Chapter 1

I held the razor tightly in my right hand.  Above the mirror, a bright yellow spotlight highlighted my pale terrified face - a face stained with dark tracks.  The tears wouldn’t stop.  I was terrified, but I knew I needed to do this.  Pulling the sleeve of my hooded top down over my free hand, I swiped under my eyes vigorously, before taking a deep breath and lifting the razor.

 

Two weeks previously

My name is Clio, like the car.  My younger sister was diagnosed with Lung Cancer when she was just ten years old.  Even before then she knew something was wrong with her.  She would say things that the entire family would brush off as an over-exaggeration from the world’s biggest hypochondriac.  It wasn’t until she started coughing up blood that we began to take it seriously.  I sometimes wonder if we had listened earlier, would this be over.  Would she have already won her fight against Cancer and be living a happy normal life?  I’ve done a lot of research in the last six months, and one thing every expert agrees on is that the sooner you catch it the higher your survival rate.

My parents blame themselves and each other.  My mom hates that she ignored Sophie for so long, and believes that her maternal instinct should have warned her that something was wrong.  She feels that she failed her youngest child and now spends her time travelling the country searching for a specialist who can tell her what she wants so desperately to hear.  My dad believes it was his secondhand smoke which caused the Cancer, and that he effectively gave her this disease she’s fighting so hard against.  And at the same time that they’re tearing themselves up inside, they’re blaming each other for the reasons above. 

I’d like to say I don’t blame them or myself, but that would be a lie.  On the analytical side of my brain I know that this wasn’t any one person’s fault, but I can’t help the guilt.  Survivor’s guilt I guess - I’m healthy while my baby sister fights for her life daily.  We both grew up in the same house where my dad would consistently chain smoke after work, so why did it miss me when I had been choking in it for six more years? 

I know my brother feels the same, even if we’ve never talked about it.  Jake pretends to live in a plastic bubble where nothing bad happens.  If it means not facing the truth and breaking down, he would happily stay in a state of denial for the rest of his life and no amount of hard truths will pop his perfect little bubble.

Jake needs to face reality soon though.  My mom needs to stop traveling and be there for Sophie and my dad needs to take time off work to support her - because my baby sister has just been given a few weeks to live.  Her Cancer is terminal.