Chapter 3

If you knew nothing about them, you wouldn't think about how big stars actually are from the earth. How can something that appears so tiny be bigger than you could ever imagine?

This is what I think about as I lay in the grass on my back.

After Maggy had fallen asleep, I did a group FaceTime with Parker and Jackie. Even through my breakdown, they were there for me. They said comforting things, but in the end we all cried together. Being out here is the first moment of peace I've had all day. The first moment I've had to just process. Looking back up at the stars, I can't imagine how one small, diseased cell could grow to the size of something that can kill.

Evidently, dangerous things come in small packages. There is no way to fix it or run away. The situation is out of my hands.

Those are my least favorite kind of situations.

It's three days after we found out about the tumor. I come into the house way past my curfew. Mom's snoring softly in her room, unaware of my late arrival back home. I guess it's a good thing that she doesn't know her daughter was at the park until one a.m.

Quietly, I cross the hallway, taking extra care to avoid the creaky wooden board. Maggy's door is cracked open and the glow-in-the-dark stick-on stars plastered onto her ceiling give off the faintest of glows. I see her huddled into a ball, asleep yet shivering. She's not covered by a blanket and her room is the icebox of the house. I grab her old baby blanket with the edges softened from all its use. Carefully, I drape it over her and she smiles in her sleep. It's only then that I see the paper in her hand.

I slip it from her fingers and smooth out the wrinkles. It's a list, written in Maggy's signature lime green ink.

Maggy's List of Things She Wants To Do Before She Dies

I muffle my sob with my knuckle before it wakes her. I hold the list up to the glowing stars to see it clearer. On the list are sixteen items.

1. Try a Mega Banana Split from Ashdown's Finest

2. Complete the splits

3. Sing with Copeland at Cafe Locale

4. Go to a dance

5. Get a pet

6. Paint a mural

7. Spend a day at Ashdown's Orphanage

8. Nana's Bizcocho!

9. Mall Day (doing all the fun, cool teen girl things)

10. All Nighter sleepover

11. PG-13 movie

12. Drive Moonblaise

13. Ears pierced

14. Change a life

15. Help Copeland finish her song

16. See the "Midnight Sun" (the Northern Lights) in Fairbanks, Alaska

My mouth hangs wide open. I glance back at the sleeping from of my baby sister. This is like...a will or something. How can she wrap her mind around the fact that she has four months to live? If I were her...I wouldn't be able to comprehend that. Judging by this list, she doesn't want to waste a single second that she doesn't have to. She's gotten braver, it would seem. Getting her ears pierced? The thought used to terrify her.

Glancing back at the list, I vow to do everything in my power to help her complete every item on this list. I want to turn it into more than just words on paper. I want to make these words into memories. Even if they are her last.

My tears spill over and I crumple against the ground by her bed. The wood of her bedframe stabs me painfully in the back but I don't care, I don't care, I don't care. The sounds coming from my throat don't even sound human. I feel pure agony, like a dead weight is stuck in my chest. Like my beating heart has been encompassed by a straightjacket.

I can't breathe.

A small hand pokes out from the blankets and reaches for my face. A voice, just as small, whispers my name groggily.

"Go back to sleep, Maggy," I tell her softly, swallowing my tears.

Her breathing slows and I know she's fallen asleep again. Gently, I kiss her forehead and linger there, breathing in the warm scent of her skin and hair. Then I leave her room.

Once I'm in my own room with the door securely shut, I shoot a text to Parker and Jackie, biting my lip to keep it from trembling.

I NEED Y'ALL'S HELP.