Page 117 of Remember Us This Way

She forces a small smile, but the heartbreak wins out and she crumbles again. “I’ll be ready,” Zoey promises her.

With that, Dr. Sanchez quickly speaks with Zoey’s parents as Kelly pops in to say goodbye, though it won’t be long until we see her again. Erica helps Zoey out of her bed, and her father quickly rushes to her side, curling his arm around her waist to help take her weight, and the fiercest jealousy cuts through me. I promised her that I would always be the man to catch her when she fell.

Instead, I grab her bags, and before I know it, she’s back in her parents’ car, heading back to East View. It’s a long fucking day filled with overwhelming sadness, grief, and helplessness, and by the time night has fallen and Zoey is asleep in my arms, tucked into her bed, I can barely breathe.

After making sure she has everything she needs, I slip out from beneath her before pulling the blanket right up to her chin, keeping her warm and watching the way she snuggles into her pillow. When she’s asleep like this, so at peace, it’s hard to comprehend how the cancer is pulsing through her body and poisoning her from the inside out.

Feeling myself starting to break, I silently move across Zoey’s room and slip out into the hall, pulling the door closed behind me before dashing down the stairs and heading straight out the backdoor. I barely get a step out into the night before I fall to my knees, gasping for air as my eyes grow watery.

She’s not getting any better. The chemo was supposed to work. It was supposed to breathe new life into her and give her a fighting chance, but now we’re back to step one. Only this time, the leukemia has had a chance to grow and spread through her precious body.

That round of chemo tore her to shreds. How the hell is she supposed to endure another, more intense round?

Fuck. I’ve never ached like this in my life. I’m trying to hold myself together for her, to be the fucking hero she needs, but seeing her like this is killing me. I’d give anything to take away her pain, to put myself in her place. I would endure it all if it meant saving her from this hell.

Finally catching my breath, I fall to my ass with my back up against the wall of the house. Then despite not touching a single cigarette since Zoey showed me how to find peace, I pull one out of my pocket and light it up, desperately breathing it in.

My hands shake as my world slowly crumbles around me. I feel like I’m screaming out for help, but no one is coming because Zoey is my salvation. She’s my savior, and now she needs me to be hers, but I don’t know what I can do to make her pain go away. She needs me to save her, and all I can do is stand back and watch her leukemia spread, slowly pulling her away from me, no matter how hard I hold on.

I’ve been sitting outside for over an hour when I hear the backdoor open. Lifting my head from my knees, I find Zoey looking down at me, and as I go to get up, she walks right into me and steps over my legs, dropping straight down into my lap.

Her arms wrap around my neck as I hold on to her, so damn terrified to let go.

“We’re going to be okay,” she promises me, leaning right in and resting her head against my shoulder. “I love you too much to leave this world yet. I’m not going anywhere, Noah. You’re my bestest friend, and there is still so much I want to experience with you. You’ll see, you still have a million more years to drive me crazy. I’m not nearly done loving you yet.”

My hand brushes over her hair and down her cheek, feeling the wetness of her tears. I should be the one comforting her, not the other way around. “Nothing would make me happier,” I tell her. “We’re going to have it all, Zo. Just you and me until the end of time.”

47

Zoey

Well, this is shit.

I stare up through the gates of hell—East View High—and suddenly I don’t feel so brave. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking about coming back here. Maybe I was seeking some semblance of normalcy during these few recovery weeks, but I clearly wasn’t thinking straight. Perhaps the leukemia has spread to my brain and is screwing with my thought process.

Crap. That was dark, even for me. I shouldn’t joke like that.

I’ve already missed almost two months of school and am drastically behind in all my classes, though not a single teacher has pushed me to hand in schoolwork. At this point, I think it’s safe to say I won’t be graduating. It’s not like my attendance is going to get any better over the next few months when I’m in and out of the treatment center. But I figured, why not try and experience life like a normal teenager before it’s all stripped away again? Sitting in my room day in and day out, recovering from my first round of chemo, is doing my head in. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been more than occupied with the story I’m writing on my laptop, but it doesn’t keep me from going stir-crazy.

The football season finished a few weeks ago, and without Noah’s crazy training schedule, he’s been able to spend more time with me, taking his classes online and only going in for exams, which seem to be all the time. I can’t complain though, I’ll take him any way I can get him. I’m just grateful his campus is so close. If he’d taken any other offer for college, this would be so much harder.

There’s only a week before Christmas and New Year’s break, then I’ll be starting my second round of chemo straight away. And God, it makes me anxious. I know what to expect, how it’s going to make me want to claw the flesh right off my body, how my insides are going to tremble as the drugs are slowly forced through my veins. All I can hope for is that I have the mental strength to keep pushing through it.

But if this doesn’t work . . . shit. I can’t allow myself to go there.

It has to work. There’s no other choice. This is my final shot.

I know Dr. Sanchez said there’s a plan B, that I have other options if the second round of chemo fails, but at the rate the leukemia cells are spreading through my body and how quickly I’ve been declining, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I won’t have the strength to keep fighting. Especially considering how weak I’ll be following the chemo.

Like I said, I have no other choice. This has to work.

My phone chimes in my hand, and I glance down as I wait for Hope, too chicken to walk through the gates by myself.

Resident Asshole: You good? Just got back to campus.

Zoey: I think I’ve finally lost my mind!

I hit send before holding my phone up and taking a photo of the school gates, letting him know my plans for the day. I quickly attach that to a new text and wait for his onslaught to follow.

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