Silver Lining

14. Wishes

17 days before

As soon as the Wishing on a Star foundation had sent me an email about Logan, I immediately replied and asked for Logan's email so I could talk to her.

Logan was an eleven year old girl from Los Angeles. She had Ewings Sarcoma, a type of bone cancer. She hadn't mentioned a lot about treatment in her emails, but the Wishing on the Star foundation had told me she started Chemotherapy about a month ago. Over the past few days, Logan and I had been emailing back and forwards. Logan and I talked a lot about One Direction, which was her favourite band. I had met them once at a music event in New York, and she loved hearing about that.

The Wishing on a Star foundation was a charity that granted sick kids a wish like going to Disneyland, or overseas. Logan had wished to meet me, which every time I thought about it nearly brought me to tears. Logan is the sweetest kid. Her and her mum had come to Australia for a weeks holiday, and I was going to meet her today! Both Logan and I had been looking forwards to to this day for ages. Or what seemed like ages.

I met Logan and her mum, Sandy, at their hotel in Melbourne at ten am. When I walked into the lobby, Logan started to jump up and down and wave excitedly. I waved back, walking towards them quickly. I bent down and gave Logan a hug. "Oh my gosh! I can't believe I'm meeting you!" Logan whispered excitedly.

"I know! I've been so excited about meeting you too!" I told Logan, and she laughed.

She looked a lot different to the photo of herself she had sent me. In the photo she had little tufts of fluffy light brown hair, which was completely gone now. She was a lot more pale, and had large dark circles under her eyes. She still had a huge smile on her face though. I stood up and shook her mums hand. "Hi, I'm Madison," I said.

"I'm Sandy. It's so nice to finally meet you, some days you're all Logan can talk about," she told me with a laugh.

We took a taxi to the National Gallery of Victoria. Logan asked me in one email if I had ever been there, and wanted to hear all about it. Art is her favourite thing in the entire world, and has always wanted to go to the National Gallery of Victoria. So it was only right I take her, duh.

As we got out of the taxi her eyes grew as wide as saucers. "This is sooo cool," she whispered in awe.

We spent three hours walking around the galleries. Logan stared at each and every painting, trying to take it all in. Logan and I both liked the same painting the most, one by Pablo Picasso. After we had stood there for about eight minutes studying it, Logan broke the silence. "I've seen pictures of this painting so many times, it's weird to see it in real life."

"I know the feeling," I told her.

"Did you guys have any plans for lunch?" I asked them once we had finished in the art gallery.

Sandy, Logan's mum, shook her head. "No, we don't."

"Fantastic!" I said, beaming at them. "What would you think about having lunch with Laurel, Theo, Matt, and I?"

Logans big brown eyes doubled in size. "OH MY GOSH! Really?"

I smiled amusedly at her excitement. "Yeah, of course. It'd be fun having you!"

***

Sandy, Logan and I arrived at the restaurant at the exact same time as Laurel, Matt, and Theo. We took a selfie of all of us in front of the restaurant- "So I can remember this day forever!" Logan said. Her mum than took a couple of photos of us all, and then we got a photo of Logan, her mum, and I. After a mini photoshoot, we all went into the restaurant. We were at Chez Dre, a restaurant in South Melbourne. Laurel, Logan, and I all had the chicken salad, which had quinoa in it and was so delicious it wasn't funny. Theo and Sandy had the smoked salmon baguette, and Matt had a roasted eggplant and buckwheat salad. We were all stuffed to the brim, but the desert menu sounded to good to not at least try, so we all talked for ages before odering desert, trying to get hungry again. Logan told us all about her school and friends. She had to leave school for a little bit while she had Chemotherapy, but she hoped to go back sometime in the next three months. She asked us a lot about the PlayFest event, and other events. She was going to go to one at the start of this year, right before she was diagnosed with cancer. She couldn't go because she was in hospital. "But it's okay, 'cause I'm meeting y'all now anyway!" She told us cheerfully.

Logan was really cheerful about everything, and I admired her for that. She'd been through more shit than she should of at her age, and she still stayed optimistic. It made you feel happy.

After Chez Dre, we said bye to Logan and Sandy. Logan pulled out a book of her satchel style bag, and gave it to me. We sat on a bench on the street as I flipped through it. There was a mixture of things in it, collages, photos of Logan and her friends, some photos of her at hospital, and letters. apparently all of Logan's friends were in the YouTuber fandom, and they all wrote letters to us and Logan glued them into this book. The cover was a watercolour painting of me Logan had done, and it was really good. "Gosh, you're good enough at painting that you could of been in that gallery! Thank you Logan, I love it." She beamed at me, and I beamed back. Gosh, beaming is great. "Here, I got you something too." I unzipped my bag, and took out the plastic pocket where I was keeping the photo.

I handed it to Logan, who opened the plastic pocket and pulled out the photo. It was a photo of One Direction that was autographed by them that they had given me when I met them. Her face lit up, and she ran her finger over the autograph. "It's even signed! Thank you so much Madison, today was the greatest." She wrapped her arms around me, hugging me.

***

"Can you hear that?" I asked Theo. He stopped digging in his pockets for the key to our apartment and listned. You could hear faint music coming from inside the door, but it was too quiet to figure out what song it was.

Theo shrugged. "One of us must of left the radio on." He found the key and unlocked the door.

We went inside, and followed the music down the end of the hallway to our bedroom. As we got closer we realised it wasn't music, but speaking.

We stopped just outside our bedroom door. I squeezed Theo's hand, even though my hands were clammy.

"I believe in you, that you'll make the right choice," was being repeated over and over again. From inside our bedroom. He was inside.

The panic rose in my chest, and my vision started to fade into black. My head pounded, and Theo looked like he was a million miles away. I sunk to the ground, the world fading to black.