The Favour

“O my god, o my god, o my god! I can’t believe I’m doing this. Do come on, come on. What did she say it was again? Frig. Stoney wall, something?? Pebble floor? Crownmoulding8! That’s it, thank god it worked. Okay, let me see…”

I watched my sister trying to log into my laptop. She is muttering to herself, blowing her apple-red bangs up and following them with her eyes as she tries to think what I told her just hours ago at the hospital. A small tear drips from the side of her pink and puffy eyes. “Come on, come on, you know this,” I think to myself. I need her to do this. I clap and jump when she finally gets it but there is no sound.

“Holy shit!” She breathes out opening my messenger app as she begins scrolling through all my messages. I cringe looking over her shoulder. Yep, there they are, all of them. No one was ever supposed to know, I didn’t think anyone would ever see. I gave her strict instructions, log in and delete the messages so no one would see them and then reset the password.

I had no choice. She was there and we only had a quick moment alone before another family member or friend was shuffled into the stifling room. She was crying next to me, saying she couldn’t do life without me. Touching my hand as she took in an ugly suck of air that sounded like a moan. I tried not to roll my eyes.” Look we always knew this was coming” I whispered to her.

I’d been sick since I was eight, with spinal tumours. Now here I am, at 21 years of age in a hospital bed for the final time, my fight was over. I was 21 but still only had the life experiences of an 8-year-old. The minute the diagnosis came I stopped having life experiences. I stopped getting to go anywhere without my parents…

I shift as my service dog lifts his head in an alert but I don’t need him now. I wonder who will get him when I'm gone. Service dogs are too expensive and take too long to train, which makes them very valuable. So the dog doesn’t just get to stay with their person’s family, that would be crazy. Instead, they are given to someone else who needs them, they have to move on and continue their job.

“Just listen!” I raised my voice in exasperation. “I really need you to do this for me.” She’d do anything I asked, they all would. One last wish. They were coming soon to give me a diploma that I hadn’t earned yet, an honorary degree on my deathbed. Yep, they’re doing that.

I loved going to school. I went with my walker, my back was so deformed that I could barely walk then. I made a real spectacle moving slowly through the halls with my service dog and aide. But I got to see life. Other people’s lives. I got to learn too but it was the people I came for. I’ve never had a boyfriend. Boys, they were so appealing and yet so far away. Who would ask the girl who is balding from so much radiation throughout her life, that’s right the one with the hunchback, out on a date? Who would even take the time to know her? To approach her?

After a while of watching I began to know their lives. Who they were dating, their best friends, what happened at the party last night and where the best yoga studio in town was. Like I would ever need that knowledge. Yoga, all the girls meet at yoga, hang out and talk. I could never do yoga. I hear the boys talk as they all walk by in their Lululemon pants and sweaters, making their asses look huge as they strut by. They don’t make clothes like that to fit me, my clothes and shoes have to be able to cover my oddly shaped body. One of my legs is longer than the other. I grew wrong, around the tumours. Not to mention all the surgeries I had to remove portions of my spine.

I took it all in, all of them and I wanted to be with them and know them. