It's easy not to

"Aubrey, wake up. Doctors appointment.", my dad said while rubbing my shoulder to wake me up.

"I'll meet you downstairs in fifteen minutes.", I said, fully aware that I slept in past noon.

I didn't go to school the rest of the week. I wasn't answering my phone, replying to e-mails, replying to comments on myspace, or seeing anyone who came to the door. My parents just thought it was a mood swing, and called my doctor, well, doctors. Two in one day. Lucky me.

I didn't bother to hop in the shower. I threw my hair up into a sloppy bun and just put on a pair of gray sweats and a green tank-top. No bother getting dressed up.

I hurried down the stairs, grabbed a banana from the kitchen, and walked out to the passenger side of my dad's brand new hummer. Not exactly an environmental friendly car since it eats gas, but hey, my dad wanted one.

Five minutes later my dad met me in the car. He had half a bagel in his mouth and smiled at me. My mother was at work. She doesn't like doing these things. It takes up too much of her time, and she's always left disappointed. Thanks, mom.

I looked back at the house as we started to pull out of the drive. There was something... missing."Dad, where's the tree?"

"What tree?"

"The willow."

"Oh. That tree.", he replied back dryly. "Your mother thought it was too depressing. Had some people cut it down."

Oh, of course. We all know the real reason why. Too depressing. I might look at it and decide to shoot myself this time.

I let out a sigh and rested my head on my window. We were on the highway now. Luckily, we don't live too far away from the local hospital, Saint Peregrine Laziosi, our current destination. Ah, so many times we've taken this fucking trip...

I tried getting the incident in school out of my head, and now it was easier than usual. I hate hospitals. That was the only thing on my mind.

I hate fucking hospitals with a passion.

It took about twenty minutes to finally get there. That's a twenty minute silent car ride with my dad. Fun. I barely talked at all to my parents this past week, only if I had to or wanted something.

I walked into the automatic opening doors, and made myself to the front desk with my dad. The nurse sitting there, named Bertha, was a middle aged woman who look like she was extremely pissed off at the world. How sweet.

After signing in, we took an elevator up to the third floor, walked down the long hallway, made a couple turns, and ended up in some room where they draw blood. Routine procedure for me. I walked into the back room, and into the small badly cushioned chair. My dad was out in the teeny waiting room watching 'The Price Is Right" on a small rinky dink television.

A nurse walked in, fresh out of medical school. She had blonde hair, but her roots were growing in. She was thin, pretty, and looked way too chipper to be drawing blood. Kind or eery, if you ask me.

"Hi, my name is Kathleen! It looks like we're going to be taking a lot of blood out of you, so we're gonna be feeding you some nice graham crackers and fresh orange juice.", she said in a very happy voice along with a big cheesy smile.

Bitch.

Kathleen tied a blue tourniquet around my left arm and made me squeeze this orange stress ball in my left hand. After three minutes, she took the ball and stuck the needle in my vein. Voila. Instant blood.

I watched as she filled about... a million different tubes up with my blood. It's not like I get grossed out with this stuff, it's just the sensation. It makes me queasy. Speaking of queasy...

"Um... can I get a graham cracker?", I asked after an overwhelming sensation of suddenly feeling lightheaded smacked me across the face.

Kathleen reached over and handed me two rectangular graham crackers with a small paper cup of orange juice, with pulp. Yummm. I hate pulp.

I took a bite out of the one graham cracker. It tasted like cardboard. Oh well, it's going to have to do.

"All done!", Kathleen cooed with her overly bright and shiny voice.

It seemed like an eternity, but I finally finished. I might pass out, but who the hell cares! I survived. I thanked Kathleen and walked out to the waiting room, where my dad was caught up in Jerry Springer. Figures. Steve was holding some transvestite back from beating the shit out of his boyfriend, who all the while thought he was a she. Amusing.

"Ready for Doc?", my dad asked in an overly enthusiastic way, even clapping his hands while standing up.

Yes. I am so excited to see my shrink because you and mom think I'm going to kill myself since I haven't been going to school, or nothing's yet to have changed!

Talin's POV

"Okay, so, why did you want to meet me here? I don't even know you, dude.", Chase said to me while taking a sip out of his coffee.

I found out his number from Sarah, well, more like stole it. I called him and told me to meet me at the café. I wanted to firstly apologize, and find out what really happened with Aubrey. I took a deep breath in, before letting it all go.

