"I do, I do, and I swear I will eat every bite." I knew she'd stand over me until I did. I gave a half-shrug. "Well, now that I'm off the alemtuzumab, at least I'll be able to enjoy my food again."
"Maybe put some meat back on your bones." Lisette's voice was light, but she couldn't hide her worry.
"Sure thing," I said around the first bite of the only slightly soggy sandwich. "No problem."
***
An hour later, I sat in Hannah and Sarah's darkened living room, nibbling on a piece of pizza they'd bullied me into taking and leaning against a beanbag chair, wrapped in a hideous but surprisingly soft afghan that Sarah's grandmother had sent her.
And I felt normal again, if only for a little while.
Sarah was curled up in Mike's lap on one of the bland institutional chairs, not-quite-making-out and playing with the diamond ring on her finger. The rest of the girls and a couple of guys-boyfriends and wannabes-were sprawled around the room in various boneless poses.
I was suddenly, intensely glad that I was there and that I had them to be around me. If I'd stayed home that night, I would have probably cried and maybe puked and maybe cried some more. And at some point, Chelsea and Christina would have stumbled back in, probably drunk and almost certainly with at least one guy between them, and then I would have had to listen to them all night through the thin apartment walls.
It wasn't that I'd forgotten my grief. I was still dying, and I knew it. It was that, right now, I wasn't alone.
I dropped the greasy slice of pizza on the paper plate and let my eyes sag shut. For the moment, I was watching corny movies with my friends, and that was enough.
It was all I had.