#hey look! some cadnis! actual cadnis! whee!

[sprnklersplashes]

heart of stone (3/?)

AO3

It’s an hour before Damian leaves. An hour of him hugging her and stroking her hair and her telling him everything she can. They try to spend some time normally, watching vine compilations on Janis’ phone, only it doesn’t feel right. Their laughter is forced and accompanied by a pit in Janis’ stomach, the hard reality staring them in the face. After one video she puts her phone away and Damian holds her tighter, resting his cheek on her head and lacing their fingers together. She lets herself sag against him, revelling in the comfort he gives her even if it can’t make this better. She bites the inside of her cheek as she wonders when the next time they hug like this will be or where they’ll be when it happens.

It’s going to be a long few months.

“You sure you’re okay?” she asks him as they stand at her front door. “With all this?” When his smile doesn’t reach his eyes, that’s when she truly feels the weight of it and it drags her down hard. She’s only seen that expression on his face a grand total of three times, two of which related to unpleasant memories of his father. And now once more, because of her. She bites back an apology.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” he replies half-heartedly before shaking his head. “Who am I kidding? Of course you’re going to be okay. You’re Janis.”

“I am?” she replies, smirking just a little.

“Yeah.” The crack in his voice doesn’t escape her notice. He play-punches her arm. “This cancer’s going to have a tough time trying to beat you.”

“If God wants me gone he’s going to have to come down here himself,” she jokes. Only it doesn’t land with him. His eyes widen, his hand around her wrist in a grip that’s sudden and panicked. It’s an old joke spoken in a new world and she realises that too late. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t-” She grabs his tense shoulder, unsure of what else to do, and tries to be as reassuring as possible. “It’s okay. I’ll be okay, they’ve said I will.”

“I know.” He hugs her once again, crushing her in her grip and stroking her hair, his heartbeat fast against her chest. She wraps her arms around him, cursing at herself.

“Maybe the dark humour will take a backseat for now,” she whispers. He laughs at that at least, even if it’s short lived. He steps away from her just as his mom pulls up outside of her house, beeping her little car horn.

“My mom,” he says, looking from the car to her. “When do I tell her?”

“Whenever you want,” she replies, shrugging. “Not like we’re keeping it a secret.”

“Okay.” He pats her cheek clumsily as she opens the door. Before leaving, he takes one long look back at her, sadness clouding his eyes. She doesn’t let him know that she hates it. “You owe me a calzone when this is all over, Sarkisian.”

“It’s a date,” she jokes, her breath catching in her throat. Through the window in the door, she watches him run across the road, holding up shirt up over his head as the sky starts spitting, and climb into the passenger seat of his mom’s car. Her vision blurs as the car pulls away, her cheeks hot and her jaw clenched.

She doesn’t bother to hide it when she walks into the kitchen. She’s too tired and even if she wasn’t, what’s the point in it?

“Oh, sweetie,” her mom sighs, rushing up to her and pushing her hair out of her eyes. She rubs a hand up and down her arm, her lips rolled into a thin line. “How did he take it?”

“Fine,” she says. “I mean, not fine. But he’s… It’s a lot for him. But he didn’t storm out of the house or accuse me of lying or something messed up like that so I guess…” She trails off, the sentence running away from her. Is there a good way to take news like this? If there is, it would have been nice for her to know yesterday.

“Why don’t I make you something?” her mom asks again. “You want some coffee? Tea? Or one of those little mug-cakes you like so much?”

“I can make it myself,” she tells her, already tempted. She breaks out of her mom’s grasp and starts pulling stuff out the cupboards, the recipe crystal clear in her mind. She turns around, equal parts amused and annoyed at her mom hovering behind her. “I’m not going to burn myself on the microwave, Mom.”

“I know. Just, well, maybe you should be sitting down?”

“I can do it myself,” she repeats, despite her tired legs. She looks over at her again, annoyance beginning to win out.  She spoons flour into her mug, white smoke puffing up before her eyes. “I’ll be fine, Mom. Besides I’m the only one who knows how to make them.”

