The Other Side of Tomorrow

Harlow groans and tilts her head to the sky for a moment before facing me. Sometimes it’s jarring looking at her with her one blue and one green eye. It’s almost like looking at two people at once.

“Willa, one teensy-tiny cup of ice cream isn’t going to kill you.”

I give her a look.

“Bad joke, I know.” She takes my hand. “But come on, let’s get out for a while. Mom and Dad won’t be home for a while yet, and I hate seeing you sad.”

“Why are you home?” I ask, suddenly realizing it’s the middle of the afternoon and she should be at school. It’s May, and her school doesn’t end until June.

I finished up my home schooling back in De

cember and graduated. It was nice being done nearly a year and a half early, but it also made me that much more confused.

I wanted to go to college, right? But how did I do that with all the extra baggage I had? It wouldn’t exactly be easy, or sanitary, to dialyze in a dorm room. The thought alone made me want to shudder.

It was possible I could enroll at the community college and continue to live at home, but … I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted.

Lost, that’s the only way I could describe myself at the moment.

It seemed like my whole life was on pause, waiting for the day I got a kidney. For the day when I could really start living again and didn’t have to think about dialyzing or anything that goes with it.

There wasn’t a day in the last three years where I didn’t have to think about something regarding my illness. There was no escaping it. It was there all the time.

While at times, like today, it was hard, most of the time it was such a part of my routine I didn’t even think about it.

But for the moment, I was having a major case of the poor me’s.

“We got out early today,” she supplies. “Parent-teacher conferences are tonight, the teachers need time to prepare. I’m sure they have to give a lot of bad news.” She claps her hands together and tilts her head to the side. “I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, but it looks like little Tommy is going to fail,” she mocks in a high-pitched voice.

“Is it that bad?” I ask, picking up my flip-flops and heading up the deck steps and into the house.

“You have no idea,” she groans. “Half the kids there don’t do anything. They expect a free ride or Mommy and Daddy to pay their way. All they talk about is partying, drinking, and sex.”

“Sounds like I haven’t missed much.”

“Eh.” She shrugs, sliding onto one of the barstools. “It can be entertaining at times, but it’s mostly annoying.”

“Let me go change, and then we’ll go,” I tell her.

There’s no way I’m going anywhere with sand in my crotch. I don’t know how it always manages to find its way inside my clothes, but it does.

“I’ll be here.” She kicks her legs up on the counter.

I bound up the steps and push the door open to my room.

It’s a mess, like always. My mattress lies on the floor, covered in a million pillows and blankets. String lights hang across an entire wall, making my room glow with a warm golden hue. Pinned to the string of the lights are Polaroid photos. I still have aways to go to fill it all up, it’s a work in progress, but it brings me joy to see all the different happy moments I’ve captured. There are some not happy ones there as well, but I like to be reminded of how far I’ve come. How no matter what’s been thrown at me, I’m still standing tall.

I change quickly into another pair of shorts and a loose tank top, then check my appearance in the floor-length mirror behind my door.

My hair’s a wild mess and looks like it hasn’t been brushed—even though it has. My eyes are wide, and my cheeks flushed, making my freckles even more prominent. I have a love/hate relationship with my freckles. Some days I love them and think they’re cute, other days I think they look like mud streaked across my face.

“Willa! Are you done yet?” Harlow yells up the steps.

“Yeah, yeah,” I chant, grabbing my purse and slinging the strap across my body before reaching for my car keys on my dresser.

I stumble down the steps and find Harlow waiting by the front door.

“I’m starving now,” she whines. “Let’s grab a bite to eat and then get ice cream.”