By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Clara POV

I traced the contours of my family's faces, seeking to memorize their final expressions.

My mother stroked my cheek, calling me her precious canary.

She promised that once this surgery was over, she would cook my favorite meals and help me put my ballet shoes back on.

I looked at her gentle, exhausted face and remembered the grueling sacrifices she had supposedly made for me.

She would hold my hand during every single injection, her grip a counterpoint to the needle's sting.

The reflection from a nurse's stainless steel tray would catch the light, and a sour bile would rise in my throat, summoning the memory of all those mornings I was made to swallow fistfuls of bitter pills.

The foul taste of the drugs left a constant, gnawing nausea in my stomach.

I had endured the agonizing pain for two years, never uttering a single complaint.

I would force a lighthearted smile, comforting them by pretending to be strong.

I recalled the relentless vomiting that left me gasping for air over the toilet bowl, my throat raw.

I recalled coughing up blood into my cupped hands, terrified that I was dying too fast.

My beautiful hair—the very hair my mother used to brush every night—fell out in massive clumps.

I had to hide my baldness beneath a cheap woolen beanie.

I suffered from severe insomnia and bone-deep agony.

I would bite down on my blanket at night to muffle my whimpers, desperate not to wake my hardworking father in the next room.

I watched my own body wither away.

I transformed from a vibrant ballet dancer into a bedridden invalid.

My vision blurred.

The letters on my schoolbooks twisted into unrecognizable shapes, stripping away my ability to learn.

I slowly lost touch with all my friends at school because I was confined to this sterile prison.

I looked at Mateo, who was currently choking back fake sobs.

I recalled the day a particularly brutal round of chemo had broken me, leaving me in a heap of tears.

I had asked him if I would ever get better.

I had begged them to stop the treatments because we had no money left.

My mother had held me, weeping and repeating the lie that I would definitely recover.

My father—the man I now knew was a hardened mafia Capo—had red eyes and a trembling voice as he swore he would never give up on me.

Mateo had brought me cheap hair clips and plush toys that day.

When he tried to pin a clip to my hair, he realized I had almost none left.

His hands shook as he pinned the clip to my beanie instead.

He called me the best sister in the world and begged me not to speak nonsense.

They had taken turns caring for me.

They had cooked nutritional meals, wiped my sweating body, and offered relentless encouragement.

They seemingly wasted away themselves from the stress of my illness.

I had hugged my mother, crying and begging them to abandon me.

I blamed myself for not being strong enough to fight the cancer.

My mother could not stop her tears, apologizing in return, claiming it was their fault I was suffering.

I had believed their words were born of genuine heartbreak.

Only now did I understand they were born of twisted, guilty confessions.

They were apologizing because they were the ones poisoning me.

I did not doubt they loved me.

But knowing what I knew, that love was a mouthful of ash.

A sudden, violent cramp ripped through my abdomen.

The poison was eating through my stomach lining.

And the worst part was that I could feel it spreading—slowly, deliberately, the way their lies had spread through every corner of my life.