H E A T H

It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment during this conversation that I decided I would rather be scraping shit off the inside of a toilet bowl, than standing here and listening to the over excited redhead talk without taking a moment to breathe. She's covered a lot in the last eighteen minutes.

She's explained in great detail how she prefers her eggs cooked. She's informed me of the calorie count in a single slice of Poppa Joe's Pizza. That was rather disappointing. I love Poppa Joe's but as a med student, I'll never be able to eat it again. She's also moved on to listing all of the names of her childhood pet's. That was after going through her family lineage.

I wasn't here by choice. There's a frail fifteen year old girl at home who I sat with during her chemo this morning. That girl, my sister, Sarah, she practically pushed me out of the house and forced me to attend this 'fiesta'. The worn out sombreros hanging on the walls that Jade, the homeowner, had collected during a contiki around Spain, Italy and France were hardly enough to call this an all out Mexican rave.

Of course, I couldn't forget the chips and salsa on the coffee table. The coffee table which was strewn with bongs, ash-trays and bottles of alcohol. She'd decided to host an end of summer rave and wanted to give it a theme. Did Summer ever end in Miami? It was safe to assume that the high schoolers huddled in the corner doing shots out of the bottle caps weren't worried about themes. They just wanted to get blackout drunk.

Jade had allowed her little brother, Braydon or Bray to invite all of his buddies along. High school started back on Monday after summer vacation. He was going to be a senior. We didn't know each other all that well. I didn't attend most of these parties because being a med student meant a hell of a lot of time with my nose in a text book. Not to mention I took care of Sarah as often as I could.

But Bray was nice. A little out there, but nice. Jade and I met at Miami Dade College in our first year. That was three years ago. We were friends but we didn't spend all of our time together. Despite her best efforts to drag me along to all of her boozefests, most of our socialising remained on campus.

The house started to feel small. The longer that I was trapped with this Beth girl- I think that was her name- the more that it felt as if the walls were closing in. The student house wasn't small. It was five bedrooms and the living area was open plan with wide windows wrapping right around. We stood in the living room space the couches which were old and patterned, stained with liquid patches and cigarette burns.

Torn posters were falling off the faded wallpaper, the curtains were too small for the frames and the hardwood floors were covered in small dents from being traipsed across in high heels. The kitchen and dining area were on the other side of the room.

The only reason the countertops weren't covered in dishes was because Jade made all of her roommates buy paper plates and plastic cutlery so that it could be thrown in the trash. The six seater table wobbled when it was leaned on but apparently that added to the challenge of each beer pong match that was hosted.

The one ongoing at the moment was less than thrilling but it was more interesting than the girl beside me who had shimmied closer and sounded as if she was detailing how to make her favourite flavoured milkshake.

Before I could come up with an excuse to leave, I felt a warm hand wrap around my bicep and when I glanced down beside me, I was met with a pair of blue eyes and a long head of raven hair. The girl who had wrapped around me was gorgeous. She was stunning to say the least. But I stood there in confusion as she smiled up at me and winked. "Sorry i'm late," her melodic voice cut through the volume of the music and intoxicated shouting.

She continued watching me with intent mischief and all I could do was watch her right back. The ability make sense of what was happening had evaded me for a brief moment. At least I hoped it would be brief.

"I forgot to feed the dog," raven girl said as she slapped her palm to her forehead. "Oscar was starving. Anyway, I made it. Who's this?"

She rested her head on my arm, she came just below my shoulder, and pointed at the copper haired girl whose name I could no longer remember. I wasn't even sure if I could remember my name at this point. I stammered for a moment but the girl who had been chewing off my ear for the past twenty minutes straightened up and shook her head.

"I'm no one," she gave us both a stiff smile. She didn't bother to say goodbye. Some petty part of me was hoping that she'd apologise for stealing twenty minutes of my life that I could never get back. But instead she turned around and disappeared through the sliding door beside the kitchen. Someone was using the brazier. I could smell the burning wood and aluminum cans coming through the with the summer breeze. I had to wonder who had the idea to start a fire when it was eight thousand degrees out.

Raven haired girl laughed. She dropped her grip and I felt as if my feet were on the ground again. She sighed with satisfaction and faced me with that piercing blue gaze. It was intense. The colour. She was such an odd looking girl. In a good way of course. Her skin was golden, as if she spent a lot of time in the sun but that blue in orbs would have been more common with pale skin. It was possible that she was wearing contacts. But instead of asking, I just stood and stared at her.

"You're welcome," she grinned, pulling on the bottom of her short black dress. It hugged her curves. She wasn't thin but she was proportionate. Her average height was given a little boost from the heels on her feet. Her cleavage was exposed but I did what I could not to let my gaze linger.

