I looked to her, and I saw that frightened girl looking out the window. She looked so fragile beneath to rough exterior. Close to breaking, close to leaving, and dangerously close to disappearing.
“No.”
She still didn't look at me. Her eyes followed the objects we passed, and her mouth remained closed. She pretended I wasn't there, or either, she was stuck inside her mind, with her complicated thoughts.
“I love you, Julie,” I told her, licking my lips. My mouth felt dry, as if it was the first time I had ever said the words to her. When she still didn't look my way, a lump grew in my throat. “We all do.”
She took in a deep breath, and rested her face against her closed fist. “I know that. I do,” she answered slowly. “That's what makes it all so hard,” she told me, and for the first time in days, I felt like I was talking with Julie again.
This girl, who had been so detrimental to my coming back from the undead, had disappeared at the first doctor appointment. It was then that she had disappeared, and she had said it was because she was tired of fighting.
Secretly, I think she was afraid to.
Now, hearing that there was no chance without the transplant, she was scared and confused. I could see the thoughts in her mind turning over and over. Should she stay, or go? Should she fight, or give up?
I thought about this song that she had played for me, one of our many times of driving around with the radio on. She had made her own mix tape (only it had been a CD) and she and I drove around until it had played the entire way through.
There was this one song, by Ross Copperman, I think. I had never heard of him, but Julie had put two or three of his songs on my CD, and although I liked all of them, there was one that reminded me of my statue beside me.
The song was called Holding On and Letting Go. It said that it was one door swinging open, and one door swinging closed. Some prayers found an answer, and some prayers never know. We're holding on and letting go.
At that moment, it explained Julie and I completely.
I was the one holding on, and Julie was the one letting go. She was waiting for someone to tell her it was okay to do so, and it wasn't. Not to me. It never would be.
“Fight, Julie. Not just for me, or them, but for you,” I told her, and I glanced her way. The way her green eyes met mine only made my words more powerful. She knew that, and I knew that.
“What if I get my hopes up, and I still lose?” she asked me, and she was on the verge of crying. Because everytime Julie was on the verge of crying, or was crying already, it was because she was scared. I knew that now. My eyes had been opened.
“Then you can go knowing you gave it everything. You can't let your cancer have you,” I told her.
“It already does.”
I shook my head. “No, it doesn't. It has your body, Julie, not you, not your soul. But if you don't fight, it will, and then it wins, and I don't want it to win. I want you to go down fighting, whether it works in our favor or not,” I replied.
Julie wiped beneath her eyes as I pulled up to the curb of her house. She didn't immediately get out. She sat there, and she looked at my dashboard with a torn look on her face.
“I'm just scared,” she told me, and looked at me. Her eyes were blurred with tears. “I don't want to keep putting everyone I love through this pain. I wish I could just quit hurting everyone,” she told me.
That was when I unbuckled my seat belt and moved next to her. I held her against me, and I felt her. Once again, it was Julie in my arms, and Julie in my soul, and she felt it.
“I'd take this pain any day, over losing you. I don't want to be here without you, and I know that's probably selfish, but I love you, and I want to see you become an artist and not feel damaged anymore. I want to see you old and wrinkled and knitting in a rocking chair,” I told her, and Julie laughed against my chest.
“I think I'd be an awesome old woman,” she told me, looking up with a small smile, despite her tears.
Sometimes we're holding angels and we never even know.
♥
Julie's exact promise to me was that she would really consider the transplant. She would rather it come from someone else, someone she didn't know, but she was going to really think about it.
If it was all she could promise, I was willing to accept it.
It wasn't even two days later when the second thing happened. The second thing changed the course of my life forever.
Ava was the messenger, and her news on that late afternoon, after coming home with gum and vomit on my shoes, and sharpie on my jeans and arms, shook me to my core.
She looked at me, and she ran her hands through her hair as she told me my mom had been released from the mental ward.
♥
Parole, probation, good behavior, and very sad and pathetic plea to the judge, I wasn't sure why she was released. I didn't care. All I cared about was that she was out, or going to be, and she wasn't behind brick walls anymore.
There