They were Cady’s idea. Over the winter break last year, before it all truly went wrong, she had called Janis about this new recipe she stumbled upon on Pinterest, babbling excitedly about ‘little tiny cakes in mugs, how cute is that, Janis?’. She invited Janis over, insisting on testing out as many different recipes as her microwave would allow. There was something about the sight of Cady with a white handprint on her skirt and flour dusted across her nose like snowflakes that did certain things to Janis’ heart. She can’t be sure, but that might just have been the day she began seeing Cady in a new light and daring to imagine them as something other than friends.

The memory now only makes her heart clench. There are few things Janis loves in the world more than Cady Heron’s smile and nothing hurts her heart like when she’s sad. When her lips touched hers for the first time, she swore she’d never do anything to hurt her. She’s going to be breaking that promise tomorrow, even if it’s through no fault of her own.

She goes up to her room with a mumbled goodnight to her parents and an unexpected, quick hug from her dad. Maybe she should start expecting them, she thinks sadly as she trudges upstairs, one hand around her mug and the other gripping the bannister.

She curls up on her bed, too tired to sit up but too jittery to try to sleep. Besides, the sky is still orange out there and she refuses to go to sleep before the sun does. Despite herself, she feels strangely proud. Cancer or no, her sleep schedule is hers, at least to some extent.

She pulls her laptop over, squinting in its blue light, and opens Tumblr for a while, scrolling through likes and reblogs without any of it registering. She bounces through social media with twitching fingers, closing tabs not five minutes after opening them. Facebook is the worst; little green dots lined up at the side of her screen, each one able to contact her with the press of a key. The last thing she wants right now is a conversation. So she opens Twitter instead and lets the friends be mixed in with the strangers. She’s hidden as long as she doesn’t say anything and she has genuinely no intention to. No likes, no retweets, nothing but a stream of content she can half-focus on in a bid to forget herself.

It works, at least for a while, three jokes or art pieces for every “real person” who crosses her timeline. But her eyes are constantly drawn up to the searchbar against her will and when a post of Cady’s crosses her path, her eyes linger for longer than they should.

“Fuck it,” she mutters, typing her handle into the searchbar and tapping her nail against the mouspad. She’s not as strong as she looks, and recently she’s discovered that she’s really not that strong when it comes to her girlfriend.

Cady’s profile loads up on the screen, her profile picture of her hugging a lion at least putting a smile on her face. Cady rarely uses this, having only gotten it at Regina’s request and preferring to use platforms like Instagram, uncomfortable with Twitter’s character limit. 280 characters is barely enough to capture those beautiful thoughts of hers. But Janis scrolls through them anyway, not quite having realised how much she missed her until now, missed how she talks and thinks and the feel of her hand against hers. Scrolling through her Twitter is a poor substitute for having the real thing.

There’s a post from five days ago, of the two of them sitting in Cady’s backyard, her chin on Janis’ shoulder and Janis’ hand covering hers, the remains of ice cream around Cady’s chin. Cady’s mom had taken that on her daughter’s phone, the two of them lounging in Cady’s garden after she had been showing Janis her peonies.

Janis is almost taken aback by how she looks. She knows how she felt, exceedingly happy, dangerously close to in love and a little intoxicated, but also exhausted. Even though everything felt perfect and all she could ever want, in the back of her mind she was thinking about going home and collapsing into bed. Her skin crawls as she knows why she felt like that. The girl in the photo with the sparkling eyes and beaming smile has cancer. Her body was-is- falling apart bit by bit and she was none the wiser, enjoying summer sunshine and thinking about nothing other than how much she adores her girlfriend. How would she react if she knew that in a few short days, her life would be ruined?

She curses as she wipes away a tear. Hasn’t she cried enough for today?

She opens up a search engine, fear building in her chest, the hair on her arms standing up despite the warm air. She sits and watches the blinking cursor, the only sound in the room being the soft whirring of the laptop and her heavy, deep breathing. She doesn’t want to know, not at all. Knowing will only make it worse. She should just turn this thing off and toss it away before she does something she regrets. That’s what reason says.

She doesn’t listen to reason. Instead she listens to the one part of her brain that won’t shut up.

She types effects of cancer on relationships into the searchbar and closes her eyes tightly. If she can’t see the results, they don’t exist, right?

