Jane stared at the mirror for a long time, she couldn't believe it. Chemotherapy. That word sent chills down her spine. What in the world was happening to her world? Every single thing she had thought her world to be had come crumbling down and now she didn't know if she was still an actress in her own movie.
Her teacher had told her that. That she was an actress in her movie. It was supposed to be a motivational line that meant she could take charge of her life and act her part very well. Well, right now she didn't even know what her part was anymore.
Well, she sighed, this storyline was getting all jumbled up and she wasn't sure she was the star actress anymore. She felt more like the scared new unnoticed role player that just had a few lines to act out. It was summer but it felt like winter: cold and chilly. She looked back at the face staring back at her. She had had to cut her hair short so the chemotherapists would have a much easier job scraping the rest out and plugging in all those weird instruments in. Just that she hadn't started treatment yet. It was due to start in three months so she had let her hair grow back a bit; short, and wiry looking, black, neck-length hair.
Her parents had tried to give her all the encouragement they thought she would need but the thing was it was getting on her nerves because they constantly bugged her with numerous "hope you are not dying yet" sounding kind of questions and dotted over her day and night till she felt like a cute puppy whose owners couldn't stop fussing. And talking about a puppy, she glanced down at the foot of her bed and allowed herself a little smile when she saw her puppy Rue sleeping with the mouth hanging open. Rue. How had she even gotten to name the puppy such awkward sounding name? She couldn't remember.
She couldn't remember much these days. Infact the doctor almost told her she had a memory loss. Almost because she had to give the doctor a wicked eye and that had quickly shut him up. How dare he want to say she had memory loss? She Jane? The girl who almost always topped her class. She wondered why they would allow such clumsy doctors to be in charge of human life. But deep down, she knew she had either lost her mind and was seeing things that weren't there or she was really seeing things that were really there. Either a yes or a no. No in-between. She didn't have a memory loss.
Walking away from the mirror back to her bed, she had sudden flashes of visions that were no longer sudden because she was used to them now. It no longer startled her. Those had actually happened and she had remembered them but in bits, in disorganized order, like cutting a cake in so different places that they became messy. It couldn't be arranged. She took her pills from her bedside table just as she glanced at the clock: 1.a.m. These pills didn't help. She had insomnia and all the sleeping pills in the world couldn't help her sleep at night.
How had her world, her perfect little world, come tumbling down? No not tumbling down. Dark? How had her bright little world turned so dark? She put on her night gown. The red one. The red one because she loved red. The red one because her first toy had been red. The red one because her favourite colour was red. The red one because her favorite teacher was a red head. The red one because the evening her world had started to puzzle her, the evening she at least started to notice some strange things she had a red dress on and even the skies were a bloody red with the sun startling red, as though someone had bled on it and forgot to wipe it off.
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That morning she had woken up with a smile. Today was the day she would rewrite the test she had failed. No. She had missed. Yes missed, because her mother had taken her to the hospital for some tests. Her mother, Ann, had been worried about her ever since her hair had started falling off and those black spots had started appearing on her stomach.
The tests had been carried out and nothing had been found out so Jane had assumed it must have been the chlorinated swimming pool she always went to have her swimming practice 4 days a week. She remembered when she first went to a swimming pool and now despite all she gave a little smile. She had run away. It had been very embarrassing and she had made Vivian, her best friend promise not to tell anyone
After she got her certificate, she had stopped having her lessons altogether. After all, she reasoned, she wasn't going to be at the risk of drowning anytime soon. But then she was forced to resume her lessons when one night she woke up from a terrible nightmare of when she had been drowning and she had heard a voice saying,"how could you forget to swim? You just got your certificate of confirmation. You are a certified swimmer" and Jane remembered that she had told the voice in a voice that she didn't even recognize as hers "I forgot. I forgot. I forgot." And then she had went ahead to drown. So she had started the lessons again all because she had had a bad dream where she had drowned because she couldn't swim. Her mother had told her that her reason was the silliest one she had ever heard but she just shrugged. What did her mother know? Or even her father?
Well her father was trying a bit
.
They had always been too busy to notice anything of importance about her. For example, they didn't know when she started having those horrible nightmares. They didn't Know when she had sneaked out of the house one night just to sleepover at Vivian's place. Her best friend Vivian. Her parents
especially her mother...Jane knew her father couldn't have cared less if it was left for him
had told her to cut off ties with Vivian because Vivian first had the exact symptoms she was now having and they
Jane's parents..no mother
had assumed she had gotten the symptoms from Vivian.
Jane had been strangely angry when the doctor told her they could find nothing wrong with her. Angry because she had missed the Chemistry tests that was set for that day. But Vivian had told the teacher that she was very sick; which might have been partly true because after those spots came she had been having splitting headaches. She had gone for the tests her mother had pestered her.
To Jane it was just some silly black spots on her stomach and a few of her hairs falling off. She knew her mother meant well. She had thought her mother hadn't or wouldn't notice since her parents were both extremely "busy" people. They reminded her of a movie she had watched when she was younger: of very busy parents who had , after accumulating so much wealth from their busy jobs had settled down to enjoy it on holidays only to be crushed by an auto accident on their way to the perfect holiday paradise. The movie was supposed to be a tragic one but the actors ended up making it a very funny tragedy. What was it called again, a tragic comedy.
Thanks to Vivian, she was going to write the test she had missed on the day he had taken those laboratory tests. She was going to write the paper this morning. She couldn't be happier... Chemistry was her favorite paper plus the red haired Mrs Smith was her favorite teacher. And since red was her favorite color, she just loved her all the more.
The test had been scheduled to hold after school because Mrs Smith had no free periods going on for her. After her last class that day, as other students were bouncing off home rather very happily; perhaps even more happily than had they seemed when they were just arriving for a fresh school day, she had to stay behind for the test and Vivian had graciously offered to wait for her.
She looked at her wristwatch: 3 p.m. already? Why was Mrs Smith taking so long? Vivian was sitting beside her with a very sour face. Jane knew her friend was supposed to be at her singing class today although she had been having bouts of a strange sickness. She took singing classes after school for one silly reason: Her dad had told her she sang like a horse! Jane still remembered the day Vivian came to her with swollen eyes and she had asked her what the problem was and she had snapped rudely at her but however after some minutes ticked by without them talking to each other, Vivian had told her that she had a bit of a misunderstanding with her dad who said her voice sounded like a horse's own. She had ran to her room and cried for 2 hours. "So that's why my eyes are swollen", Vivian had concluded. Although Jane tried to assure her it wasn't true, Vivian insisted it was since two people had told her the same thing: her Grand aunt and now her dad!
Jane looked at her pink wristwatch again: 3:15p.m. Merely the effort of looking at the wristwatch was a pain to her because she did not like pink. No, not at all. Her mother had bought it for her recent birthday and so to show appreciation she had to wear it so her mother wouldn't be offended. She would have preferred a red one. She had always loved red. Pink didn't go down too well with her. She thought pink just wasn't her colour. She remembered the last time she wore a pink dress; that was like a year ago and she had fallen into a ditch, broken her wrist, and got her money stolen all on the same day! She had concluded that pink wasn't just for her and so tried to avoid the colour since then.
