With You ✔

29

Kit

The question on the college essay before me is : What are your long term goals?

I have no idea how long I sat there staring at that question until I finally gave up and began watching Ellie type away at her own answer. What is her long term goals?

I don't see the point in applying to college anyway. It's too late to apply to the colleges that we actually want to go to, and I don't even know if I'll still be here in the fall, so why bother? Actually I know exactly why I'm staring at a blank screen and applying to colleges I have no interest in - it's because of the platinum blonde girl sitting at the foot of my bed, wearing my shirt and biting her lip as she furiously types away on the laptop in her lap. There's a bag of chips open on the bed next to her, and I can see a few crumbs on her shirt - she looks a mess with the crumbs, the over sized shirt, and her hair that she hasn't washed yet today piled on top of her head. But she's my mess, and she's perfect.

I look back at the blank word document on my computer screen and decide to give it a serious attempt, because that's what Ellie wants.

It's hard though, because I don't really have long term goals, and I can't exactly write that as my answer. I can't write that I have a massive intruder in my head, just sitting on my brain, making me focus on nothing more than the now. I can't write that that the only goal I have right now is to make sure that my brother has a friend for when I'm not around anymore, or about how I'm trying my hardest to make sure my mom knows I love her and don't want her to be sad for me.

I can't write an essay about how I fell for a girl and she fell for me, and now here we are wasting precious time writing college essays to schools we don't really want to go to when who knows where we will even be in August - where I will be.

I'm just trying to make it day by day, I don't even know what long term is for me.

If I'm being honest though, long term I want to be alive and tumor free with Ellie by my side. I want to graduate high school and go off to college with her and leave this town where everyone sees me as this old self that I shed a year ago. I don't want to be reminded of who I used to be before the tumor, or who I was when I didn't talk to anyone. I just want to be me - the me that finally feels whole and happy.

There's a way.

There's a way to get my long term life, or at least there's the possibility of a way. I haven't thought about it in a long time, but I've been thinking about it more and more over the past few months. It scares the shit out of me, now more than ever, but I think that I have to try. I have to take a risk, or this will all have been for nothing, nothing but heartbreak for everyone.

"How's your essay coming?"

I never really liked the color blue. I never really liked any color more than I liked the others, but ever since I met Ellie, all I can think about is blue. How could any other color ever compare?

I close my laptop and sit it aside, "It's done."

I never started the essay, I never even typed my name. The essay isn't what's done, me being too afraid to take a chance to save my own life, that's what is done.

Ellie

It's hard to believe that it's already April. These past eight months have really flown by, but I don't regret a single moment of it. It all led me to where I am right now, laying in Kit's bed with him beside me, both of us staring at our computer screens, writing college essays and sending in applications. We graduate in a little over six weeks, and with everything that has been happening, we both let college slip our minds and are now little late on the whole applying to college thing. We're way too late to apply to some Universities and colleges, but we both agreed to apply to wherever we still can in order to still have some kind of plan.

The medication that Kit takes now makes him drowsy and sometimes he sleeps for the entire day, or two, so he misses a lot of school but since his grades are perfect and I bring him his assignments every day, Principal Mercer agrees that he can still graduate if he stays on track. He gets headaches a lot more now, sometimes they're really bad and we just lay in the dark, but I don't mind. I'm just so grateful that he let's me be here at all. Kit is handling everything in a totally different way this time, he's not shutting me or his family out, and he's still living his life, the college applications are proof of that, even though I know he's only filling them out for me and doesn't really care.

Sometimes when he thinks I've fallen asleep, he will whisper apologies to me, even after all these months and all I've stood by him through. He still feels guilty about bringing me into his life when he knew that he might not be around for long. I'm not sorry though, I love Kit and Kit brought out a side of me that I thought I would never be able to show to another person. I thought I was never going to be comfortable enough or loved enough to show someone the real me, but Kit changed that. Kit changed everything for me.

"How's your essay coming?" I look up from my screen, expecting to see him typing away on his own essay, but instead he's staring at me.

He closes his laptop and puts it on the nightstand, "It's done."

Smiling, he reaches over and closes my laptop before moving it to sit on top of his. "I wasn't finished." I try to be serious, but when Kit smiles all my focus falls on him and everything else is out the window.

I'm sitting cross legged at the end of the bed and Kit moves himself so that he's sitting up against the headboard. We're facing each other now, and the distance between us becomes a lot closer when he reaches towards me, his hands around my wrists and pulling me to him so that I'm now straddling him.

He pushes my hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear and cupping my face in his hand. I lean into his palm and try to fight the urge to bite my lip, "You think you can finish it later?" He asks as his thumb traces my lips.

"Yeah, I think I can do that."