"Look. I'm not really good at explaining things so here it goes... I'm Sarah's cousin first of all."

"You're that bitch's cousin? Aw, man. Poor thing.", he replied sarcastically.

"Tell me about it. Well, it goes like this; Sarah called me and asked me to do a favor, to come down and help her ruin this girl's reputation. This girl named Aubrey.", while saying this Chase's facial expression changed from serene to pissed off. "Aubrey's been giving her hell, and after seeing Sarah, know why. Sarah's a fucking bitch. Well, I met Aubrey by chance, we talked. She seemed normal."

"She is.", Chase cut in defensively.

"Yeah, well... she is. I went over her house, ran into Roger,-"

"WHOAH! You're the little fucker who beat his ass? Dude, that's great! Aub always told me how great a person you were. She might not know you man but she really likes you."

"Thanks.", I said while looking down into my cup of tea. Man, do I feel like such shit."Well, it gets worse. So, all in all, I started to like her. I asked her to the winter formal."

"That's how I recognized you! You asked me to do that special delivery for her! Oh man if it wasn't for you we wouldn't be- ah. I'm sorry things worked out against you. No hard feelings?"

"None. Just, let me finish. I got mad. Hurt. Sarah talked me into spying again, well, worse. She was going to pay me, a lot of money, and well, I got carried away. I heard you two talk about how she tried to commit suicide."

"How the fuck did you hear that?", Chase asked. I swear to God, he's going to fucking kill me, and I wouldn't put it past him.

"She had me spying. First night only. I took off after I heard that. Just let me explain everything, okay? I promise you, I'm not a bad guy. My judgements were just clouded for a bit. I swear, after I heard you two talk about it, very briefly, I decided to talk to Sarah, but not to tell her anything. Just to tell her I was done messing with Aubrey. I guess I finally came to my senses, a little too late, but I still did."

"How the fuck did the school find out then? She's not fucking talking to me thanks to you."

"I assure you, I had nothing to do with telling the school. I knew nothing about all of that. That was all Sarah. Like I said before, I decided to talk to Sarah, but I let is slip. Hell, I figured Sarah was smart enough to understand. I figured out later, if I didn't tell Sarah the truth about Aubrey, Sarah wouldn't have stopped trying to make Aubrey's life a living hell, so in the end it was better that I did."

"How did Sarah find out about almost every detail?", Chase asked.

"I dunno. I have no idea. I've been so pissed off at her that I haven't been talking to her."

Chase seemed to sit there for a bit, perplexed.

"I appreciate you telling me all of this.", he finally said. "Aubrey's been through a lot, all of her life. I'm not going to beat the shit out of you, so relax. Everybody makes mistakes, even me. Even Aubrey."

"Why did she try and do it?", I asked, letting curiosity get the best of me.

"You told me your story, let me tell you mine. I knew Aubrey since we were kids. Our fathers are friends. We grew up together, did sports, played in a club house, had a secret club, the whole nine yards. One year, Aubrey got sick. Really sick. She stopped coming outside to play, and spent a long time in the hospital. We were just kids then, well, younger."

Great, he's telling me his whole fucking life story.

"She came home, and everything was back to normal for a bit, until she got sick again. This time, she was in the hospital for weeks. She was diagnosed with cancer."

Holy fuck.

"What kind?", I asked. Now I was perplexed.

"Leukemia."

Holy shit.

"She was in the hospital a lot. She went through a lot of chemo, and for a while she was completely bald. That's when her mother bought her a wig, at least until her hair grew back. She started getting better, and her hair started growing back. Things picked up where they left off. Up until about three years ago, where she got really sick again. This time, she barely made it.", Chase said, his face getting somber, and his eyes looking as though they were glaze over.

"She did some more chemo, but things weren't getting better. They were getting worse. Doctors told her parents they expected her to die within the next four to five years if things don't change. Everything changed for Aubrey. Her mother lost it. She expected her to accomplish so little in such a short amount of time. Everything Aubrey did, she was expected to win first place. Then, all of a sudden her mom started to treat her like she was dead already. That's when Aubrey lost it."

I never would have thought...

I was over her house last year, in the kitchen, talking to her parents. They were telling me how Aubrey had recently been to the hospital, and how the doctors only gave her a good two years, three was pushing it. Well, two years until she would most likely die."

"That's when she did it?", I asked.

"That's when she tried to do it. Thank God me and her dad got there in time."

Yeah, thank God.

Poor Aubrey.