Page 100 of The Beautiful Collision
This isn’t about forgiving Maine. I’m not ready for that, not yet. This is about fighting back against the casual cruelty of a universe that lets children suffer while their families watch helplessly. This is about channeling my grief for one child into action for another.
This is about helping one child, when I couldn’t help Ethan.
This is about helping one child, when my parents did nothing to help me.
I create a new document, and Maya the Party Queen goes for broke, except there’s no booze at this event. I work with the kind of focused intensity I haven’t felt in a week, and within an hour, I’ve got a website, social accounts, and a fundraising page ready to go.
But I need a photo of Chloe. Something clean, professional, and emotionally compelling without being manipulative. I dig through Maine’s social media, and the normalcy of his posts from six months ago is heartbreaking. Pictures from team parties, stupid memes, a performer playing a role.
Then I find myself lingering on him, not Sophie.
It’s a photo from the party we held together. Maine has his arm slung around Mike’s shoulders, mid-laugh aboutsomething, his head thrown back. The camera caught him in that perfect moment where his entire face is transformed by genuine joy.
My chest tightens painfully.
God, I miss that laugh. The real one, not the performative boom he uses to command a room, but this one, unguarded and slightly higher-pitched than you’d expect from someone his size. The one that made his eyes crinkle at the corners and my heart melt.
I swipe to the next photo before I can stop myself. This one his old roommate must have taken without him knowing. He’s bent over a textbook at their kitchen table, one hand in his hair, completely focused. It’s captionedwhen the class clown actually studies.
But I remember what that focus felt like when it was turned on me. The weight of those blue eyes when he’d trace his fingers over my whole body, mapping me like I was something precious he was trying to memorize. It was intense and amazing and breathtaking.
Not helping with the task at hand, Maya, my mind reminds me.
I focus back on the job, and then, there. A picture of Chloe from last summer. She’s laughing at something off-camera, her entire face lit up with joy despite the oxygen mask. She looks so alive, so fiercely herself despite everything her body is putting her through.
This is the one.
I build the website around that photo. Clean lines, compelling copy that tells Chloe’s story without exploiting it. I add a donation tracker, link it to a secure payment system, and include just enough medical details to be credible but not so dense they’ll make people’s eyes glaze over.
I briefly pause to wonder if I should ask Maine’s permission.
Or his family’s.
But, fuck it, what’s he going to do? Be angry at me?
I’m going to help this girl, whether they like it or not.
Next, permits. Pine Barren University requires forty-eight hours’ notice for any campus event involving more than fifty people. I know this because I’ve organized enough parties to have the events coordinator’s direct number saved in my phone.
I shoot Patricia an email, playing the grad student card hard, mentioning that several faculty members from the nursing program will likely participate. I copy in Professor Langham, my favorite professor, who I know has a soft spot for student initiatives and likes to run as well.
Then sponsors. Every local business within a five-mile radius gets a personalized email. Pizza Plus, where Maine works, gets a special note about how one of their employees needs community support. O’Neil’s, Pine Barren Bagels, the campus bookstore… everything and everyone I can think of.
The social media campaign needs to be organic but organized. I create a hashtag: #RunForChloePBU. Simple, searchable, specific enough that it won’t get lost in the noise. I design shareable graphics using the campus colors, create sample posts that people can copy and paste. I make it easy for people to help.
I reach out to the campus newspaper, the local news station, the radio show that does human-interest stories every Friday. I craft press releases that tell a story, about a campus hockey star who’s given so many people so much joy and whose little sister needs some help.
And, through all this, for the first time in weeks, I feel good.
Happy and in control.
As I get the wheels turning, my phone buzzes with responses almost immediately. Patricia says yes to the permits. Dr. Langham offers to personally sponsor the event for an eye-watering sum. Joe from Pizza Plus says they’ll provide free food for all runners at the finish line, plus a cash donation.
The momentum builds with each response, each commitment, each share of the campaign page. It’s working. It’s actually working. Money is already ticking in, but more important than that is the buzz that’s building, because I knowthatis what will make a party blow up.
I pause, suddenly aware that I’ve been at this for three hours straight. My neck aches from hunching over my laptop. My coffee went cold ages ago. But for the first time in days, I feel like myself. Not the party girl or the perfect student or any of the other masks I wear.
Just Maya, using every skill I have to focus on something apart from my pain.
