The rain is falling harder, the noise almost deafening, like it’s a metaphor for the way I’m feeling. I walk over to the dream board and study the pictures I carefully cut out of magazines and pinned there so long ago. They are as familiar to me as my face, and I trace my finger over them gently. I spent so much time back then looking at them, dreaming, imagining my future.

They are not pictures of exotic destinations. No pictures of Disney World or Paris or the pyramids in Egypt. Nothing like that.

The pictures are of bridal shoes, jewelry, bouquets. Cakes and flower-strewn altars. Brides wearing the most exquisite dresses, with immaculate hair and makeup and expressions of blissful rapture.

There is a knock on the door and I turn my head toward it. The handle turns and it opens; my mother’s head pops around.

“There you are,” she says. “Are you OK?”

I nod.

“Well, come back out then and mingle with your guests. They’re starting to think you’ve deserted them.”

After a last, lingering glance at the pictures, I follow her, down the hallway back into the lounge.

“I found her,” my mother announces brightly to no one in particular. Still, most people turn and smile. Amanda has been in the kitchen getting a drink and comes over to peer at me shrewdly.

“You OK?” she asks quietly.

I put my arms around her neck and rest my forehead against hers. This close I can see the freckles on her nose that she spent a great deal of our teenage years caking in foundation to try to cover.

“No,” I say. “I’m not OK. But thank you for asking.”

She frowns, confused.

“How about a speech from the birthday girl,” someone calls, and a hush falls over the room, the only sound the rain, which is pounding now. Everyone looks at me expectantly. I pull away from Amanda, although I leave one arm slung over her shoulders. I look out at the faces, all watching me expectantly, all familiar and yet so foreign, in that moment. These people have the rest of their lives to look forward to. They will mourn me, of course, at first. How long does that last, though? Until ordinary life creeps back in and thoughts of me become further and further in between? Selfishly, perhaps, the thought of my family and friends living on without me brings me no comfort, just fear.

Life just got urgent.

If you have something you want to do, do it. Do it now.

The old lady’s words echo back to me.

“I’m getting married,” I say quietly.

My mother’s face creases in a quizzical expression as she tries to digest the words she just heard.

“What?” she asks.

“Say that again?” Amanda says.

“I’m getting married,” I say again, louder. “I’M GETTING MARRIED.”

The rain stops.

My mother looks from me to Amanda.

“To her?” she says.

Chapter Four

There must be something they can do? A drug trial? Did you ask him about any new drug trials?”