1 Her Magnum Opus

"I meant this to be my masterpiece, the fruits of my labor—with whatever quality a seventeen-year-old could achieve. I didn't think I wouldn't finish it when I began. I had been working on it for two years, and I almost had the first novel completed.

Yet I knew this day would come quickly. I woke up feeling sick every morning until my insides bled and wailed so badly that I couldn't hide my suffering anymore. Alas, when I was taken to the hospital, they told me what I already suspected. I had stage four colon cancer—highly metastatic—and there was little else that could be done besides making my final months happy ones as the tumors devastated my body.

As a result, the doctors and nurses let me write all day, write all night, until the day both my and the laptop's battery were depleted. Wouldn't it have been lovely if we shut off at the same time? It must have been fate or a bad omen.

I leave this laptop and the passcodes to anyone who would like to pick this project up for me—a ghostwriter of sorts. It's all I can give to the world, and it's all I will leave for everyone. Perhaps, when I meet the person who finishes it for me in another life, I can repay them with my full devotion, whatever form in which that manifests itself.

-Melina"

***

Feeling that old paper between my fingers, my first instinct was to crumple it up and throw it away as I trembled. I wanted to watch it incinerate in the pits of hell—the pit of my damn trash can. More than anything, I couldn't stomach seeing those words in front of me. It was like they were being read aloud, ringing in my ears until I was driven fucking crazy.

They scraped against my eardrums, and I was at the point of poking holes in them myself for the sole purpose of watching the blood trickle from them. Gah, that would have been so nice to let the poison leak from my veins so that I would become unconscious and forget everything before oxygen brought me back into reality.

I wouldn't accept it. I wouldn't fucking accept one word of it!

Sure, it wasn't guilt that ate up my entire being, but with the burning sadness that tore apart my insides, it sure as hell should have been!

My eyes quickly turned damp as my thoughts raced past me.

This wasn't the news I wanted to be solidified when I had just finally resigned myself to living on in hopes it was all a sick joke. I wouldn't trust it when I heard about what happened months ago from Melina's parents, and I didn't want to trust it now.

But what could I do when it was all spelled out in front of me from her own pen with every nuance of her handwriting there to drill the truth into my psyche? Melina knew she was going to die, yet she didn't speak a word about her demise to me when she disappeared from school for so long.

Watching the beginning of my senior year slam into me like a truck, it was all too much!

While bending in half on my poor bed, the beacon of my sorrows and sponge of my tears, I averted my eyes from the paper, overwhelmed by even the stroke of a pencil.

"Cherry, why did you give this to me?" I asked in a state of complete anguish, controlling my sobbing until I got some clarification.

It started to hit me that this was as unprecedented of a circumstance as any for me—for the stupid, hopeless romantic who only pined from afar and quickly lost her chance. Possibilities? They were tempting, but the sweet repose of sleeping and forgetting all my woes was equally so.

"Because I want you to do it!" Cherry exclaimed much less solemnly than expected.

Perhaps she wanted me to cheer up and not wallow in attention and pity. She often had the intuition to know what was best for me, and it was hard to frown in the presence of someone so cheery, though I couldn't yet smile.

What a fitting and sweet name for her—except for when she was as disagreeable as the fruit's central pit.

"You've been in love with her since freshman year! I thought that if anyone would want to finish it, it'd be you, Ari." She pouted, reaching to grab my sweaty, curled hands.

How could she have thought I was the perfect candidate? Had she finally lost it worse than I had?

"Cherry, you know I'm not a writer!" With a wet, warm face, I perked up and slammed my hands against the cushions as she backed away from me to avoid my wrath. "Why don't you do it instead? You write stories all the time!"

She shrugged at me.

"Do you have a brick skull?" While she knocked on my head and scolded me with her demeaning inquiries, I swatted her away. "Or did you not even read the last part?"

Cherry had a knack for underestimating my skills, but I merely rolled my eyes at her. Just because she was one month older didn't mean she was allowed to pick on me like that, especially when I was grieving!

I could not believe she insisted on pushing work upon me when I was in this state! No words on a sheet—no shitty promises in a letter—could bring back my angel, Melina! Yet I found the prospect of seeing her again even more likely than her returning my feelings.

"I did! But what are the chances of that even? And it's not like she'd ever like me, anyway." I frowned, my breathing exacerbating again.

As much as I wanted to tame my emotions, they welled up in me once more as Cherry squeezed my shoulder.

I wondered why I fought myself even as the slight intimation of hope—a sliver of precious metal in silt—threatened to plague me to the point of no return. There was no way I was going to be sickened by stupid optimism.

Twirling the strands of her bright red hair, she told me, "Think of it as your punishment for fucking around for so long. You have the opportunity to make it up now. Plus,"—she held up her hands and drummed her fingers in the air with a spooky expression as if she belonged inside a haunted house—"I don't know about you, but a lot of people believe in ghosts. Like Zixin. It's not that far outside the realm of possibilities."

My eye twitched at her as I peered at her with what was probably a splotched face, looking like some disheveled widow.

Scrunching my nose and pointing at her, I demanded, "Cherry, turn off your damn phone flashlight! This isn't funny right now!"

Grimacing, she removed the light from under her chin, destroying the sinister silhouette she had created. If I wasn't so ravaged right then, I would have likely thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, and that was some damn good stuff.

"What do you think, Ari?" she asked with a sigh while plopping onto the floor, resting on her palms.

Mellow Cherry. That almost sounded like a drink name. Regardless, it was a sight that deserved an immortalizing photograph to store in my small collection.

Still flustered, I held my tongue while chewing on the inside of my cheek in frustration.

This wasn't some small decision for me. To finish a novel entailed hours and hours of time, but how hard was it to slap some words onto a page and call the thing done with the potential reward being so great? I would get a feel for the characters eventually, and everything would then fall into place, right?

Perhaps Cherry knew better than I did.

"How hard is writing a novel...?" My voice trailed off sheepishly as I stared out my window, watching the sun cascade from its zenith in the sky.

"Easy…"

"Huh?" I widened my eyes as my high voice became even more shrill. "Seriously?"

"If you want to make it read like a kindergartener's writing assignment!" She threw her head back in offense. "Of course, it's hard, Ari, but I believe in you! All the notes are supposedly on this hunk of junk. You have everything you need to at least try, and I can help you."

While she tapped on the frame of the—surprisingly nice—laptop, I watched the glimmer of the steel sweep across my vision.

Certainly, it would be difficult. What the hell was my mind thinking seconds ago?

The thing was: Was it worth the risk?

Would every hour, drop of sweat, and blister on my fingers be an adequate sacrifice for something as superficial as love with a ghost who may have already left this world entirely?

Were the superstitious and spiritual supposed to prevail over the secular in my mind?

I had too many questions about such a daunting and capricious task!

Ah… What was my prefrontal cortex supposed to do when faced with a terribly unbalanced decision?

Obviously…

"I know I'm going to regret saying this, Cherry,"—I began with shaky, unsure hands that grasped my sheets like inflatables at sea as I surrendered to the current at last—"but I-I'll make an attempt."