Lessons from Zoey, Pt. 2

The rest of the day passed without incident. I only had Spanish, chemistry, and English left. Mr. Sorrel, my English teacher, started us on short story writing. I think I’ll write about Zoey…
Finally, the end-of-class bell rang, signaling freedom. I got up and jammed my stuff in my bag and tore out of that classroom like the Roadrunner. Twenty minutes of walking later I arrived at the base of a small hill, at the top of which grew the large oak tree that held in its branches the treehouse Zoey and I called our Secret Place. I could hear the sound of her voice as I trudged up the hill. She was singing.
How that girl managed to stay so kind and so happy while dying was beyond me. I know that I don’t handle pain and suffering well. Quite frankly, I’m a jerk. I’m nice enough to my friends, and especially to Zoey, but I’m not so nice to others. Why should I be? Other people will only stab me in the back. I have only found pain and sorrow with them.
The singing had stopped. I looked up at the treehouse and saw Zoey looking down at me from one of the windows, her bright eyes dimmed with sadness. I mentally kicked myself for brooding around her and climbed up the ladder.
“I worry about you, Ben,” she said as I plopped down on the floor. I just nodded.
“I know, Zo. I worry about you too, too. How can you be so happy when you know you’re dying?”
“Well,” she said with a shrug, “we all will die someday. If I had taken the treatments and possibly survived cancer, I would still die.”
“But, Zoey, you could have had a better life once the treatment was over! Sure, you would still die someday, but you could live longer!”
She smiled gently and shook her head. “I could, Ben,” she said, and that was all. We stayed silent for a moment. I was deep in thought and she was just looking at me wisely.
“I don’t want you to die, Zoey.”
Her eyes turned sad. She nodded and stood, then crossed over to the window. The silence that followed descended on the treehouse like a thick fog, but I didn’t dare break it. After a long while, Zoey finally turned around and looked at me, and I was stunned to see that tears were filling her eyes. Her bottom lip quivered slightly, trying to hold in the cry that desperately wanted out.
“I…I don’t want to die either, Ben,” she said. She dived into my arms then and sobbed into my chest. I let her and did not disturb her. I just wrapped my arms around her gently and held her comfortingly. She finally calmed after a while and sat up, sniffling and wiping her eyes.
“I don’t want to die,” she said thickly, “but this is the road I have chosen, and it is too late to go back.”
Another awkward silence fell. Finally she turned and smiled gently, resting her hand on my shoulder.
“Ben, life is like a wave in the ocean. It ebbs and it flows, eventually coming to crash on the beach.”
I looked at her curiously. Every now and then, Zoey could say something really wise and I wouldn’t understand a word of it.
“What do you mean?”
She laughed gently. “What I mean is that life has its bad times and its good times, but the end is inevitable. You were right in saying that I could have lived longer had I taken treatment, but as I said, the end would still come. That is why we should not focus on the end, but on today.
Today, I am still here. Today, I am still your best friend. Today we still have, so why not enjoy it?”
I smiled at that. She was right. I pulled my notebook out of my bag and winked.
“Sounds good to me, but we should probably do this homework first.”