New York’s frozen December air stings my pale face like a hornet as I ran from Kyle’s crowded house to the glistening black door of my Mercedes. While fumbling with the keys, Sam, Nicole and Ashley stumbled behind me and fell into the side of the car.
“OMG that was the best party yet!” Sam slurred through her alcohol-stained breath.
“I know right. It’s a miracle the cops didn’t show up this time since there were so many people.” Chimed Ashley from the ground. Standing had quickly become too much for the drunken girls whose blistered feet no longer fit into their Steve Madden heels.
I touch up my makeup before pulling away, so my parents won’t detect just how wild the “small get-together” I told them about was. Like every Friday night, I maneuver my car between almost fifty others as I drive down Kyle’s street in the dead night. My parents’ command drifts into my head as I see something shiny on the road ahead of me, “Be careful of the ice sweetie, it’s going to be a cold one tonight.” Smoothly swerving out of the way, the car shakes the slightest bit as the intoxicated bodies of my best friends swing in whichever direction the car throws them in.
Suddenly, everything in sight is spinning. I can make out the distinct redness of a stop sign up ahead, but I no longer know what to do with my hands to get the car to turn left or where left is. The vertigo washes over me like an intimidating wave at the beach, leaving me guessing when it will be gone. Fortunately, the nausea comes with the vertigo, so I am able to pull over and vomit before I can crash the car. With the party as my façade, I do not have to give an explanation for the dizziness and vomiting; not this time anyway.
Every day the chances of people finding out about my condition increase, but I will be sure that nobody ever will have to know. Anything that separates you from the others puts you at a disadvantage, and being pale as a ghost, lanky, and practically a walking skeleton is already making me different enough. I don’t need everyone to know about my other problems.
After fifteen minutes of pop music, I pull back onto the road to keep driving. My ears perk up as I hear Justin Bieber crooning lyrics about time. Time: the most valuable thing in life. More so than being friends with the popular kids, partying week after week, being an AP scholar, having the city council president as your father, and the church director as your mother. Time outlasts everything, and all I need is more of it; however, unlike all of my designer clothes and fake friends, I can’t grasp any more. Time: the boundaries that force me to remain in my frail, ghostly body, the chains that restrict me to a classroom desk, and tie me into cross country sneakers when all I want is to break free and become something greater. Something that isn’t damaged, something real, something bigger than a seventeen-year-old girl from Long Island. With time comes hope. The hope of doing something extraordinary. I don’t have time, so I can’t have hope.  I know that nothing extraordinary will happen to me for a long time. Twisted versions of the future fly through my mind. “The worst is to come,” nags the hidden monster working vigorously to do all it can against me. My head spins, but this time I don’t stop and pull over.
My mind races back to the horrific day in August when my future was clearly laid out for me.
“If you’re not going to take action on this, then you’re going to have to learn to live with the consequences,” my parents told me on the rainy Tuesday afternoon in the room at Hasbro Children’s Hospital when we had located the monster trying to steal my life for his own. I remember every detail of the trying-too-hard-to-cheer-hopeless-people-up decor in the small chamber that determined my fatal future. I memorized every twinge of pain in my mother’s voice as she repeated the doctor’s conclusion over and over again, trying to comprehend the news.
Today, after four long months of “dealing with the consequences” it became too much for me to handle. I need to let go.
In one rash flick of my wrist, I changed everything. A mix of glistening lights and the blackness spun around me as if I was on a carousel. Truth be told, I was on a carousel; the carousel of life: the wheel that keeps on turning. I want the wheel to stop. My wheel’s been turning for far too long, and I haven’t been able to catch my breath. Sooner or later I’ll be able to breathe freely with God, so why not make it sooner rather than later.
Crrrrrraasssssshhh. Glass shattered all over as my previously perfectly sleek Mercedes-Benz ran up the side of a large oak tree and into the ditch beneath.
“What the heck just happened?! What is all over me? Why am I bleeding?” A chorus of sobs and curiosity mixed with disbelief fled from the backseat to the demolished front of the car where I was sitting, not disturbed by the life-threatening mess I had just inflicted upon myself as well as my best friends. Whipping out her cell-phone, Nicole dialed 911 and within ten minutes a fleet of first responders swarmed our crumpled-up paper ball that was formerly my car.
“Say, I’d recognize this sweet face anywhere. It’s Hannah Walsh, Kevin and Susan’s daughter!” Boomed the deep, loud voice of the fire chief, Gary Watson.
“We were on our way home from a party. I think she had too much to drink which affected her coordination,” whimpered Sam as she gaped at the calamitous scene with eyes bigger than those of a caricature.
Dragging me out of the driver’s window that was bordered by shards of glass an old, wrinkly EMT yelled to his posse, “Get a head scan.” Blood, dripping everywhere, was the icing on the cake; a sign that the end was soon to come. My head felt as light as a feather, my breathing as jagged as the shards of glass that were edged into my flesh. Based off my past hope of becoming a neurosurgeon, I could piece together that I at least had a mild concussion, if not something more severe. Although, I don’t think that mattered compared to a more pressing discovery that the paramedics would soon pick up.
Setting me down on the stretcher, the doctors rubbed icy-cold, clear jelly on my head and rubbed around a thicker version of a magic wand. Nonetheless, this so called magic wand did not belong to my fairy godmother, as I knew everything I had worked so hard for in the past three years would unravel in one sentence. Ashley, Sam, and Nichole would find out my hidden demons which would lead to everyone knowing. The whole town would know about the secrets I kept that haunted me, the monsters that forced my mouth shut because being different was worse than death.
“She’s got a massive tumor. Looks to be about Grade 4, and it’s expanding to the cerebellum!” Shouts one of the EMTs to the other doctors filling out many papers.
There it is. The final blow to my gut hits me hard. I feel naked, having my deepest secrets exposed for everyone to find. What will they think of me? Thinking to myself I inquire, “Is difference really a bad thing?” I had seen how happy other kids at school were with their own friends who talked about important matter, not just whose party we were going to on Friday night. I wanted that for myself. Everything happens for a reason, and things were starting to fall into place for me. This wasn’t where I belonged.
The feeling of cotton balls filled my ears, only allowing the muffled sobs of the other three victims to dance through the tunnels leading to the mastermind behind this scheme, my brain. My ingenious brain told me to do specifically what I wanted and not care about others for the first time in my life. A feeling of pride swelled in my heart as a result of my actions. I was proud to stop the bullying that my tumor had forced upon me and become my own hero. Stopping the pain I was hiding from the world felt phenomenal, for I could finally understand what it feels like to be free. Relief instantly swept over me as I was taken from the earth and brought to bigger and better places.