Sunshiner

Another full week passed, and our normal routine transformed completely until our lives literally revolved around planning this trip. We hardly saw any of our other friends, and we probably wouldn’t have even seen the light of day were it not for Candace’s pestering to go outside with my laptop and do all of our planning while basking in the sun. She loved the sunshine.

First we plotted our general route, and we mostly stuck with Candace’s initial ideas of Amsterdam and Venice and the Ruins of Rome and Egypt, but we also threw in some of the places that I wanted to see, like Australia and certain parts of Africa. We were basically making one giant circle around the world; we decided that our final destination was going to be Hawaii before we returned home again, and therefore we were fully aware that we would be spending a lot of money on plane tickets. Therefore, we had to plan wisely and choose specific hotels to stay in, since we wouldn’t be able to stay in any fancy places, but at the same time we didn’t want to end up sleeping in alleyways. Surprisingly enough for me, I found that I did not mind that we weren’t going to be residing in luxurious resorts. Although I was used to such pristine accommodations, I believed that living like this – like an average person – would make it even more thrilling than it already was. I thought that the less privileges and the less money I had meant that I would appreciate it more.

Neither Candace nor I were the type of people to plan ahead, but this trip was nothing like we had ever done before. Even though we were legally adults, we still felt like kids, and throwing ourselves into the world was a scary thing to do. Therefore we planned the shit out of this thing. Once we decided exactly what places we wanted to go to, we went online and spent hours upon hours choosing what places we should stay in and what restaurants we should eat at. Our days were no longer filled with swimming at the Lake or partying on Devil’s; they were spent reading hundreds of reviews on hotels and cafés and transportation services. The research in itself was actually very dull, but the purpose of the entire thing was what pushed us through to do all of the work.

It had been quite a challenge making my mother understand that I didn’t just want to go on this trip; I needed it. After a very long discussion, and after hundreds of promises were made to call her or write to her everyday and tell her every detail about my life, she finally agreed. Candace’s parents, much to my surprise, were much easier to persuade. They both seemed upset to be spending less time with their daughter, but I think they understood that she had to go out in the world and explore new things, and being leashed down by her parents was not something she could tolerate. I also think that Bear and Mrs. Harlow realized that even if they said no, she wouldn’t listen to them anyway.

Finally, to make our trip official, we bought our first plane tickets: They were dated for September 1st at 7:45 a.m. for the Marco Polo International Airport in Venice, Italy.



All we could do now was wait.

I had already contacted my college and informed them that I planned on taking a gap year. They gave me trouble about the classes I had already registered for, but then I mentioned a few unsubtle hints about who my father was; as soon as they heard his name they suddenly became much nicer to me and “if you need any more help, Mr. Ray, we will always be here for you.” So at least that was taken care of now.

For the first time in the history of life, Dayton became a boring place for me. I didn’t care about the parties or the barbeques or the occasional prank; all I could think about was the rest of the world and it made me realize that Dayton was small and insignificant. I would come back to it someday, I think, maybe later in life, or maybe even next summer…but for now I just needed to get the hell out of here. I did spend a lot of time hanging out with Johnny Boy, because the truth was he was still my best friend and I owed that time to him. I couldn’t leave him in the dust like I was leaving everyone else.

The rest of my time, of course, was spent with Candace. We never did anything new and yet we always managed to have so much fun, and it got to a point where I was actually angry. I was angry with myself because of all of the days that I had ever spent without her, and I was angry that this couldn’t last forever. But this fury vanished as I reminded myself that I shouldn’t fret over the past or the future and I had to savor the now.

There was one thing, however, that was bothering me to no ends, and no matter how hard I tried I could not wish it out of my mind. This feeling of unsettlement took the form of a question: How long did Candace have left? She had told me that she never asked her doctor about her test results because she didn’t want to know. Neither of us brought this question up, though, even though we both knew it was lingering in the shadows of our minds. It remained cooped up inside of me, free to slowly eat my insides away until there was nothing left but a skeleton of nerves and stress. But then I realized that maybe I didn’t want to know either. Maybe ignorance is indeed bliss.

Since we had never spent this much time together before, she had been very skilled at hiding her coughing from me; but now I saw it happening more and more. There were several times when we were doing something and suddenly she would keel over, and the next few minutes would consist of her coughing and me attempting to comfort her. At first this only happened once every few days. And then it happened nearly every day, and then it was occurring quite a few times within a twenty-four hour period. It was scaring me.

