hit him on the chest. "You - wouldn't - dare," she squeaked out, nearly laughing while crying at the same time.

"Mom told me about your mother's.....uh......her condition," Jay said softly, after she had somewhat calmed down. "I'm really sorry, Mira."

"Please......just don't," Mira replied. "I'm gonna hear this from everyone for the next several months. I really don't wanna hear it from you as well."

"Okay, I won't repeat it," Jayden quickly agreed to her request. "Now, I want you to lie down and get some sleep. Okay?"

Mira compiled and lied down on his bed, brushing away the tears from her face. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she said suddenly, reaching for the box of tissues on his nightstand. "One moment I'm talking to Dad and then in the next moment, I'm making Ara cry, yelling at my mother........who's acting nicer than ever, mind you. She started being nice when she found out she had cancer. But now that she knows she's dying, it's actually surreal."

"Maybe it's her way of dealing with it?" Jay offered.

"She invited Lexi for lunch the other day and even spoke to her afterwards. Alone."

Jay's eyes widened slightly. "Lexi and your mother? Whoa.....that is kinda odd."

"Tell me about it," Mira replied, stiffling a yawn.

"Maybe Dad knows something. If you want I could ask him for you."

"Don't bother. I'm sure they'll tell me eventually," Mira answered back, rubbing her eyes slightly.

Jayden carefully got up from the bed and covered Mira up with the blanket, shutting off the lights.

"Jay?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't want to take care of my siblings or my Dad," she mumbled weakly. "Does that make me a bad person?"

"I don't think it does," Jay replied honestly.

"Sometimes.........sometimes I wish my mother wasn't my mother," Mira confessed, her lower lip quivering.

"Yes, but if she wasn't your mother, then you wouldn't be you - which would be quite the tragedy."

"Sarcasm noted," Mira muttered, her eyes finally closing.

"Go to sleep, Mira," he whispered, brushing a hand over her face.

He waited for a few minutes for her to completely fall asleep before he bent over and grabbed a pillow from his bed. Hesitating for only a second, Jay quickly gave a kiss to Mira's temple and quietly left his room. If she got a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, he was willing to sleep in the spare room for the night.