Voyager

"Hey," I say to Willow when I walk through the door of our room. I'm massaging the spot on my arm where the drug was injected. It always gets sore after these treatments.

"Hi," she says, lying on her back on her bed and doing something on her phone. She flips over and looks at me.

I walk over to my bed and sit down on it, glancing out the window. There's nothing out there except blackness. It's been like that for awhile. Apparently, we won't be able to see any more planets until Saturn and that won't be for another month.

I start taking my shoes off and getting my pajamas out of the little dresser by my bed. It's really early but these treatments make me so tired all the time.

"Hey, can I ask you something?"

I look up at Willow, who's giving me a peculiar expression.

"Shoot," I say.

"Where do you keep going every Wednesday night?"

I freeze. I knew this was going to happen eventually. There's so many thoughts running through my mind that I don't even know how to properly respond to her. Do I lie? Do I tell the truth? This whole thing works better when no one knows about it. I know that if I tell her, Willow will probably look at me with her big, pitiful eyes until we get to Earth 2.0 and that's enough to make me want to run away.

"Um–" I start, still not knowing what I'm going to say.

"And please don't lie. I worked with kids for a living, detecting lies is like my superpower," she says.

I sigh and turn to face her.

"Okay, Willow, you have to promise not to tell anyone..."

Willow sits up quickly, almost excitedly, and exclaims, "I promise!"

"Okay," I say, unsure if I should be doing this, but what choice do I have? This would have happened eventually. "There's a doctor on this ship named Dr. Olivier Dujardin. I go to him every Wednesday night because he's an oncologist and I have brain cancer. Brain cancer is one of the only cancers that doesn't have a cure, but Oli has an experimental drug and I agreed to take it while I'm here."

She stares. "Wait, what?"

"Yeah," I say. "It's not as bad as you think though. I'm okay, really."

Willow continues to look at me with concern and shock, like she wasn't expecting me to say that I had cancer, of all things. I feel a little bad about it because now I know things will probably become really awkward between us. I'm afraid she's going to turn into Flora 2.0 or something.

"You okay?" I ask.

She gives me a look and says, "You're asking me that?"

I laugh but I don't say anything else. Willow becomes very quiet all of a sudden. I don't know her very well, since we've only been on his ship for two months, but Willow's slowly becoming a really good friend. She's sweet, kind, and caring. She always wants to know about everyone's lives. She's cute and friendly. I just don't know if she's the type of person who can keep a secret really well.

"So, uh, I'm starving. Wanna go down to the cafeteria?" I say.

She nods. "Okay."

We get up and make our way down. I can feel something different about Willow now, I don't know what it is. I slowly regret not lying to her about it. I could've just said that Oli was my boyfriend and just fill him in on it later so we could keep the act up if Willow ever sees us together. Except, I know I'll feel guilty lying to my roommate like that.

I guess I made the right call.

We get our food and find Lily and Oleksandra at a table and go join them. Ten minutes later, more people have shown up. Flora, Kavya, Callahan (in his uniform, which I've never seen before until now), George (also in his uniform), and other random groups joined the table, though not our conversation. I keep glancing at Willow, who's suspiciously quiet, but I'm trying not to draw suspicion to myself either. I think people are noticing how quiet she is. She's usually always so talkative and asking questions.

"And he fucking took his pants off right then," Lily says, angrily. I didn't hear the rest of this story but now I'm really curious.

"Fuckin' hell," Callahan says. "That's disgusting. I'd've kicked him in the balls."

"Oh, I did," Lily says, taking a sip of her drink.

Oleksandra nods her head. "I walked in right as she did it."

"Oh, my God," Flora laughs.

"Willow, are you okay?" George asks, suddenly. Of course he would be the one to notice.

Willow looks surprised and she says, "What?"

"You're just so quiet. Is something wrong?" he asks, concerned. Everyone looks at her and I'm feeling a slight panic that she's going to stand up and scream that I have brain cancer to the entire cafeteria.

