Sunshiner

I didn't know why, but her words didn’t cause me as much pain as they probably should have. I didn’t think I was capable of feeling that much anymore. Instead, she was the one to start crying. It seemed that her test results affected her more than I had anticipated it would, considering how she seemed to have accepted the fact that she was sick and she was dying. Well, of course she would be depressed by the news, but...it caught me off guard anyway. I wasn’t used to a crying Candace. I wasn’t used to being the tree trunk while she was the falling leaves; I wasn’t used to being the support. But I would do it anyway as long as I was doing it for her.

Without saying anything, I removed my arms from around her waist and reached up to wipe the tears as they slid down her cheeks. “I was hoping I would last longer,” she choked out in a voice so, oh, I don’t even know how to describe how she sounded. I could hear her crumbling apart on the inside.

“Shh,” I whispered in return and held her close to me. I wasn’t sure what else I could say that wouldn’t be a lie. It will be all right, I wanted to tell her, but that would just make both of us feel even more miserable. “Do you remember the summer when we were six?” I said after a while. “It was the first time we ever met.” She sniffled and nodded and I took it as a sign to go on. “Our dads had made friends and they made us play with each other so they could go in my backyard and barbeque or something. I remember I wanted to play tag, but you immediately said no...”

“I want to eat cake,” she said stubbornly before I could even finish my sentence. “Come on.” I didn’t have a second chance to try to convince her to play tag before she had firmly grabbed my hand and led me inside. There, sitting on her kitchen counter, stood a double-layer devil’s chocolate cake; my mouth watered upon seeing it.

“Daddy said I can’t have any,” she stated, but she climbed up on the counter anyway and grabbed a fistful of the cake. “Here,” she said and passed it to me, and I gratefully accepted it and stuffed it in my mouth. She scooped her own piece and then hopped back down to the ground.

Before eating it, however, she sniffed it. “Ew,” she gasped, drawing back with a disgusted look on her face. “It smells funny.”

I gave her a confused look. “Mine was good,” I said.

“Well mine isn’t. Here,” she said and lifted her hand towards my face, “smell it and see for yourself.”

I leaned in closer to catch a good whiff, and as soon as I did she shoved her hand in my face, smearing chocolate all over my cheeks and up my nose. She let out a triumphant cackle before yelling, “Daddy! Evan is eating the cake!”

“I remember that,” she said with a ghost of a smile on her face. I instantly felt better; I had made her happy, at least a little bit. “I was such a badass back in the day.”

“I didn’t hate you after that, surprisingly,” I said with a faint grin. “It wasn’t until the Prank Wars, when you put glue in my hair, when I actually began disliking you.”

“Really?” she asked incredulously.

“Yep,” I nodded and sighed. “After I first met you, I actually thought you were kind of cool, even though you were sort of a brat. No offense,” I quickly added as I saw the scowl set over her face. “That’s why I came to your house everyday to play,” I went on. “When I went home-home after the summer ended, I did that cake prank to every single one of my friends. I thought it was the funniest thing in the world.”

“I really had that much of an impact on you, huh?” she said with a small smirk.

I nibbled on her neck. “You have no idea.”



I don’t know when or how it happened, but somehow I fell asleep, because the next thing I could remember was someone softly nudging my stomach. “Hey,” Candace whispered and my eyes fluttered open.

“Hey,” I mumbled groggily.

“I’ve been thinking,” she began and my first thought to that was, Uh oh. “Do you remember when I said that I wanted to live forever?”

“Yes...”

“Did you ever understood what I meant by it?”

“I suppose not.” My frown displayed my confusion.

“Well, I was serious about it,” she said without looking at me. “I didn’t mean it literally, of course... Have you ever heard of the saying, Legends last forever?”

“You wanted to become a legend?” I asked flatly.

“Well, when you say it like that it sounds totally conceited,” she huffed. “I meant that I wanted to be remembered forever. I could die, but the memories of me wouldn’t. I thought that if I did great things – amazing or terrible things, it didn’t matter which as long as they were great – then I would have stories told about me forever and ever.”

“Don’t take this offensively, Candace,” I said slowly, “but that sounds a little childish.”

“I came up with the idea when I was fifteen,” she admitted, “right after I was diagnosed. But for a next three years after that, I sort of just stayed quiet and tame because I was trying to live a normal life. I thought that if I was noticed at all, then people would want to find out more about me, and then they would learn that I was sick and they would pity me. So I never did anything great or terrible or amazing. But then this summer rolled around, and for the first time in three years I wanted to come back to Dayton. Dayton is small enough to make an impact, and if you think about it, it’s the perfect place to create stories about yourself; generation after generation of families come back to Dayton for vacation, and it would be so easy for my story to be passed down from parents to children and then their children’s children. There’s the Prank War, too, which gave me plenty of opportunities to do incredible things that people would remember me by. I didn’t care if people looked down upon me for causing so much trouble – as long as I was being looked at, I was perfectly satisfied.”