A high school senior using middle school logic. What’s become of her?

She clinks on the first link, squirming at the images that load in pieces on her screen. Hands clasped over a wooden table, two people looking into each other’s eyes with sincerity and sadness on their features. She’s never been good with emotions like that. Which is why she pushes them away, she supposes. Even the idea of sitting down carefully and Having A Conversation in hushed voices about such delicate, difficult subjects makes her want to vomit. Today was hard enough. Her parents are just lucky she loves them too much to do that.

She scrolls past sections about family and friends until the word ‘partner’ catches her eye and she stops. According to the article “cancer can be a difficult thing for couples to face” (yeah no shit). Little Miss Psychology who wrote the thing goes on to explain that “this can manifest in changing roles in the relationship” which again, no shit. The more she reads the article, the more she feels her time being wasted. There’s nothing she couldn’t already guess and most of it is for married couples with kids. Who’s going to take the kids to school, who’s going to pay the bills, who’s going to make dinner? Nothing that concerns her, nor should it for a long time.

She reads that cancer has a negative effect on their sex lives, and actually laughs. Sex was the last thing on her mind.

Then, near the bottom, it shifts from the practical to the emotional. Miss Psych explains that cancer can often cause “an inability to do leisure activities” and while that should have been obvious to Janis, it screws with her more than a little. Sure, she and Cady have quiet time in one of their rooms, but it’s always balanced by doing something else, trips to the mall or the movies, or going down to the zoo to see Cady’s beloved lions or the museum so Cady can watch Janis get lost in the art world. It’s the being with each other that makes it special, but going out like this keeps everything interesting for both of them. What do they become when that disappears?

With a shuddering breath, she pushes on, reading about how miscommunication can happen in relationships when this happens. Cady trying to keep positive could become dismissals in Janis’ eyes, or Janis keeping a mask up for Cady only leading to them stopping talking. And miscommunication is always the first step, according to Damian. Out of his three relationships two ended because they stopped communication.

And finally, “cancer can be a destabilising force for most relationships”. It’s one of the first things she sees and it’s the last thing she needs to see. There’s a lot she loves about her life now, or at least her life post-Spring Fling, and one of those is how solid it is. Steady friendships, or semi-steady in some cases, and a comfortable romance with Cady. For the first time in a long, long while she was happy without even trying to be.

She closes her eyes and turns onto her side, pressing her hand to her stomach. What must it look like in there now? According to the doctor, her body is producing more white blood cells and they can’t function and then something about her organs. While she should know better, the image of her blood turning white attacks her mind, something like white paint spreading through her veins and attacking her organs, turning them pale and hard and frozen. Maybe once it was done with her body it would bleed through her skin and show on the surface. Her body could become a statue from the inside out. Maybe if she stabbed herself right now, she’d bleed cold and white instead of red.

She shoots up, shaking the image from her head. Her heart is unsettled in her chest but she takes comfort in it, wild and erratic and alive. She pushes all thoughts of what’s happening to her out of her head, trying to replace them with anything else.

Unfortunately for her, the only anything else she can think of is Cady. Her only two options are her debilitating body or her debilitating love life.

Well, it’s not debilitating. Not really. Not yet anyway. Well, except for the fact that she hasn’t texted Cady back in two days. She’s not left her on read, but she’s no doubt left her worried. She’s always worrying, her Cady. Worrying that there’s enough food for everyone or that everyone at her place is having a good time or that her two friend groups will get along.

What will this do to her?

She opens her laptop again, fully aware of how destructive she’s being. But her mind won’t rest and checking the internet is just as good a plan as any. The article is still there when she opens it, the white light making her head hurt.  Her stomach hurts more and more as she looks through the web and she’s sure it’s not because of the illness or the hastily-made mug cake.

“Cancer can be incredibly straining on the patient’s relationships,” the article tells her. “Often the patient will find it difficult to be a supportive and loving partner with the toll the illness takes on them.”

That’s the part that really sends her flying. The phone falls from her weak hands as anxiety takes over her body, making her hands shake and her chest tighten. She pushes the laptop away and pulls her legs close to her chest, pressing her forehead into her knees as she counts her breath, in for eight and out for eight.