I wasn't sure if the fatigue was catching up with me or if the fact that this girl had me questioning the existence of magic, but I became frustrated when she stared at me with that smug grin. As if I owed her for helping me out. It was irrational. I knew it was. But that didn't stop me from snapping like a spoiled child. "I didn't need your help," I muttered like an absolute asshole. It was like all of the frustration that I'd been feeling over the girl who rambled my ear off came to the surface and I couldn't just shut the hell up and thank her.

"What was the point in that?" I questioned with sarcasm. "Come along and get rid of one girl, hoping that i'll fall all over you and fall in love and fend off some drunk asshole that tries it on with you because this is some sort of chick novel where it's all chance encounters and happy endings. Life's not like that and I'm not interested."

That was where the rambling ended. It made no sense. It was incoherent and fuelled by a lack of sleep and irritability. But the girl with raven hair appeared as if I hadn't said a damn word. She just continued to smile.

"Are you done?"

I didn't answer her. I didn't know how to. I needed some sleep.

"I'll take that dumbfounded look on your face as a yes," she nodded and stepped forward. I thought that she was stepping forward as an intimidation tactic. But someone stumbled past her, drunk and as unstable as a newborn deer on ice. Her fragrance was intoxicating. It hit me as she threw her hair over her shoulder. The scent of lemon and sugar. "First of all, I was just trying to save you from pariah Carey over there. Everyone knows Michelle Coll is a stage ten clinger and she would have no sooner been planning your wedding.

Second of all, I don't do high school boys so you can relax, I have no plans of forming an unrequited fantasy land with you."

She thought that I was in high school? I didn't know whether to be flattered or offended. It occured to me that I had shaved this morning. More often than not I had stubble coating my chin and jaw. But I'd cleaned up due to the fact that I was tired as fuck and stubble wasn't going to help dim the appearance of fatigue.

"Lastly, unless your name is Queen Bee, you have no right to behave like such a diva. I was lending a helping hand. Not asking for a fucking organ donation. Don't be so sensitive sweetheart."

She began to walk backwards, somehow avoiding bumping into the multiple bodies that were drunkenly stumbling around. She raised her hand and wiggled her fingers with a sarcastic wave. "Have a good night precious."

With that, she turned around and slid right into a group gathered beside the kitchen. She was welcomed with hugs and high fives. She had to have been in high school. But then again, she was well known to a lot of the college students here as well. She helped herself to a beer from the fridge, she accepted a shot that was handed to her and then another and then another.

Girl's complimented her outfit and guy's gave her the look. It appeared as though she was adored by the masses. I watched until she was disappearing through the sliding door, just catching sight of her arms going up as she shouted with excitement. That was when I realised that I'd stood there. . . alone. . . watching her for about five solid minutes. I needed to leave.

The front door was missing a glass panel. Someone had done a patch up job, taping cardboard over the hole. The house used to be in good condition until Jade moved in and realised that she couldn't cover the rent. No one was surprised. She'd taken on a five bedroom home on a student allowance. She had to enlist roommates or she wouldn't have been able to keep it. If she ever decided to move out, there was no chance that she'd get her bond back.

I stepped out onto the concrete steps and began down the footpath which was overgrown with grass from the front lawn. The fence on the side of the house was open and Jade was standing beside it with one of her friends who was crouching in the hedge with her underwear around her ankles.

Jade glanced up and waved. She must have seen me watching her friend with distaste because she laughed. "The line for the toilet was too long. It's just a piss."

She left her friend and stumbled towards me. Her dreaded hair sat underneath a beanie and cascaded down to her butt. "Are you leaving?"

I nodded and watched with a harsh glare as she pulled a cigarette out of her carton. It wasn't long before she gasped with realisation and hid it under her beanie, no doubt remembering that I had a sister at home with terminal cancer. "My bad," she slurred with an apologetic smile. I shrugged. It wasn't as if smoking had caused Sarah's cancer. It just wasn't something that I wanted to see other people go through.

"Are you leaving?" She questioned again, slipping her hand inside of her black tank top and scratching her boob.

"Yeah," I answered, giving her a curious look. "I'm just not in the mood tonight. But I'll see you on Monday."

She drew me into a hug that seemed too strong for her frail frame. "Drive safe."

I told her goodnight and wandered down to my car that was parked on the side of the road. It wasn't far from home. Both of us lived in Flagami which was fifteen minutes - give or take - from Miami Dade College. Jade walked most of the time. Unless our classes aligned and then I would give her a ride. She wasn't doing med. She was doing social work. She wanted to counsel youth. To be honest, I couldn't imagine her giving advice that wasn't 'weed solves everything.'

When I arrived at home, I parked in the drive and sighed with exhaustion. It had been a long day. Our single story house was nothing special. We'd lived here forever. Mom and Dad bought it as their first home. Not that, that asshole was still around. We couldn't afford to upgrade but Mom did her best to keep on top of maintenance. Her nurses wages weren't that generous and Sarah's medical bills weren't making life easy. But we didn't complain. We just got on with it. What else could we do?

