Free An Unstill Life by Kate Larkindale

cautious, I slipped into the room, eyes darting around before I allowed myself to relax and walk up to the bed.
    I thought at first Jules was asleep. She lay on her side, one fragile-looking arm stretched over her head. Her face was pale, almost gray. I tried to shake the flavor of ashes from my tongue.
    “Jules?” I kept my voice to a whisper, not wanting to wake her.
    “Livvie?” She rolled over and sat up, the pillowcase leaving red creases in her cheek.
    I nodded. “Yeah. It’s me.”
    “Where have you been? I feel like I haven’t seen you in days.” Jules’s voice, usually a strong, brilliant gold-yellow, had faded to an insipid lemon shade. I could see the effort those few words took. My heart clenched, becoming a solid block in my chest. For the first time, I allowed myself to think the unthinkable: Jules might die. A door opened inside me, blackness spreading through my midsection.
    I swallowed hard and pasted on a smile, banishing the darkness into a corner where it coiled and writhed. “I was here yesterday, remember?”
    She frowned and rubbed her hand over her shorn head. The dark hair lay in tufts and whorls against her scalp and looked even more gnawed than it had yesterday.
    I bit back a grimace at the irritating violet whine of the bed’s motor as she raised the end and settled herself more comfortably.
    “What’s up? You look kind of miserable.” Jules scooted over on the bed, inviting me to sit.
    I climbed up and sat, shaking my head. “It’s nothing.” My problems were so petty, so insignificant. So what if Hannah chose Sam over me? Jules had cancer.
    “Is it Mom? I tried to tell her—”
    “It’s not Mom. I haven’t even talked to her.” She’d already been in bed by the time I got back from Mel’s last night. And this morning, she’d ignored me.
    “So, what’s so bad then? Boyfriend trouble?” She sounded eager. I guess being stuck here, any distraction was a good thing.
    “No. Well, kind of.” I didn’t know how to start. Why would she care about my stupid little problems? She always had before, but her own problems were so much bigger now.
    “Oooh!” Genuine excitement made her eyes shine. She even had a little color in her face now. At least my problems were good for something. “So, who is it? Let me guess… Um… Jeremy Holmes? No… Luke Passianato?”
    I shook my head, unable to keep the smile off my face. Luke Passianato? As if! “No. It’s not me. It’s Hannah. And Mel.”
    The disappointment that crossed her face made me want to invent a boyfriend then and there, but it was too late. “So, what’s going on?”
    I told her everything. I explained about Mel and her crush on Sam Taylor, how she’d had her eye on him since he’d arrived the previous winter. I told her about my phone call with Hannah, about Mel and Eddie, about chasing Mel down the track, about Hannah and Sam at the diner.
    “It’s hard, I know.” Jules sighed and shifted until she was closer to me. “You guys have been friends forever, and now it feels like it’s all changing, right?”
    I nodded.
    “Is there someone you like?”
    I shook my head. “Not really.”
    “Look, in my experience, guys are real good at busting up friendships. But they don’t last.”
    “What? The guys or the friendships?”
    Jules laughed, and for a moment she sounded like herself. “The guys, you doofus.”
    “Oh.” My face warmed. Of course.
    “You’ll get a boyfriend soon, Livvie.” Jules ran her hand across my hair. “Then you won’t feel so left out.”
    I shrugged. I wasn’t sure I even wanted a boyfriend. Not if it made me forget my friends. How long it would take before Mel ditched me, too?
    We sat in silence for a long time. It wasn’t uncomfortable though, and that struck me as odd. Jules was never quiet, never still. She attacked the world, one experience at a time, always moving forward.
    “You’re not the only one Mom’s mad at.” Jules’s words startled me away from my