Dumb as it sounds, she likes being someone’s girlfriend. She likes making people, particularly people she cares about, feel happy and warm and loved. It makes her feel worth something. Despite the front she presents to the world, she cares. She cares for fuck’s sake.

Cady deserves a girlfriend who supports her. One who is devoted to her and makes her life easier. Cady went through a lot last year, she wasn’t innocent in it at all, but she went through a lot. So many times she’s told Janis she’s excited to go back to school this year and just be normal. To study with her and walk to school with her and be her prom date.

‘Last year was like a shark tank,’ she had explained to her as they sat in the park, her head in Janis’ lap. ‘Next year I just want to float.’

The sharks might be gone, but Janis is bringing a whole tsunami.

It isn’t fair. None of it is, her parents have told her as much, but now it’s really not fair. Not to her and not to Cady. After a less than great first year, she deserves a better chance at real school life. She should have a girlfriend escorting her to prom, an old fashioned date-on-your-arm type of affair. They should dance under a glitter ball together while Janis whispers words of affection into her ears.

And then there’s the school side of school. Cady has so many college plans, big and lofty ones that require months and months of work. What will Janis be then? A distraction? Or worse, a burden. She’d never dream of demanding anything from her, but what if she can’t help it? Or if she doesn’t need to because Cady focuses on her anyway? What if she’s the reason Cady doesn’t make it? Her job as Cady’s girlfriend is to be her support system, her rock. If she can’t do that then what’s the point in them being together? Why should she have a girlfriend if she can’t give her everything every day?

It’s only when she finds her toy kitten twisted and wrung in her hands that she realises she’s spiralling.

“Breathe,” she whispers to herself. “Come on, breathe.”

Her mind clears as her heart slows down. Her worries don’t go away, but she can see them more precisely than before. She leans her head back against the wall, letting the air rush out of her. There is a solution to her problem, but it’s not one she likes. She guesses what she wants went out the window when her blood started acting like a dick.

After all, the best way not to hurt Cady with this is to just not be her girlfriend, right?

“You’re a moron,” she sighs, shaking her head. She stretches her arms and starts tugging on her pyjamas, tiredness taking over and dragging her eyelids down. She shuts off her laptop, avoiding even a glimpse at the article, and shoves it under her bed. In the quiet of her dark room, she can hear her parents murmuring downstairs and wonders, probably with good reason, if they’re talking about her. They talk about her a lot more than they used to. Years ago, Janis lay in this same bed listening to the same thing; anxious, inaudible conversations about her between people who thought she was asleep. Only thing is now, it hurts more. Guilt only gets worse with age. She drifts off slowly, her stuffed cat pressed into her chest, one thought coming together in her hazy mind.

She’s already hurt the three most important people with this. Can she really hurt Cady too?

                                                                                               *****

Her room is still dark when she jolts awake. Her eyes sting and she blinks heavily out of tiredness as well as getting used to the darkness. She knows why she’s awake before she even looks down or can feel anything. There’s only one reason she’d have woken up this early.

She switches on the light and finds her legs covered in sweat, small dark splotches on the sheets. Her top clings to her stomach and her hair to her neck, a feeling that’s uncomfortably and frustratingly familiar.

Her clock reads 4:30am. Groaning, she kicks her covers off and stumbles to the bathroom, rubbing at her bleary eyes.

Avoiding her reflection, she holds a cold cloth against her skin, her damp shirt handing over the edge of the bathtub. She can’t help asking herself, what if she had noticed this before? What if she had brought it up to her parents? She had just shrugged it off as nothing before. If she hadn’t, would they have caught it in time? Maybe this would be over sooner, maybe it would have been over already. If she had just paid more attention, she might be happy now.

She makes eye contact with her reflection, and the words ‘stupid girl’ ghost across her mind like the other her had whispered them.

“New level of self-deprecation,” she mutters, running the cloth under the cold faucet. “Blame yourself for… this.”

