She’s screaming. After weeks spent struggling to work up the courage to visit her, clinging to the hope that she’ll be over it by now and won’t still be angry, Marya’s screaming. Yelling. Her voice echoing down the hall, shooting up my body from my tingling toes to the pit of my belly and exploding into my brain. “I don’t want to talk, Lyssy,” she’s saying. “Not after what you did to me.”

“I’m sorry, okay?” I yell back, pounding on the door and pounding my fists violently against it. “Will you please stop fighting me and come out now? Please?”

She flings open the door, and stands there with her eyes red and bloodshot, her hair a wreck and her whole face yellow and sagging with a strange weight that I can’t recognize. My heart jumps within me, every part of me is crying for help but I just stand there with my eyes pooling with tears.

“I don’t want to be with you, you freak,” she cries, her lips curling with anger and her eyes lit up with wild grief. She slams the door shut with a deafening roar, and I sink down to my knees, my whole body shaking with rage.

“I am not a freak,” I screech, flinging open the door and stomping down the hall. “I am not the freak here, Marya, and neither is my mother. If you had just taken the time to listen to her, to hear what she had to say, you wouldn’t say this. You wouldn’t say any of this.”

“You’re just like her,” she bellows from up the stairs, and I run up the stairs, my feet pounding against the ground. I swing across the room, seeing Marya curled in the corner and inching towards her with my face contorted in anguish.

“I am not just like her, Marya, I am Alyssa. I am my own person, I will not make the same mistakes that Mum did.”

Tears are overflowing down her cheeks, she looks up at me with her lips twisted up into a sneer. “Don’t you get it? You already have, Lyssy. You’ve always been just like her, I’ve just been too stupidly blind to see it.” She bangs her fist into the wall and brings it back with a howl of pain as blood begins to trickle slowly out of it.

“If you just talked to her you’d understand,” I cry, inching closer to her with my face burning red with fury. “She’s different now, she’s changed.”

Marya clutches her bleeding hand with a snarl, and backs slowly away from me, thudding against the wall behind her and collapsing on the floor. “There is no change,” she yells. “Change is what the counselor said when he said he had the answer to Mum and Dad’s marriage issues. And now look where Dad is. Change is what you said had happened when you finally started standing up to your Mum when we first began high school. And now listen to you.”

Her words rip my heart and twist it to pieces, and it takes all my energy to say one more thing. “It’s not too late for change, Marya.” I’ve stopped yelling, my voice is more of a whimper now.

“Oh yes it is,” Marya says, shaking droplets of blood off her hand and curling up into a ball on the floor as tears stream down her cheeks. “Get out,” she demands through her sobs. “Just get out.”

I shove the door closed and stumble down the steps, shaking back sobs. That wasn’t what I wanted. That wasn’t what I had ever prepared for. I thought she would understand. Thought she would forgive me.

How could I have been so wrong?

I start to exit the stairway, but I look up to see a familiar woman blocking me.

“Mrs. Reed,” I stammer, my cheeks burning red. “I- I’m sorry, I know I kind of barged in.”

She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I thought I heard your voice,” she says quietly. “And I’m not mad, Alyssa, quite the contrary, I’m glad you came. I’m sorry you had to see her like that.”

I force a smile, but I can’t fight back the tears stinging my eyes. “Don’t be,” I mumble. “I’m her friend, I’ve seen her in good times and bad.”

She gives me a sympathetic look, and placed her hand on my shoulder gently. “She’s not mad at you, you know.”

I nod, but I know Marya’s mad at me. One look at the hatred in her eyes had told me everything.

“Sit down a bit, Alyssa,” Mrs. Reed says, and she guides me to the living room. I follow her dazedly, sitting down slowly and folding my hands together.

“Look, it’s not you. She has a lot on her plate right now, she’s been that towards all of us. She just needs someone to take her anger out on.” She gives me a weak smile, her green eyes watering with tears. “She got a letter from her father this morning.”

