Chapter 20

When Ryan wakes up that last day he knows it's the end. He can feel it. That knowledge somehow makes it easier for him to get up and greet the day, to see all he loved one more time before it all disappeared. He has decided that it won’t be dramatic like in the movies, there is sun shine but it won’t be spectacular outside. They will laugh talk but it won’t be anything particularly memorable and in the end there will be tears, lots of them, but no wailing in grief or dramatic last words, it will just end.   

He eats more at breakfast than usual that day and that makes his mom smile and eases the tension a little that's settled into Julia's shoulders. Ryan smiles as much as he can and babbles, because he likes to do it and because he knows it makes them feel better. He wants them to remember him like this, happy, chattering and energetic, wants them to remember his last day as having been a really good day.

After breakfast the rest of the pack shows up, as they always do. They spend most of the morning just walking around the neighborhood or sitting in a circle in the front lawn. Always talking. Ryan finds as the day wares on that he still has so much to say and not nearly enough time to say it in. He's glad that he has made his peace with this place because hours from now he will leave it, forever.

He's said the really important stuff, the rest doesn't matter as much. During lunch he actually makes Julia laugh and she hasn’t done much of that since his illness had become public knowledge. Today was a good day.

The others have finally noticed how tired he is, and he's been trying to hide it a little because he just knows that next time he goes to sleep he won't wake up. It is one of those things that he could never put into words, it was calm and he is not the least bit scared anymore, which surprises him. He makes it until 4 o’clock that day and then he knows time has run out.

He lays down on the couch, stretched out with his head on Julia’s lap. Bri rests her head on her Katie’s shoulder taking comfort in her sisters presence. Peyton and Kyle are curled up in the recliner while Ben has taken over the entirety of the loveseat. Sam's sitting in the corner, keeping an eye out on all of them and he gives Ryan a little nod when he notices him looking at him. He understands now what is coming, but he doesn’t say anything. 

There's some movie playing on the TV but no one's really paying attention. "I love you all," Ryan mumbles, just loud enough. They kind of laugh and Julia runs his hand through Ryan' hair and it feels so nice that Ryan just kind of slips slowly into sleep. Ryan isn’t angry anymore, he’s just done.

The rest of them continue talking in soft voices, still not paying attention to the movie. Ryan' heart beat continues at a slow pace, the sound which they all had built their lives around for the last few months. And then, about twenty minutes after Ryan's had fallen asleep, it just stops. The absence of it makes it seem like silence have fallen everywhere and all of them look towards Ryan.

Ryan' body is all that's left of him, with his short brown hair and kind eyes that now held nothing behind the lids.

He looks peaceful, so much more peaceful than he's looked in months, but they are all shocked into silence for a moment before the tears come cascading down. Julia gathers Ryan into his arms and holds him tight. Mrs. Sails has come in from the other room and her face has lost all its color and her hands are fisted so tightly that her knuckles are white and the tears make her eyes red a puffy. Bri is petting Sam's hair and crying quietly while she sobs into his chest. Kyle is motionless while Peyton holds onto him like a life line crying, sobbing. Ben can't quite take it all in yet, neither can Katie who seemed to have little droplets moving down her face but wasn’t sure when they had started or if they would stop. Their heads are whirling and their chests ache, and god it hurts. It consumes them and wrecks them but at least they had it. It brushed up against them, rapped them in its cloth and made them brave. They felt it. So they know it isn’t just an utterance on the sunrise or a camera flash, it exists. Maybe that’s what hurts them now, and that’s what will hurt forever because it was, he was, in their hands, in their lives and then suddenly he was gone. It is terrifying, because you can get so used to a person, forget sometimes what they mean to you and when they are gone you don’t remember how to live without them, and you never will.