She settles herself in the bathtub and presses the cloth into her stomach and another to her neck, debating with herself if she should go get some ice from the kitchen. Ever the drama queen. She rubs at her heavy eyes, thankful that she has no plans for tomorrow. All her plans are cancelled for the foreseeable future, but at least there’s the silver lining of letting her sleep for longer. Karen must be rubbing off on her if she’s looking for the good parts now.

She’s almost nodding off in the bathroom, until the door open and her dad calls her name, shocking her awake and nearly giving her a heart attack on top of everything else.

“Dad!” she whispers sharply, stumbling out of the bathroom. Her dad’s eyebrows are shot up his forehead, his mouth hanging open a little as he looks at her with more alertness than she reckons he had a minute ago. He looks from the cloth in her hand to her damp shirt, confusion etched onto his features. “Dad I was just… I started sweating. I just needed to sponge off.”

“Okay,” he replies. “Do you… do you need any-”

“It’s fine.” She drops the cloth in the sink and moves to brush past him. “It’s fine, I’m okay.”

“Woah, woah, Janis,” he says, his fingers curling around her arm and his other hand on her chest. She stops where she is, avoiding his eyes. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

“No,” she answers with a shake of her head. “No I’m okay. I just need to go back to bed.” Her dad nods and brushes her sticky hair away from her face.

“How long as this been going on?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “A few weeks, I think. It’s not every night. I think it’s a side effect of the… of you know…”

“Ah,” is all he says. There’s an air of discomfort neither of them can brush off.

“I’m fine, really,” she says, pulling his hand off her as gently as she can. She dares look up at his face for a minute, the two of them feigning composure of the other. “I’m done. You can use it.”

“Do you need anything?” he asks again. “New clothes, some water?”

She shakes her head, even though her throat is painfully dry.

“I can get new PJs in my room,” she tells him instead. “Good night, Dad.”

“Bonne nuit, petite fille,” he whispers in his native French. Although it’s short-lived, she manages a smile.

Back in her room, she pulls off her shorts and tosses them away. She may well run out of pyjama shorts thanks to this. After a second’s thought, she tosses her t-shirt away too and pulls on another one that’s a little too big for her. As she slides into her bed, she wishes her dad hadn’t mentioned water. Even though her throat cracks and she holds back dry coughs, she won’t ask for more than she has.

When she’s half asleep though, her door slowly opens, and when she wakes more minutes later, there’s a full glass on her night stand. It makes her smile, and it lasts longer this time around.

                                                                                               *****

Hours later, she wakes stiff and sore and nowhere near as refreshed as she should be waking this close to noon.  As she curls into a ball and presses her face into the pillow, a wave of self-pity crashes into her chest and fills her lungs. Self-pity is probably her least favourite feeling out of all of them. Anger is an old friend and can be righteous and satisfying. She resists sadness more, but at least that can be reflective and healing. What does self-pity do for her? Doesn’t give her an outlet, doesn’t change anything. She just sits there and wallows in it, hating it more and more with each second until the anger wins out and she throws the covers off.

She leaves her phone switched off for as long as she can. She shuns technology entirely except for the TV, looking at the screen blankly with Maxie in her lap. Even her dog seems to know something’s wrong, either with her body or her mind. He presses his head into her stomach and looks up at her, eyes bright and wide and heart-meltingly cute, all the while whimpering quietly, his little paws tickling her stomach. Janis kisses his nose and it makes her feel a little better.

She goes up to her room and starts getting dressed, not wanting to spend the rest of her day in pyjamas. She’ll probably be doing that a lot a few weeks down the line. Possibly a few days down the line, she realises. Her shirt in her hands, she looks over at the calendar on the wall. Tomorrow is circled in red glitter pen and a little skull drawn in the box, ‘senior year’ written in black glitter pen above it. She wrote that weeks ago, end of July or beginning of August, back when it mattered.

The school knows now. Her parents called them up and told her the day after they found out. Janis, against her better judgement, sat against the bannister upstairs and listened in on it. There wasn’t a whole lot to listen to on her end; just a lot of ‘thank you’s and reiterations of what they’d been told in the hospital. What she would have given to have been a fly on the wall on the school’s end though. To hear every word about how sorry they were and the endless support they were offering to Janis and judge how much they meant it. North Shore’s not a bad place, especially since the end of Spring Fling. There are worse schools. But that doesn’t mean she trusts it. Trust is easy to eradicate and hard to win back.