The front door opened straight into our living area. It was open plan. A lot like Jade's place. But our kitchen was off of the dining area and was separated with a wall that was split in half. The top half was made up of cabinets and the bottom half was where the countertop began. So if you sat at the dining table, you could see the torso of whoever was scouring through the fridge. It could double as a breakfast bar with stools on the dining side of the countertop. But we'd never bothered to purchase bar stools.

Sarah was sprawled on the couch with her feet on the small coffee table that Mom found at a second hand store a couple of months ago. She was watching that terrible Gossip Girl show. She was obsessed. She watched it on repeat over and over again but that didn't stop her from sobbing whenever someone broke up. Whenever I paid even an ounce of attention, someone was dating their best friends ex or a couple were fighting and next time it was all different again. It was like they put names in a hat each season and said, 'who will we couple up this time?'

"What are you doing back?" Sarah peered over the back of the couch as I toed off my shoes beside the door. Despite being fifteen and having five years on her, she still seemed to think that she could order me around and give me cheek. She was a lot more mature than most girls her age though. She had to be. After all that she had been through and was going to go through.

Sarah was two when she joined our family. She was brought to the hospital that Mom works at. She'd been in a car accident and her parent's died. Mom cared for her while she was recovering and fell in love with her. More than she had with any other patient before. When no one else came forward to claim her, she was put in foster care while the social workers tried to hunt down some extended family. Mom applied to be a foster parent in the meantime.

It wasn't easy considering my father had taken off five years earlier when I was three. But her application was accepted and Sarah was with us for four years before Mom began the process to adopt. It all became official when she was seven and neither Mom or I would have had it any other way.

Not even after Sarah was diagnosed with Leukemia when she was twelve. Nothing has been quite the same since then. Sarah tries her hardest to ensure that we behave as normal. And we did in the beginning. When she improved and the treatment worked, we were over the moon. The stem cell transplants were successful for a time and we thought that we were through the worst of it. But about six months ago, it came back.

She was diagnosed with acute Leukemia which means that it will be slow, but it will get bad and the doctor said that there was nothing more he could do for her. Chemo and more surgeries would give her more time. But Sarah claimed that she didn't want to spend the rest of her time in surgeries. So she agreed to chemo once a month. When she first fell ill, she did it once a week for six months. She would spend the entire day getting pumped full of Vincristine, Daunorubicin, Cytarabine, Teniposide and a long list of other anti-cancer treatments.

It was awful. The chemo made her feel half dead before she saw any sort of improvement. And even then, it didn't keep the cancer away. So now she refused to spend that much time in chemo again.

Mom came out of her bedroom dressed in her scrubs while she pulled her dark brown hair into a bun. "Oh good, you're here," she smiled, accentuating the lines around her eyes. She battled with her afro-textured hair, attempting to wrap the elastic band around it one more time. "I have a shift at the hospital. I thought I was going to have to drag Sarah along with me."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Mom, I can hang out here alone. I'm not an infant."

She wasn't given an answer. Mom ignored her as she collected her things and shoved them into her bag. Her thin bronze arms stemmed from her sleeves and I watched her with concern. Sarah's condition was affecting all of us but Mom wasn't coping well at all. She tried. She put on a good front and cried when her door was closed and no one could see her. But the fact that we were going to lose her was killing all of us.

"Have you eaten?" I questioned Mom, peering over the back of the couch.

She smiled as she collected her keys from the bowl beside the door. "Yes sweetheart, I have eaten. Sarah and I had homemade pizza."

"Homemade," I scoffed which earned me a thump in the bicep from Sarah. She hated it when I scolded them for eating shit like that. Both of them needed more sustenance. Not to sound like a pain. But Mom barely ate as it was and Sarah's health was less than ideal. It worried me.

After a kiss on a cheek for both Sarah and I, she left and reminded us not to wake her up before eleven in the morning. As if we hadn't been doing this for our entire lives. Sarah settled in closer and gave me another jab in the arm. "So why didn't you stay at the party?"

I sighed and pretended as if I was focusing on the television. Chump in the suit was making the bitchy brunette cry again. When was he not being an asshole? She always seemed to end up with him again. It made zero fucking sense to me but whatever. Sarah didn't give up the jabbing though, so I shrugged her off.

"I was just tired," I told her.

"Sure," she sounded suspicious. "Can you just go and meet a girl?"

I turned and stared at her with confusion.

"Or a dude," she said, redirecting her attention at the television. "Either or. Just get laid."

"Sarah," I groaned and gave her a weak shove. "Come on. I don't want to hear that shit coming out of your mouth. You're fifteen."

"Sixteen in three months to the date," she grinned. "Almost legal."

"I will ground you."