But she smiles and says, "Yes, I'm alright. I just have a headache."

"Oh, I can get you some Ibuprofen!" George immediately stands up.

"You're so sweet, George, but it'll go away. Thank you though," she says. He slowly sits back down and Callahan claps him on the shoulder.

I'm feeling immense relief; so Willow can keep a secret. For now, at least. She stays quiet throughout the rest of dinner but she starts to contribute a little more to the conversation, which has suddenly turned to more stories of men doing gross things. I try to telepathically tell Willow that I appreciate her not telling everyone.

I know that I eventually have to, especially if the cancer gets worse and I become bed-stricken or something, but for right now, when everyone is in ignorant bliss and don't have to feel like they need to walk on eggshells around me, it's good that no one else knows. I like just being seen as me, not the girl with cancer.

By the time dinner is over, everyone starts to go back to their rooms. Lily, Oleksandra, Flora, and Kavya wave goodbye and Willow stands up and tells me that she'll see me back in our room.

I smile and say, "Okay."

She gives me a smile back but it feels different, like she's now seeing me as the girl with cancer.

George also immediately follows her. He's not very good at being subtle about his feelings towards Willow, but she doesn't seem to mind, which is sweet.

"You okay?" Callahan says to me as he takes a bite out of the pie he just got.

I nod. "Yeah, why?"

"You've also been really quiet all night. Did you see Willow naked or something?"

"No," I roll my eyes. "Just didn't have much to contribute today."

"To the story of a random man taking his bloody pants off in Lily's room? That's not the Lizzie I know."

"You only know me from when we were ten, not now," I say, as-a-matter-of-factly.

"True, but you always have something to say."

"Not tonight."

"Okay, fine. If you say so," Callahan says, giving up. I shoot him a grin.

"Cute uniform," I say, changing the subject. He snorts and look down at it. It's grey and looks almost like a jumpsuit, and his name tag is pinned right above his heart.

"I forgot to change," he shrugs.

"Looks good on you," I comment.

"I can see right through you, Eliza, you're making fun of me."

"I'm being serious!"

He smirks and stands up. "I'm going to leave now, to get away from this toxic environment. Goodnight, Eliza."

"Goodnight, Cal," I say. He scowls at me and I watch him walk away, saying goodnight to some other people as he passes by them.

I guess I should go back too. I'm not sure what I'm going to be met with when I get there, but I'm afraid of what mine and Willow's relationship is going to be like now. She's just been so quiet and distant. Flora wasn't even like this when she found out. She had maybe an hour of shock and then she immediately went into full nurse-mode, making sure my health was okay.

The door is wide open when I get there and when I step inside, I'm assaulted by colors. Our room was always very colorful thanks to Willow's abundance of arts and crafts, but this time, there's more, if that's at all possible. My bed has lights hanging from it that change colors every second. On the walls are random colored paper stuck to it. Even Willow's side is decked out with similar decorations.

"Holy shit," I say, looking around. Willow's by my desk, taping streamers to the wall.

"What do you think?" she asks.

"Really colorful..."

"I know," she nods. "It might be too much but there shouldn't be any darkness or negativity in here. My students always responded well to bright colors whenever they felt sad or mad or anything. Do you like it?"

"I like it, but why?" I ask, turning to look at her.

Willow smiles at me and suddenly, she pulls me into a hug and squeezes me tight.

"I haven't known you for very long, but I haven't felt this connected with someone in a long time. And we're going to be living together for awhile so I just want you to know that I'm here for you, whenever you need me," she says, pulling away and giving me a grin.

My heart swells at this and I can feel myself tearing up slightly as I look around.

"Wow, thanks, Willow. This is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me," I say. I never thought that Willow (or anyone, really) would do something like this, that someone would just focus on my happiness more than anything. It's so sweet and thoughtful.

I pull Willow into a hug again and she chuckles, squeezing me tight again. At least now I know the kind of person Willow is and it's better than I could have imagined.