If I Stay {Fillie}

Purple Looks Good on You

Millie was sitting in her car, in the driveway, deciding whether to spend her Thursday before going off to work for Finn Wolfhard, with her family or not.

She felt like she had been neglecting them for one reason or another.

It might've been their tendency to try so hard to understand her when they knew they never could.

It might've been how they always asked her if she was okay, when she very obviously wasn't, instead of just comforting her and holding her and telling her everything would work out all right the way she desperately needed them to.

Or it might've been how they now treated her like some sort of sick animal that needed to be regarded with gentleness, as if they feared she might break into a million pieces if they said one wrong word.

So, they were everything Millie didn't want them to be. Not right now. Sadie and Noah were the only ones who somewhat understood.

But Sadie and Noah had their own flaws.

They simply pretended that nothing had changed.

They pretended that Millie was going to live a long and happy life. They acted like the three of them would never be separated, and that the gloom of incurable sickness was not slowly eating away at Millie's shortened existence.

More and more every day.

And that was worse than everything else.

Millie needed a break from her best friends. Her family missed her; she could tell.

Her mother always seemed so upset when Millie told her she was going art supplies hunting with Noah, or shopping with Sadie, or even going to the Vancouver Police Department to free Finn Wolfhard from prison with the money he had given her.

She definitely had not revealed that last one to her mother.

Her father looked like he wanted to talk to Millie every day, and watched her with hopeful eyes when she approached him. But she would tell him she was going to take a nap, and his wishful expression would falter drastically as he would reply, "Oh. Okay. Sleep well, honey."

Ava wanted to play with her, but Millie would never comply. "I'm tired," she would tell her.

Paige wanted to take her somewhere and have a nice girls' day. "I'm busy," Millie would reply.

Charlie wanted to just sit down and have a conversation with his little sister, make sure she was doing all right. "I don't think so," she would say.

And now the guilt was crashing down all around her, like a raging ocean coming to crush her.

They must think I despise them. They must think I don't want to be around them at all.

That certainly wasn't true.

Or was it?

Millie felt so burdened she could hardly breathe some days, and the prospect of telling her family all of her worries threatened to suffocate her.

But still. She knew they needed clarification that she didn't hate them. She didn't want to leave them every day.

She should never leave them.

She was going to die in one year. And all she did was push away her family that loved her and wanted to spend as much time with her as possible before they had to let her go.