Not Afraid to Die

Numbers danced around the page, blurring into muddled lines of incomprehensible text. The girl at the desk sighed. Sixth grade math made her want to pull her brown locks from her scalp. She wanted to toss the workbook full of problems into the trash bin beside her floral-decorated desk and let it decay amongst the miscellaneous unopened candies. But her father would be checking over her homework the next day. She needed to defeat the army of equations.

Sighing, the girl sat back in her chair and glared at the pencil mark-less page. A pang ran through her stomach. It was only yesterday that she returned home from the hospital, where the doctors decided she needed to be put on a feeding to tube to aid in healthy weight. Keeping weight on her body was difficult with the constant nausea and lack of appetite. The doctors were trying to help maintain the girl's life by shoving a feeding tube in her stomach. As much as she appreciated the attempt to keep her alive, she wasn't fond of the pain that came with the artificial feeding.

She dealt with it though. Just as she dealt with home schooling, constant medications, and frequent doctor visits. Her family wanted her alive. At eleven-years-old, she was lucky to still be alive. She knew that. By the age of five, she knew she would die young and she was okay with that. Life was even more precious to her due to her illness. It was meant to be experienced to the fullest.

That didn't include sitting in her room working on math.

The unsolved equations on the page continued to receive glares from her. Answers refused to magically appear regardless of her menacing looks. Glare softening, pout taking over her face, she buried her head in her arms on top of the work. School couldn't be that important. She wouldn't be alive to make it to college. She would be lucky if she even made it through the year. Her father needed to accept that and give up the silly notion of forcing her to complete sixth grade math homework.

"Lolita, are you okay?" a concerned voice the girl knew well asked.

Surprised she hadn't heard her door open, the girl jumped from her defeated position and turned to face the intruder. The teenage boy in the doorway stared at her through his black-rimmed glasses, concern clear in his sea foam eyes. In hopes of ridding the concerned look from his face, she smiled.

"I'm fine, Dante," the girl replied.

The worry creases in her older brother's face refused to leave. Lolita couldn't be mad at him for it. Her health was delicate. Any minor illness could lead to her premature death. HIV did affect the immune system.

"Are you sure?" he returned.

"Yeah. Math just gives me a headache."

Worry disappeared from his face, much to Lolita's pleasure. Though she didn't know if the hum running through her head was brought on by math-oriented frustration or her illness, it was best that Dante think the former. She didn't like worrying him. Far more important things needed his attention, like his raising-to-local-stardom band.

"Do you want to take a break from homework?" Dante asked.

"I think you know the answer to that," Lolita returned.

A warm smile spread on his face, "Well, the band is here. I'm sure they'd love to see you."

Excitement ignited in her moss green eyes. Anything was better than doing math work but nothing was better than spending time with Dante's band mates. Besides the doctors and nurses, they were the only form of non-family socialization she got. Home schooling made it nearly impossible for her to make friends.

Lolita stood from her desk, abandoning the mathematic war in her workbook, and flitted across the expanse of her room. Dante held the door open for his younger sibling to flutter through. Together, they walked through the hallway decorated in family photos to the staircase.

"So, when is dad checking your homework?" Dante asked.

"Tomorrow."

"How much do you have left?"

"I finished the paragraph he wanted for English and my social science discussion questions. There is no science homework this week. He gave up on teaching me foreign language," Lolita listed.

"What about math?"

"It's evil."

She still couldn't figure out what human being forced children to learn mathematics. Whoever decided to put it into middle school curriculum had no soul. Equations and word problems were the worst torture known to man.

Dante chuckled at his younger sibling's disgust with math and led the way down the staircase, making sure she didn’t tumble down the uneven terrain. At the bottom, Lolita immediately diverted toward the living room entrance, where she was met with the sight of the members of her older brother's band and their lead singer's younger sibling seated around the spacious area. The first to notice her was their drummer, who took his eyes away from his pink-haired girlfriend long enough to catch sight of the frail brunette.

"Hey, cupcake," he said, "How are you feeling?"

An ache was running through her brain, pain surged from the once in use feeding tube insertion spot, nausea was threatening to turn into a full-fledged vomit fest, and exhaustion had clouded over a good deal of her better judgment. She was anything but fine at the moment.

"Great," Lolita responded, smiling brightly.

As long as she was alive, she would be great. No pain would get in the way of how she lived the remaining days of her life. She made that promise to herself, to her deceased mother, to her father, and to her brother.

It wasn't a promise she was planning on breaking.