Free Girl Saves Boy by Steph Bowe Page B

been worse.
    In bed at night, I cry for him dying. I also cry for me staying alive.
    I’m lonely. Incredibly, intensely, unendingly lonely.
    It’s this constant ache all through me: numbness and anger and sadness. The emptiness is all-consuming.
    It’s not just my brother being dead; it’s not just my father disappearing.
    It’s not just being sent away to my grandparents, and it’s not just my grandparents both dying on me.
    It’s not just my mother with her anti-depressants and a life of her own, without me.
    It’s not just feeling responsible for Ben’s death, and it’s not just being friendless.
    It’s everything and it’s all too much and everything is weighing me down at once.
    I feel broken on the inside.
    And, worse, I feel like no one notices, and no one cares and I could die quietly and everything would go on as it is, but minus me.
    I just wish that someone would listen and care, and not just Geraldine, because she’s getting paid to listen, paid to care.
    I resent that. But, because Geraldine is so nice, I try not to.

S ACHA
    It happened almost a year after I met True. We were both nine.
    And it’s a startling memory, because it was when I was first confronted with the idea that one of my parents could die (of course, shortly after that came the realisation that I myself could die).
    True’s parents had been old when she was born. late-thirties. But still, her father should have had a few more years in him. Her mother was into her fifties now.
    I didn’t find out until later that it was a genetic heart problem. I think it was something that tormented True a lot as she got older—that perhaps her life would be cut short by forty years or so, that she’d be struck down with a heart attack way too young, like her dad. Maybe that was why she was trying to squeeze so much in, working so hard, wanting to accomplish everything she could before it was too late.
    Or perhaps, regardless of whether her father had died when she was nine, she would have become the same goal-driven, tunnel-visioned girl that she was.
    One morning, True was called to the principal’s office. Everyone thought it was just another of True’s ‘special meetings’ that she had because she was so far ahead of the other students and the staff didn’t know how to deal with her.
    True did not return for the rest of the day.
    I particularly noticed her absence because I was always by her side, so I had no idea what to do when school ended that afternoon, as I usually walked home with her. I hung around outside the principal’s office (thinking maybe True was still in there) until the reception lady very kindly called my mum to pick me up.
    That evening, Mum and Dad sat me down at the dinner table after the meal and gave me some bread and butter pudding with ice-cream. This was a very special treat in our house, so I thought maybe something big was going to happen, like me getting the brother I kept asking for. (I was going to name him Davin. He was going to be awesome and we were going to play Spider Man. I had it all figured out.)
    Dad said, ‘Sacha, True’s dad has died.’
    I said. ‘Oh. How?’
    Mum’s eyes filled up with tears. ‘He was just old, darling.’
    That made sense at the time, since he did seem exceedingly old; True’s parents were ten years older than mine. I know now that forty-four isn’t that old at all.
    Everyone was upset, including me, even though I hardly knew him, but especially True and her mother. By the time True returned to school a month later, I’d already gone into hospital for my first bout of chemo.
    That was not a good year for anyone.
    Sacha’s list of places where it would be nicer to live than on the ground
In the clouds: they always seem like fairy floss when you’re on a plane, dipping through them, and if you could avoid eating them all, there’d be pleasant views and (on the higher clouds) constant sunshine
Under the sea: once you got around the whole unable-to-breathe thing, it