Regardless, they’ll tell everyone tomorrow. They have to. It might be in a special assembly, or during morning announcements. Maybe they’ll take her friends out of class one by one and break the news to them gently. Or just assume they already know. They’d be a quarter right in that case.

Her phone is still dead on her nightstand. She picks it up the way you’d pick up a live grenade and holds it gingerly in both of her hands. Her reflection stretches before her in the screen like a funhouse mirror. She’s not felt quite so afraid of her phone since she was 12, but now she’s not scared of what people would say to her. The opposite really.

She turns it on after an eternity and places it on the floor until it stops buzzing. One message from Damian, asking how she’s feeling and if she wants to hand out, followed by a yellow heart. Three from Cady, one good morning text, one photo of her hamsters and one asking if she’s okay. It’s harsher than anything she’s seen from her before and the worst part is she has a feeling that’s only the beginning. It’s still polite and careful, asking Janis to talk to her “whenever she’s ready”.

That may take a while, Cady.

Her chin rests on her knees, her nails digging into the sides of her legs and her jaw tightly clenched. Her breaths are long and shallow. She’s not exactly a stranger to difficult conversations. Between coming out and telling them about Regina and telling her parents she wants to major in art, she could make a walk of fame of them if she really wanted to. But none were like this. They could all end in good things and they all did. Nothing good could come of this, not for her and certainly not for Cady.

She dials the number slowly, despite having never dialled a number in her life. Like if she takes longer, she’ll get a better idea. Or this will all end if she waits long enough.

Shouldn’t she know better now, she thinks as she presses call.

“Hi!” Cady picks up on the second ring, sounding out of breath, like she’d ran to pick it up. She can almost picture her just from the sound of her voice; brown eyes wide, maybe twirling the ends of her hair. Or sitting on her bed, her hand buried in a pillow and feet anxiously tapping the floor.  She hates herself and this isn’t even the worst part. “Um, hey, how are you?”

There’s a tiny spark of warmth in Janis’ chest, in amongst all the fear. She’s missed her voice so much.

“Um, yeah,” she replies, aware she’s not actually answering her. “No I’m-I’m good.” As her mouth runs dry, she starts worrying if she is even able to talk right now. Near silence stretches between them, broken only by Cady shifting on the other line and her parents talking below her. As she tries to find something, the idea of just hanging up and throwing out her phone crosses her mind and she can’t quite dismiss it.

“Did you go to your hospital appointment?” she asks, a calm tone taking over her voice. “How was it?”

“Oh,” is all she can muster up. “It was…” Horrible. The worst day of my life. Ruined my life. I wish it had never happened. I haven’t been happy since. “Fine, I guess.”

“So you found out what was wrong?” she asks. The question forms a rope, tightening around her neck.

“Yeah. It’s not important.” Just slightly life-altering. She lets go of her wrist, shaking out of her cold hand. She flexes her fingers, words coming out of her mouth thoughtlessly. “I need-I need to talk to you.”

“Okay. Should I… should I be worried?”

Yes.

“I don’t know,” she replies. She pushes herself to her feet, legs shaking, and pulls her sweater around herself.  She bites hard on the inside of her cheek. Her main priority out of this is Cady not hearing her cry. “Caddy…”

She closes her eyes and mouths a silent apology before continuing.

“Caddy, I think we need to take a break.”

Cady stammers on her end, nonsensical, meaningless sounds that do nothing but fill empty space. Janis bites into her fist as tears begin running down her face. It builds up in her chest instead and it aches. Is this heartbreak? Is this what they mean when they say it? She’d always taken it metaphorically. Turns out it’s literal.

“Take a break?” Cady echoes. “Janis I don’t-what do you mean take a break.”

“I mean-” She takes a deep breath, hoping that the sniffle sounds like allergies. “I mean, we’re going into our senior year, Cady. That’s a lot. You’re looking at math college, I’ve got a lot to do for art school, I think it’s best if we-if we just pause it.”