She finally tore her gaze away from the star-decorated window and looked up at me. “Do you remember when you pulled the prank on me out at Devil’s that one night?” I nodded shamefully. “I wasn’t pissed at you for throwing rotten eggs at me, believe it or not; that stuff was pretty easy to clean off. I was angry because that prank was the Victory Prank of the summer. I wanted to be victorious this year, I wanted to win, but you stole my glory. I was counting on the Victory Prank to win me fame.”

“I’m...um,” I stammered, unsure of what else to say. I had felt bad enough about it before, and I had been burned – literally – in order to gain her forgiveness. “I’m sorry?”

She shrugged casually. “Nah. Whatever. It’s fine now,” she said. “I know I’ve left an impact on you, and that’s enough. Will you promise me something?”

I nodded.

“I need you to tell stories about me. I want you to tell your friends and your family and random strangers on the street. When you get married, I want you to tell you wife about me. I want you to tell your kids, and I want you to tell my story so well that they’ll want to tell it to their kids, too.”

I kissed her soundly on the lips. “I promise.”

“I need you to do one more thing for me, then,” she said in an unusually soft voice that told me that her next words would not be pleasant. Something bad was about to happen, I could tell from the look in her eyes. “I need you to leave.”

“Okay. I’ll come back in the morning,” I said, even though I knew perfectly well that wasn’t what she meant.

“No,” she said, “I need you to leave and never come back.”

“You’re testing me again,” I said and gave her a half-hearted grin. She couldn’t be serious right now. She couldn’t be.

“I’m not testing you,” she whispered and shut her eyes. “I want you to remember me forever – but I want you to remember me as a strong girl, not a weak, sick one. This...this whole scene,” she nodded towards the white walls around her and the wires protruding from her arm, “this isn’t me. I hate having you see me so beaten down and pathetic.”

“Candace, you’re being absolutely ridiculous,” I said firmly. “I love you no matter what, and you being sick isn’t going to – ”

“Please, Kasey,” she whispered hoarsely. “I’m going back to my home-home in Colorado in a few days anyway, and I’m going to be bedridden – and it’s not because the doctor ordered me to, it’s because I can hardly even walk anymore. I don’t want to do this to you; I don’t want to be a burden.”

”Of course you’re not a – ”

“I don’t want to do this to me, either,” she interrupted. “I’m in enough pain as it is.” She opened her eyes and gave me a heart-wrenching look. “It’s my last wish. Please.”

I was about to argue with her, but suddenly her chest heaved and she began coughing. She reached for the red button near her side, and almost instantly a nurse ran into the room to help her. Two nurses followed, then a doctor, and soon the room was so filled with people shouting out medical orders that I was pushed aside into the corner. I watched for a minute as Candace continued to cough – the nurses couldn’t do much to help – and then, with tear-filled eyes, she looked around the room and then made eye contact with me. Even though she was still coughing and couldn’t speak, I was able to understand what she was trying to tell me.

Goodbye, Kasey Ray. For the last time.



And so I let her go, just like that. I left the hospital and went home, and she left home and went back to the hospital at home-home. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her since, nor had I heard any news from her parents. I suppose she had made sure that Mrs. Harlow and Bear understood that she wanted nothing to do with me anymore, and she forbid them to speak to me or my mother or anyone in Dayton, for that matter.

I was bitter, to be sure, and beyond furious. How could she do this to me? How could she do this to herself? But I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t fight back, because this was not only the wish of a dying girl, but it was also the wish of the girl I loved.

I let two miserable weeks pass without doing anything. I sunk into a state of depression and I refused to speak to anyone, not even Johnny Boy. I didn’t go outside and I hardly felt the sunshine anymore.

Then one day I woke up and the sun was filtering through my window and it was beautiful. The sunrise made the dust sparkle and I thought, Fuck this shit. And I got out of bed, turned on my computer, and bought a plane ticket to Colorado.



The first place I looked was not the hospital, since I knew that Candace was not the sort of person who would remain trapped in a place like that. I went straight to her house instead. Luckily I was a very skilled stalker and I looked up her home address and then Mapquested it. I had to rent a car (I chose to drive a Mustang, of course) just to get there. The sun was setting when I arrived.

Her home-home looked like it suited her very well and yet it didn’t at all. It was very unlike her Dayton home, which was small with flaking white paint. This one towered three stories high and it was painted a cobalt blue color with eggshell white trimming and shutters. It was new, probably only a decade old or so, but it was made to look centuries old; the house was a hypocrite.

I knocked on the door and no one answered. There were voices to be heard and a commotion going on inside, so I knew that people were home. I knocked again and again, and when no one answered on the fourth try, I gave up and walked right in.

I did not have time to take in any furniture or interior features of the house, because the only thing I noticed was the fact that there were several adults running around like crazy people. They all looked panic stricken as they shouted out things that sounded medical, things that held no meaning for me. They were all wearing white as well and that detail was what made me realize that these people were doctors. If I had to assume, I would think that Candace would have needed a full staff of doctors and nurses to take care of her while she was bedridden at home.

I stood in the middle of the chaos like a stone in a rushing river. No one seemed to notice me, and if they did then they didn’t seem to care that I was there. Apparently they had more important things to worry about, but about what I did not wish to find out. Just as I was wondering where Bear and Mrs. Harlow were, the couple walked around the corner, clutching onto each other as if they were about to fall off of the edge of the earth. Their faces were stone white. They were about to walk right by me and up the stairs when Mrs. Harlow finally saw me out of her peripheral and did a double-take. Her face turned paler.

“Did someone call you?” she asked. Bear opened his mouth to say something, but then he realized she wasn’t talking to him, and he turned around and finally noticed that I was here.

“You came right in time,” he breathed.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, profoundly confused. “No one told me to come. I just came to visit...”

“Oh,” Mrs. Harlow said, looking dumbfounded. “So you don’t even know...?”

“Know what?” I demanded as the sour taste of panic rose in my throat.

“She’s...she’s dying as we speak,” Bear said, blunt and hurried. By the way he kept on glancing up stairs, where Candace’s room presumably was, it seemed that he wanted to be with his daughter right this instant and I was wasting his time – no, her time. “It turns out she had less time than the doctors predicted. She woke up yesterday morning with the worst cough she had ever experienced and she’s only been getting worse.... We thought that someone had called you to come, so you could spend your last moments with her and say goodbye – ”

I hadn’t heard the last part of his sentence because I had pushed past them and bolted up the stairs, taking two steps at a time. I could hear Mrs. Harlow scoff at my rudeness, but then she and Bear quickly caught up behind me. “Her room is the second door on the left,” Bear panted behind me and I immediately pushed through the door, but upon seeing the state of her room I stopped in my tracks.

There were tubes and wires and monitors everywhere – this place wasn’t much different from the hospital room, save for the color of the walls, which were a faint turquoise shade. A beeping from one of the monitors could be heard; it was steadily getting slower. Through the large window on the wall a blood-colored sun could be seen, slowly sinking down towards the horizon. In the middle of the room was a large bed, and in the bed, propped up by countless pillows with wires strewn across them like spilled intestines, lay Candace.

The tan had long since receded from her face, and her freckles contrasted greatly with her sickly pale skin. Her hair was matted and dull, and it had even gotten a shade darker from the lack of sunshine she had received while trapped indoors. Her eyes were closed, and I was unsure if she was asleep or if she was – no, she couldn’t be. “Candace?” I said shakily, just to make sure that she was still breathing.

When she heard my voice, a smile had formed before her eyes could even flutter open. She saw me standing in her doorway and she grinned – she really grinned, which was the first genuine smile I had seen from her in far too long. “You came to see me,” she said, though she didn’t sound too surprised. She probably knew all along that I would come back for her.

I didn’t say anything and instead made my way over to her bedside, careful not to trip over any wires. Her parents, who were still holding on to each other for support, remained in the doorway. They kept their eyes averted but their ears open. I sort of wanted Candace to tell them to go away so that I could spend a few minutes alone with her, but I knew that would be unfair to them, because a few minutes may have been all that Candace had left. Besides, they were her parents and they had more of a right to be here than I did.

“Hi,” I choked out. I was trying very hard not to stare at all of the medical equipment surrounding her.

“Hi,” she replied, still smiling. The sun was sinking further down in the sky.

“I, um, it’s...” I stumbled on my words before clearing my throat and saying softly, “It’s good to see you.” I brushed a strand of hair out of her face, touching her so gently that I could barely feel her skin under my fingertips.

Her smile broadened. “It’s kind of annoying here,” she said randomly, trying to make her voice sound casual and matter-of-fact, as if she was pretending that everything was fine. “They try to make me feel better with all of these.” She patted the mountain of pillows around her. “It doesn’t work. They’re trying to save me, too. That’s not working either.” I was about to say something but she cut me off with a grin. “It’s okay, Kasey. It really is. My coughing stopped.” She said it as if it was a good thing, but we both knew it wasn’t. It only meant that her time was getting closer.

I let out a long sigh and ran a hand through my hair. “You need to get a haircut,” she pointed out, and I let out a light chuckle, which surprised me because I didn’t know that laughing was possible at this point.

“Yeah, I do,” I agreed. I would have climbed on her bed to lie down next to her, but there were too many wires in the way. Instead, I leaned my upper body on the side of her bed so that our faces were close together.

“I’m going to miss you,” I whispered and leaned my forehead against hers. Her face was lit up by broken pieces of amber sunlight; the sun had fallen beneath the tree line and its beams pierced through the branches in slivers. I kissed her softly.

When I pulled away she looked almost angry. “Just because I’m sick it doesn’t mean you need to be so gentle,” she said. “I’m not going to break, not yet.” And then she grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me into a fiery kiss. We forgot her parents were standing right there and for a minute (or two) we just lost ourselves in the experience of just being able to feel each other. Then she pulled away, and as I looked into her honey-colored eyes I knew that was our last kiss.

“I love you,” I said fiercely.

She parted her lips to say something, but suddenly she seemed very weak and her voice had left her. The smile she gave me said enough, though: I love you, too. She leaned back into the pillows and let out a soft sigh that reminded me of the Weeping Willow as the wind swept through its branches. A sudden darkness veiled the room and I realized that the sun had fully set. Then, with a small smile still on her lips, Candace closed her eyes.

And my sunshiner was gone.