“New memories, you say?” I grinned. “Is there space for some of these other things I have in mind?”
“What kind of things?” He bent his head, his lips hovering over mine.
“The things my dad would kill you for.”
“Hmm.” He pressed his forehead against mine. “I think that we can definitely fit them somewhere in there.”
18
NOAH
I watchedher as she walked down the street, right in front of me, wishing I could freeze the time so that this moment we were in right now would last forever.
But I couldn’t.
Hopelessness was the worst thing that one could feel, and I was filled with it, consumed by thoughts that painted my life in colors of gray and black. Colors I wanted to run away from, but how could I, when the only person that held the keys to the bright shades was going to be taken away from me?
She put on a brave face for all of us, but I could see deeper than some of the others could—she was terrified. I always wondered what was there after the end—after the flatline. Was there going to be some kind of light, or was she going to spend her eternity trapped in the darkness, waiting for a better time to come?
Was she going to remember me, her life, her parents, and everything she wanted to do, or was she going to forget and become a floating soul without direction, without a purpose?
I never really thought about death. It was an omnipresent aspect of life, but I never had to deal with it. All of my loved ones were healthy and safe. All of my friends were still here, and even the people that weren’t part of my life anymore, were okay.
But now, as I kept staring at her back and at the white, puffy clouds gathering on the horizon, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Every single day since my mother told me what was happening with Sophie, I woke up with thoughts of death and endings. I went through my days thinking about it. My nights, my once pleasant dreams, were replaced by nightmares, painting the picture of a world without her in it.
Was she in pain right now?
Was she lying to us just so that she wouldn’t worry us?
What was I going to do when the time came, when the clock stopped ticking?
Was this world our last destination or was there something else afterward?
The gravelly road, cutting this field in half, scrunched beneath my feet, my boots crushing the tiny rocks. Sophie’s light hair wavered on the afternoon wind, her arms spread on both sides, as if she was flying.
She threw her head backward, laughing at whatever she was thinking about, yet I couldn’t find it in myself to even crack a small smile.
I’d tried behaving as if nothing was really going on for her sake, but every single time I would leave her, it felt like a gaping hole the size of the Gibraltar passing took place inside my chest, tearing at the edges, spreading wider and wider, and I feared that I wouldn’t be able to keep going on like this.
“Noah!” she yelled, pushing away the dark thoughts clouding my mind. “Hurry up!”
Her body was turned toward me, and I drank her up. I drank every single moment we had, storing them somewhere deep inside my mind for safekeeping, because I knew that soon enough I wouldn’t be able to have them.
She didn’t want to tell me what the doctor said after her last checkup just two days ago, but Andrew’s face gave away all the answers I wanted to get.
Sophie didn’t have long.
She decided to stop all the treatments, except for the painkillers, defying all of us and what we wanted for her. But I respected her wishes.
“I don’t want to be a vegetable, Noah,” she told me when I confronted her about her decision. “I want to spend my last months living, instead of fighting a losing battle. I know that I won’t survive this, and trust me, this isn’t me giving up. But I know, I just know.”
And what was I supposed to say to that? I couldn’t be selfish with her, no matter how much it hurt knowing that she wouldn’t live long enough to see the next year. Grim faces, hollow souls, pain and anguish, they colored the walls of her house, and while her parents and her brother tried to do the same thing I was doing, tried to be strong in front of her, I could see the cracks in their armor every single time she wasn’t watching.
Today, she wanted us to go for a walk. I wanted to stay inside, to keep her close, to hug her to me, to give her years of my life if I could, just so that she wouldn’t disappear.
I quickened my pace, reaching her in less than five seconds, and wrapped my arms around her middle, pulling her to me.
“You’re awfully slow today,” she said, her eyes fluttering as she looked up at me. “Is this old age that’s catching up with you?”