She can’t hold it back. She puts the phone on the bed, the covers blocking any sound and presses her face into a pillow, letting herself cry into the fabric. It’s not much, just enough to let herself breath again. It doesn’t stop hurting or even hurt any less, but she can speak again.

“Janis? Janis are you still there?” Cady asks, muffled by her covers. “Janis?” She picks it up and throws herself off the bed, walking in a continuous circle.

“Yeah I’m here,” she says, her throat raw. “Sorry Maxie was being a dick.” She crosses her fingers behind her back.

“Janis I just want-I just want to understand,” she says. Her own voice shakes a little and it’s a knife against her ear. She’s probably pacing the room, a frown on her lovely face. Janis slaps herself on the cheek like she can slap the image out of her mind. “Janis we can make this work. Loads of people date in senior year-hell, Karen and Gretchen are. Aaron was a senior year-”

“You’re going to use Regina and Aaron as an example of couple goals?” she snorts, an unkind edge in her voice that tastes vile on her tongue. Hurting Cady is more painful than the cancer will ever be, yet a part of her wonders that if she’s a bitch now, this will end faster.

Thankfully, she still has some integrity.

“That’s different,” Cady huffs. “That’s Regina. You and me… we’re you and me.” There’s a long sigh on the other end and Janis can imagine her rubbing her forehead like when she’s debating a math problem. “Janis lots of couples date in senior year. Rachel Hamilton was still with her girlfriend last year. They’re still together now. And I know-I know you’re worried about stuff, I’m worried about stuff, but if we stay together at least we can-”

“Cady!” She jumps at her own voice. She’s never heard herself as sharp as she was just there. Her voice echoes around her and cuts her skin. She lowers herself onto the bed again, her limbs weak. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Cady assures her. She doesn’t deserve this level of gentle. Not from her. “It’s okay let’s just talk this out. Maybe we could get Damian-”

“No.”

“You’re right. Bad idea,” she says lightly. “Look Janis, we’re all stressed about senior year. But we don’t need to jump to anything yet, right? We can just take it easy and if it gets too much-”

“It’s already too much,” she replies. She’s not lying. Cady just doesn’t know. “Cady I’m sorry but it’s already too much. I can’t deal with a relationship now. It’s- it’s not you.” Her nails dig into her palm. “There’s just too much happening in my life for a girlfriend now. I mean, I didn’t think it would last as long as it did.”

“You didn’t?” And if pain were a sound, it would be Cady’s voice. Breathless and cracking, the two words shaking. If she had punched her right in the face it would have hurt less than what she just said.

Congratulations, Janis. You just did exactly what you wanted to avoid.

“Not like that,” she whispers pathetically. “Just… I think it’s best for both of us if we end it here.”

“Okay.” There’s a finality in that one word, a line drawn under everything they had these past months. Nothing could have prepared Janis for this. “Okay fine. If that’s what you want, then fine. We can end it here. I’ll see you tomorrow then, maybe.”

“Thank you.”

She’s not sure if Cady heard the end of that. The dial tone rings in her ear, loud and unending. She keeps it there because in a weird way it’s like keeping Cady there.

She got what she wanted, didn’t she? After all, why should she be Cady’s girlfriend right now when she can’t be what she needs? This is all for the best, isn’t it? Now Cady can focus on school with minimal distraction and Janis can go through this without dragging more people down with her.

“Fuck that,” she says in a low voice. Her chest rumbles as her breathes suddenly get quicker, her fingers curling inside and out. Fuck that. It’s not what she wanted, not at all. She wanted a senior year with Cady. For her to slap Janis away as she tries to distract her from homework. To greet her with hugs in the mornings and hold hands with her in the afternoon. Her visions fall apart in front of her and roll away, stopping her from building even a daydream to keep her going. Her nails scratch at her scalp as she pulls on her hair, a dull throbbing rising in time with the dial tone’s steady beeping. As she bites down on her cheek, she doesn’t know if she’s imagining the metallic taste in her mouth, if it’s blood or just her own cocktail of anger and shame and grief.

