Snippets!

To be honest, I'm so excited about this book. It combines my love of Disney and jiu jitsu and hanging out with little kids and hating physics homework and Star Wars and red rubber boots and long boarding and my little Australian town. It also talks about cancer and death and when words fail and I just love it to pieces. I've been working on it since my gap year, and I haven't had a lot of time to edit it in the past few weeks but I'm excited to start up again sometime. 

Background: The following snippet is from Stella's point of view, who's five years old. Tyler is her best friend, and Xavier is Tyler's best friend, who's in the hospital getting chemo.

***

We visited Xavier in the hospital a few weeks before he was supposed to finish his medicine. He mostly just looked really tired and unhappy. I'd brought the letter from Tabitha with me, and I had also brought a drawing that I'd done in class to make him feel better. It had bubbles and people inside the bubbles, and trees and rainbows and a giant tree and lots and lots of flowers. I'd even drawn in Rapunzel's tower from Tangled. 

"Hey Stella," Xavier said, and he gave me a tired smile. It looked like the one Mum gave me after she'd spent all day working and was really tired because Baby #2 was heavy and kept jumping on her bladder, which she kept complaining about. 

"Hi Xavier." I stepped around Tyler and crawled up onto the bed Xavier was lying in, even though there wasn't a lot of room. He had tubes in his arm which I tried to avoid because I didn't know how they put a tube in his arm, and as I tried to think about it I realized that it must have really hurt. "I drew you a picture." 

Tyler grabbed it from his backpack and passed it to me, then I gave it to Xavier. "See? Those are bubbles and there are people inside the bubbles, see, that's me and that's you and that's Tyler. Then those are the trees and Rapunzel's tower and the rainbows and flowers..." I trailed off, because I'd just realized that the drawing wasn't very good at all and I shouldn't have given Xavier something that wasn't very good. He was sick, after all. I shouldn't give sick people things that weren't very good. But he just smiled and high-fived me. 

"Thank you Stella, it's beautiful."

"Shall I?" Tyler asked, and I turned around to see that he had a roll of tape in his hands. He pulled it really hard and it made a weird shhhhlerck sound, then he bit one end of it and a giant piece of tape came away from the roll. 

"What?" I asked, but Xavier gave him a thumbs-up and Tyler grabbed my picture and taped it to the wall, and we all stared at it for a second and I hoped they liked it, especially Xavier because the wall was boring and plain and made me sad so it must make Xavier sad too. They both clapped, and I joined them after a moment even though I wasn't really sure if I should be clapping too. 

"How are you feeling?" I asked Xavier. That was what you did in hospitals. You asked how people were feeling.

"I'm alright. They have some pretty serious painkillers and stuff in the meds they're giving me."

"Is the medicine going to make you better?"

Then the boys exchanged a look and I didn't know what it meant, but then Xavier just gave me another tired smile that I hated. "Yep. Now how was school?"

I told him everything and I just couldn't stop talking. I fiddled with my glasses as I told him all about Bailey my friend and Ms Jones the nice teacher who wore bracelets on her ankles and who was really nice and smart, but then again all adults were smart. I told him about how we did lots and lots of crafts and it was really fun, but I didn't tell him about Luke or how we were learning our ABCs because Bailey and some other kids in my class knew them and I didn't and I didn't want the boys to know because they'd be sad. 

Tyler finally picked me up off the bed and set me on the floor on the other side of the room, then pulled a colouring book out of his backpack. "Here, Xavier and I are going to talk for a little bit. Here are some coloured pencils. Colour whatever you want." I settled in the chair and flipped through the book, noticing with a grin that they were all Disney princesses. There were a whole five pages with Rapunzel and Flynn and Pastel the chameleon and Maximus the horse. I wanted to do all the Rapunzel ones first. 

Tyler went and sat down on the chair next to Xavier's bed, and I listened while they talked. It was pretty hard to listen and draw at the same time, but I wanted to hear what they were saying. It sounded like a grown-up conversation, and now I could finally listen in. 

"How're you doing?" Tyler asked. I decided to start with Rapunzel's hair, then her purple dress. 

"Fine."

"Can I get anything for you?"

"Not really."

"A drink, or-"

"Dude, your bedside manners suck."

"I'm aware of that, thanks for the kind reminder. Can you just write it on my forehead or something so I don't forget it? Seriously though, if you need anything then I'm here," said Tyler. I frowned as I searched through the coloured pencils. There wasn't the right kind of purple for her dress. I'd have to choose a different colour. 

"I'm surprised you didn't bring any homework for me."

"I actually have a stack in the car, but thought I'd leave it there because homework sucks and I wasn't going to let you share in that suckage."

"Which isn't a word."

"It totally is. Look it up."

"You passed English how?"

"I think the teacher cheated a little. She just can't withstand my irresistible charms." They both laughed, but I wasn't sure what was so funny.

"Didn't she used to be a nun or something?"

"Yeah, in like 1826. You're so lucky you've never had her, she likes to bring it up every other sentence. And Macbeth's ambitious hamartia reminds me of the time when I met a young man who came into the convent, for I was a nun you see, and he tried to steal the candlesticks!" Tyler's voice went high and silly like in a cartoon, and both Xavier and I laughed but then Xavier frowned right after and tried to stop laughing. 

"Sorry, it just hurts a little to laugh."

"Oh, sorry, I'll stop."

"Hey, can you pop by my house and say hi to Amelia?"

"I thought my restraining order prevented that?"

I imaged Xavier rolling his eyes, because he did that quite a bit. I tried to do it too, but then Mum got upset with me. "Ha. Ha. Ha. Seriously though, she'll appreciate it. She does every time and it just sucks that she's alone right now." 

"Anything you want, anything you want."

Then we all went really quiet for a few seconds, and Tyler decided it was time to go even though I'd only coloured in Rapunzel's hair and her dress and hadn't gotten to the tower yet.

"See ya, Xavier," Tyler said. 

"Bye Xavier!" I said, then ran and gave him a hug. He hugged me back, then Tyler towed me out and we left him there, looking very alone and sad. Dear Lord Jesus, I prayed in my head, which was hard because I couldn't close my eyes or fold my hands while walking down the hall with Tyler. Please make Xavier better. I don't like seeing him so sad. 

Tell me about your projects in the comments! 

(P.S. I shall also be hiatus-ing from posting for the next two weeks due to exams, but hopefully *fingers crossed* I'll get around to catching up on all your posts I've missed.)