CHAPTER 7

Harold presents me with a check for more money than I've ever seen in my life. Granted, like he said, it's only enough to let me live comfortably for awhile. A few months. Maybe close to a year, if I'm careful. I don't even know if I'll be around that long. A year seems like a lifetime. Harold asks if I need help looking for a new apartment and even though I do, I say no thanks.

I still have a month left, so I'll put it off a bit longer.

Corey emailed me a few nights ago, asking how I was, if I needed to talk. Begging me to call her. Part of me wanted to throw myself at the computer screen and tell her yes—yes, I want to talk. I have so much to say and all these thoughts and feelings swirling around my brain and in my chest like itching ants, and I could tear my heart open just to get it all out.

I want to, but I don't. She made her stance clear. She's moved on, and I refuse to be anybody's charity case. I deleted her mail without responding.

Besides, I have Casper and to a lesser degree, RoxWell, who still never writes me anything but song lyrics. But it's sort of our weird thing now. I've started sending him messages, telling him about my day. He'll respond with lyrics from a song that says what he's trying to get across. He's had to stray from Beatles songs to get the right effect, but that's okay.

Casper is something else. She's brass and blunt, and tells me I'm over-sensitive so there are a lot of things I don't tell her. Sometimes she has bad days and goes off on rants about stupid things, but most of the time...I don't know. I think she's just tired. She's got these parents who love her to pieces and it's killing her right along with the cancer.

I need to get out of this house, she writes me tonight. Let's go do something. Go somewhere. Weren't you saying there was an art show where you're at?

That was so long ago I almost don't remember. I still have the page bookmarked, so I forward her the link. Then it dawns on me what she said.

She wants to go do something.

With me.

In person.

Before I can think of an excuse to not go, she writes: Sounds good. I can take the light-rail downtown and you can meet me?

My heart races. What a terrible idea and why on earth would she think of it?

Me: You don't want to meet me.

Her: Why not? Are you ugly?

Me: I don't know...

Her: It was a joke.

Me: Oh.

Her: There's a route that runs at 10:35 which would put me there around noon. Cool?

I have no other excuse. I am excuseless. What I gave her was the best I had. She's going to meet me, and she's going to realize I don't know how to filter what I say and I'm stupid and can hardly walk and chew gum at the same time. More than that, she'll realize how utterly, totally uninteresting I am. But she'd tell me I'm being an idiot if I tried to explain that, so I tell her it's cool even though it's not, and I try to refrain from having a panic-attack.