I wasn't supposed to tell anyone. I was going to be eighteen freshly out of highschool and tomorrow is or I mean was supposed to be my 19th birthday. Tate and I were going to explore the world. We were going to be something until of course… it happened. Tate’s been my best friend since 5th grade. We were both new to the tiny town of Savannah, Georgia, I from California, she from Florida. Tate and I went all through middle school with the typical fights and drama of twelve year old girls, and then high school began. We went to Islands high school which had a great advantage to the other schools because we were in the center of all the best fast food restaurants, this meant we had open campus at lunch and Tate and I were obsessed with Wendy's. A few years later when we had become freshman, Tate met this boy named Grayson. Grayson was tall with shiny short black hair and he was the jock of the football team. We all knew he was going somewhere in life or at least make it to ivy league. Tate and I were sitting in the smallest booth in the corner of Wendy's on a typical day for lunch. Grayson and his friend finally walked in about 10 minutes later which was strange because all the freshman had lunch the same time. They walked to the back of the small restaurant to the table booth that was just adjacent to ours. As Grayson got up to go get his and Finnly’s food, at the front, he tripped over lord knows what and spilled his neapolitan smoothie all over Tate in the back corner of Wendy's.
They've been dating ever since.
As for Finley, he's a pretty cool guy. He’s about 6’2 and has a whiter smile than the Mr. Clean guy from the commercials. He's not really athletic in the sense of football or soccer, he's more into dance and gymnastics which makes him pretty special in my book. We had hung out a few times, mostly when Tate and Gray wanted to be “alone.” We were really the second wheels in the equation.
Gray caused a lot problems at the beginning of his and Tate's relationship. I was overly protective of my best friend and she was clinging to him more than cling wrap clings to the box. She would hang out with him every day after school, and it seemed like she never had time  to hang out with me and study sessions weren’t happening as often as normal. Therefor a majority of their first few months of dating, I was either cheering, dancing, or hanging out with Finn at Tate’s house in the fully decorated basement while Tate and Gray were in her bedroom upstairs. Tate was very wealthy, I guess that's really why we became friends. Her dad was an architect and my dad was a lawyer and we always were at big parties together where there were always adults around drinking their fancy wine and gossiping about how all their friends were getting married, divorced, or having kids. Tate and I were both only children so it was inevitable that we become best friends.
Finn and I never became a “thing.” We just talked a lot and I honestly think I trusted him more than than I trusted anyone… but I wouldn't dare tell Tate that. She'd been there for everything and I for her. We even got a fish together, but he died a few weeks later because we forgot to feed him. RIP Paul.
Other than Grayson, Finn, and Tate, school and life were pretty fantastic. I got along with everyone but I also didn't like anyone at the same time. I was typically the girl that everyone came to but everyone was also scared to talk to. I'm extremely trustworthy and extremely secretive. People think they know me because i've mastered the art of letting people know me and also not telling anyone anything at the exact same time.

Two months later, I woke up with swollen glands on either side of my neck. I didn't really pay much attention to it but of course the thought of “what could this be” was always in the back of my head. I went to school at the same time as I would any other day and my throat didn't hurt or anything it was just these swollen glands that were somewhat painful and extremely tender. As I arrived at school, Tate was standing in the parking lot next to Grayson.
“Hey where were you last night? We all waited forever but you never showed.” Tate said this as her back was towards me. When she turned around she looked as pale as a ghost.
“Is there something on my face?” I said quizzically as I walked closer.
“What is on your neck?” Tate said in a tone that I had never heard her speak in.
“What?” I pulled out my pink sparkly compact mirror that I’d had since third grade.
“Oh no I didn't know you could see them, they were just a little sore”
Both sides of my neck were hard as a rock and swollen, not a lot but enough that you could definitely tell something was off. I called my mom and she came and got me almost immediately, we went straight to the doctor and the second the doctor looked at me, he knew. I had stage 2 non-hodgkin lymphoma. There I sat, in the beige colored room with tinkerbell quotes stuck to the wall, and I cried. My first question was,
“Whats going to happen to me?”
The doctor quickly replied, “Your treatment is up to you and your family, however no matter what treatment you choose, you will lose your hair.”
I grabbed my phone quickly to look at my notifications, Tate had texted me,
“What’s going on and where are you?”
I opened the text message and my thin pale fingers started typing those three terrible words.
“I have cancer.”
My mom rushed me to the oncology wing in the hospital. There I was poked, and I met all of my nurses and my doctor. Everything that day was a blur, around 20 minutes after school ended I was told I had a visitor. I didn't care that I had a visitor, all I wanted was to get out of that terrible stale smelling room and I wanted to put on real clothes. It was Tate. She walked to the door, I could tell she'd been crying, she stopped before the threshold and just stared, I took out my headphones which had been in my ears since I got to the oncology floor, and I sat up. Tate walked over, sat down, and we cried together. A solid 2 hours of us holding each other crying. I had told my parents to leave the room because adults crying makes me too nervous and anxious. Tate and I talked about it after we got ourselves together. I told her I was going to lose my hair and she told me that she was going to lose hers too.  I looked at her obviously very confused.
“No best friend of mine is going bald without me.”
We cried again for another thirty minutes.
Later during the week Finn came by, Tate had been coming by everyday after school and when her dad would let her miss school. Finn brought a giant teddy bear which just so happened to be on the same day as my first chemo treatment. He sat with me through it as I vomited and cried all over everything, I don't think i'd ever seen that much blood before in one day.
Three years into treatment and I still wasn't even close to cancer free, I had lost all my hair already and it had been gone for a while. It was a random day when I was back at school and everyone was staring at me. I had been used to it at the beginning of my diagnosis but now I was just confused. Later that day I had an appointment and I guess everyone knew about it. Most of the kids in school new my entire schedule since now I was known as “cancer kid.”  I got to the hospital and the chemo was a different type, I was sick and tired and I wanted to be out of the hospital. Since I was now old enough to drive myself, I normally left school early and drove all the way to the hospital. I texted Tate,
“Come get me.”
Tate replied, “I'm on my way.” This was a joke we had kept between each other since the beginning of my treatment, except this time she wasn't kidding. Tate came to the hospital for what I thought was just a visit. But it wasn't, Tate came into my room with my suitcase. I was so confused as to why she had my luggage in her hand.
“Let's go,” she said in a stern voice. “Let's go to Jamaica.”
There were no if, ands, or buts. She got me out of that ugly hard bed and off we went to Jamaica we didn't tell anyone, not Grayson, not Finn, not even my parents. We just got up and left as if it were as normal as eating toast for breakfast. In Jamaica is where it happened. I called my parents to say hello, but not only was it a lovely hello, it was my final goodbye.
There I lay with the warm sun beating onto my pale face. There I lay listening to the whooshing of the cool ocean waves in the breeze. There I lay talking to my best friend about what was to come after I was gone. There I lay dead by the ocean. There I lay.