“We need to take care of you,” I said one starry evening after one of her coughing episodes. It was a few minutes past sunset and darkness was falling rapidly, encasing the land in a dull blue glow which was decorated solely by the dotted glow of fireflies. We had snuck out to the Weeping Willow, which, unfortunately, was not as nice as a sight as it had been a few weeks ago. The fact that the Willow was dying was quite evident at this point. The leaves had long since been whispered away by the wind and all that was left were skeletal branches that looped towards the ground, naked and lonely. All of the colors that had once haloed the tree house – the greens and the silvers and the orange flames of the flowers – had been replaced by a ghostly shadow of grey.

“I’m fine,” she said for the thousandth time. It had always been like this: I would say something concerning her health and she would always, always respond with “I’m fine.” She was way too stubborn.

She had been coughing into her sleeve, and before she could hide it from view, I saw that it was covered in splotches of scarlet. I had seen her cough a small amount of blood before, and it worried me so much that I almost got sick every time…but this time it was more blood than usual. Her condition was getting worse. “You’re not going to get any better by pushing yourself like this,” I said sternly. “I know you want to live your life to the fullest extent, but you need to be careful. You need to start taking better care of yourself – ”

“Who are you to tell me what to do?” she spat venomously. “Stop babying me.”

“I don’t want to see you getting any sicker, okay? At least if you try to treat yourself a little bit, you might be able to last longer – ”

“Last longer? Fucking Christ, Kasey, do you hear yourself right now?” she snarled. “You disgust me.”

I grabbed her wrist before she could storm off. “I know you’re not really that mad at me. You’re being overly defensive, like you usually are when we talk about things like this…”

“Get off of me!” she yelled at me, and I knew that no matter what else I said she wouldn’t listen to me. It was better to leave her alone right now and let her vent by herself, and if I burdened her with my presence it would make everything ten times worse. With a defeated sigh, I gave in and let go of her arm, and without another word she ran off into the darkness of the night.

This was the first night in a while that we hadn’t spent the night together.



I hadn’t seen her for the rest of the night, and eventually I gave up hope in looking for her and I went home myself. I could only hope that Candace had returned to her house safely. I decided not to go to any parties, and although it would have been nice to have a guy’s night out, I felt too terrible to even want to drink.

When I woke up the next morning, it was raining.

My alarm clock had broken a few days ago, and since it was cloudy and I couldn’t see how high the sun was in the sky, there was no way for me to know what time it was. I checked my phone and realized that it was actually pretty late – almost noon. Candace hadn’t even bothered to come see me yet. Feeling a pang of worry, I set my unfinished bowl of cereal in the sink and walked over to Candace’s house, ignoring the muddy streets and the rain that pounded down on my head.

After no one answered my obnoxious knocks on the door, I walked over to the back and peered in through their glass door; by the lack of lights turned on and any sign of human activity, I came to the conclusion that no one was here. This wasn’t the first time that Candace wasn’t at home when I came looking for her – it was the first time, however, that both of her parents were gone, as well.

I walked back into the street, but once I got there I didn’t know where I should head to next. I felt oddly lost. Then I saw a movement out of my eye – it was my neighbor, Miss Claudia, the old cat lady. I couldn’t remember why we all called her Miss Claudia (it made no sense to treat her with such formality and besides, we all knew she had been married at some point, so she should have been addressed as Mrs.) but for some reason she was known by all as Miss Claudia anyway.

She was well into her seventies and looked like a withering rose; the woman, who I was sure had once been full of so much color, was now tinted by an ancient dull veil that exposed her true age. The skin around her eyes had long since creased into soft wrinkles, and although her husband had died long ago at war and she was still too in love with him to ever find someone else, she still had the motivation to dress up every day in pearls and fancy clothes. She was the sort of person who was had fascinating rumors floating around about her (when we were all kids, we all believed she murdered her husband and fed him to her seven cats), but when I talked to her face-to-face it was absolutely dreadful because she would talk and talk and talk and would never stop. I was under the impression that she was sort of strange, because although it was storming outside right now, she was in her front yard, tending to her garden.

“Excuse me, Miss Claudia?” I shouted over the pattering of the rain. She didn’t seem to hear me at first, so I walked closer to her and shouted her name again, and finally she looked up with a crinkled smile on her face. “Do you know where the Harlow’s are?” I asked.

“Darling, didn’t you hear?” she said in her friendly southern drawl, standing up from her petunias. Her pale blue eyes, as clear and as lively as a youth’s, peered at me from under a fold of wrinkles. “Their daughter was admitted into the hospital last night.”