My eyes widen, my head shoots up and I shake my head slowly back and forth. “Addressed to her? Not you?”

She gives a barely perceptible nod. “Addressed to her. The first one she’s gotten. I don’t know what it said, but she was furious. She’s yelled at me too, she’s hurt all of us. But she’s not herself, Alyssa, remember that. She just needs a way to express her feelings, and...well, you know Marya, you’ve seen her when she doesn’t know what to do with them.”

“Yeah,” I murmur, my heart tightening within me. “Yeah,” I say again, because my mouth is too dry to come up with any other words.

“Do a favor for me, will you?”

I stare up at her and force a smile, standing up and folding my hands together. “Of course.”

“Come by more often. I know that sounds...nightmarish-” she gives me a sad shake of her head, “But Marya needs to know that you’re still there for her. She’s feeling pretty betrayed right now, you have to prove to her that you still care about her.”

I fumble a nod, and then slip out the door, darkness clouding my vision. Empty words, messages, feelings fly around my head, each one longing for a place to perch and rest the night, but I don’t have anywhere to offer them. Marya has taken them from me. Marya has taken everything from me.

For days I had worked up courage, trashed about twenty speeches in order to find the right one for Marya. But she hadn’t even let me say it. Hadn’t even listened as I prepared to dump out my heart in the most gut wrenching apology I could think of. For days, I had wrestled with the fact that I wanted to see her, wanted to be friends again, fought against the voice that told me that it would never work out. For days I had listened to Mum as she told me that she thought Marya would want to be with me to the end, so that Marya could cherish my memory more. But now I wondered if it was still over, if my friendship with Marya was broken the moment I called for Mum to end our conversation.

Those days were ruined. Now all I had was a heart and soul and no one to give it too. It was too early, and I was too afraid, to give it all to Mum. Because she still hadn’t proven that she could take care of it.

I told Marya’s mother that I’d come back, that I’d keep visiting, but now I know I don’t have the strength to. Now I’ve seen her, seen how much Marya hates me, seen how much Marya is struggling, wrestling with her father, with a life that I’m not a part of anymore. And I’m not sure I want to be.

After I get home, I sit on the bed for a long time, curling my legs up underneath me and staring up at the ceiling. I finger the new phone that Mum bought me between my thumb and forefinger, staring thoughtfully at it and wondering what good it will do me now if I can’t call Marya, can’t tie myself to other people if this cancer will make me so alone as I know I have to be.

But then, as if it were waiting for the right moment, the phone beeps to let me know that it’s there.

Hey Alyssa, it’s Joshua. We haven’t talked in a while, how are you doing?

His words sting, and I start to regret putting my old SIM card into this phone, but instead I take a deep breath, and think for a moment, trying to find the right words to say. Because somehow, for whatever strange reason, I find I have to say them.

So I reply the first honest answer to that question that I’ve given in weeks. Not too great

The reply comes quickly. D: Sorry, that sucks. Let me know if you want to talk about it.

My first instinct cries out no, but I know I have to talk to someone, know that he’s the only one besides Marya who’s actually taken the time to try and talk to me about what’s going on. And I find that I need that, need someone to talk to, need someone to share my feelings to, and now… my old feelings about him, my own struggles… they don’t seem to matter as much as they used to.

Yeah actually I kinda do. Could we maybe meet somewhere? A cafe or something?

A long pause, and then another beep. Are you asking me out on a date? XD

Against my will, a smile creeps up the corners of my mouth, but I shove it away, instead jabbing in the letters, No stupid I don’t even know you

Maybe we should change that.

ok, I type after some thought.

Yay!! *high-five*

*high five*

There’s a starbucks near my house. 7680 Harvest Lane. You wanna meet at four?

Coolio

I click off and place my phone carefully at my desk, unable to believe what I just did. I run down the steps, seeing Mum on the couch and plopping quickly down next to her. “Hey Mum?”

“Yes, Alyssa?”

“Can I go to Starbucks this afternoon?”