When I Die [Wattys 2016]

Prologue

Authors note: hi all! I hope you enjoy this story. It's very important to me and something I've been working on for quite a while. I have just been looking for the right outlet to release it and figured I would give this a go. Please comment if you are enjoying. I have 112 pages written at this time and will try to upload a chapter every day for the next few weeks.
Let me know what you think!
Thank you for reading.

The moral right of the author is asserted. All rights reserved. This book is published subject to the condition that it shall not be reproduced or retransmitted in whole or in part, in any manner, without written consent of copyright holder. Any infringement upon these terms is in violation of copyright laws.

Text copyright © lexonthebeach ™ 2016

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In the fall of his senior year of high school, Leo Hendricks is dumped by his long-time girlfriend. Leo believes this disruption in his plan is the worst possible thing that could ever happen to him, that is, until he is diagnosed with Leukemia just days later. As Leo's condition worsens, and with the help of his friends, family, and a strange girl named Ophelia, he finds himself in a race against time to right all his wrongs and try to figure out what it really means to be alive.

Prologue
"Our Sun is a second- or third-generation star. All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff."
- Carl Sagan (Cosmos, 2002)

My family loves the beach. Every summer since I can remember, my mom and dad have packed my brothers, my sister and I into our minivan and made our migration from Colorado to the sea. My mom says that it makes her feel peaceful and happy. She loves the sand between her toes and watching the waves crash on the shore. My dad loves to rent boats and take my siblings waterskiing or borrow sea-dos and race in the ocean. My older brother, Aaron, loves the ocean, too. He fishes and surfs and swims. When he got married three years ago to Lara, they took their lives to the far-west-coast just to be on the ocean. They bought a small condo in NorCal, right on the beach. He hopes that the baby they're expecting soon will surf as well. My other brother, Sam, is pretty happy at the beach too. I think he likes to play soccer on the beach or tour lighthouses and eat seafood. Hattie, the baby, and the only girl, is six. She loves the ocean as much, if not more than my mom. She will wear herself out playing all day. She is absolutely fearless in the ocean, jumping over waves, red curls bouncing. I like the ocean the least in our family. I'm not actually a big fan of sand, or water where I can't see the bottom, or the sunburn I inevitably get, no matter how many times I lather sunscreen all over myself. I even can't stand the boats, or the sea-dos, because I will more than likely puke overboard. So instead, when we go to the beach, I usually sit on the coast. I like to look out over the ocean and think about how big it is. I like to imagine how small I am, on a scale with everything else. Take, for example, a blue whale, the unparalleled giant of our planet. They weigh roughly 340,000 pounds and there's around 15,000 of them left in our ruined oceans. I really, really hope their bellies aren't full of plastic. We aren't hardly a fraction of the size of a blue whale, and they aren't even a fraction of the size of our oceans. Our oceans take up about 75% of our tiny planet, and the very, very overwhelming majority of people live on the 25% land. Small. That's what we are. Our stories, our lives, while overwhelmingly important to us, are pretty insignificant on the grand scale of things. In comparison to the problems a blue whale has, they're pretty pointless. And there's probably millions of alien people out there with more interesting stories and more pressing matters. All this to say, I know my story is insignificant. But I will tell it regardless.