It keeps building inside her, rising like a tidal wave and filling her lungs, her mouth, her ears. Much like the hard conversations, these feelings aren’t new to her, rage and anxiety are long-time companions. Lately she’s started turning to the people around her when she’s feeling like this, heaving learnt the value of a support system, but her parents are busy enough and she can’t face Damian with this and drive a wedge between him and Cady who is incidentally the person she wants to talk to the most but she doesn’t have Cady anymore because she just broke up with her and Cady doesn’t even know why, and all Janis has is that stupid ringing dial tone-

“Oh shut up!” she yells, chucking her phone across the room. It bounces against the wall with an audible ‘thump’ and falls to the floor. At least the ringing stops. She her head hits the mattress, bouncing a little before going still. The ringing from the phone has entered her head instead and has seemingly no intention of leaving no matter how tightly she closes her eyes or how hard she covers her ears. Her nails leave indents on her skin and her fingers tangle in her unbrushed hair.

“Janis?” She doesn’t even hear her door opening above the noise in her head. Her mom hesitates as she enters, unease evident in her hunched shoulders and flitting eyes. “Janis I heard you yelling-”

“I’m fine.” The words are dull and heavy and hold no semblance of truth. She forces herself to look over at her mom. At least her eyes are dry. “I just talked to Cady.”

“Oh, baby,” she sighs sympathetically. The bed sags as she sits down, her hand covering Janis’. “I’m sorry hon. I know that can’t have been easy.” She just nods, a heavy weight pressing into her chest. She doesn’t cry and wonders if she’s used up all her tears in the past two days. Her mom’s hand moves in a small, gentle motion on her shirt; it’s comforting to her and it soothes her frantic mind. So why doesn’t she like it?

“Mom,” she begins. “No offence but I… I just want to be alone.” She can’t miss the sadness in her mom’s eyes no matter how hard she tries. The hand grows slower and lifts from her back. “I’m sorry, just-”

“It’s okay, Jan,” she says, pushing herself up. She stands over her, the picture of the doting mother. “We’re just downstairs if you need anything.”

“Mom.” Janis manages to push herself up by a mere fraction. Her mom halts right where she is, turning around so quickly she should be accompanied by a whooshing sound effect. She also can’t miss how bright her eyes are, ready to attend to whatever Janis needs. “Um… can you pass me my phone?  It’s… it’s on the floor there.”

The request is so tiny and not at all suited to her mom’s hyper-focus. Not to mention how weak and pathetic her voice sounds. It doesn’t belong to her body, her towering frame that even cancer can’t take away from her. Her mom nods, smile on face, and hands it over to her.

“I… I threw it across the room,” she admits, gesturing with her chin. “At the wall.”

“That’s okay,” her mom says. Something about the careful tone doesn’t sit right with Janis, but she’s too drained to care. “If it’s broken we can just get you a new one, okay?” Her hair moves against the fabric of the covers as she nods. “See you later, kid.”

When her mom leaves, the door stays open slightly, no doubt on purpose. She doesn’t have the energy to get up and close it.

Tomorrow should have been the first day of her senior year. Instead it’s the first day for everyone but her. They’ll all be preparing for the unknown, but while her friends prepare for SATs and college choices, she’ll be preparing for IVs and blood tests. They won’t want to get out of their beds, and she’ll be confined to hers.

Janis rolls onto her side, her phone laying dark beside her. No new messages, not from Cady or Damian. The former probably doesn’t have anything to say to her and the latter doesn’t know what. He’s been giving her a lot of space since she told him. She runs her finger across the cold glass, gliding smoothly across until it finds something that shouldn’t be there. A ridge that runs against her fingertip. She’s almost certain what this means, and last week she would have been freaking out and throwing curse words around. Now she just sighs and turns on her phone to assess the damage.

Her lockscreen is, of course, a photo of her and Cady, taken by none other than Damian. The two wearing their pyjamas at a sleepover they had at Damian’s, a night of movie-musicals, Cady’s hair in a messy side braid and her head on Janis’ shoulder and Janis pressing a kiss to her head. An hour ago it was the perfect picture, and one of Janis’ favourites. Now there’s cracks running through the screen, small ones at the top poking through her hair and over her eyes, and a longer one that slices between her and Cady. They’re not too bad. Nowhere near bad enough to warrant a new phone. But they’re there and they’re all Janis can see.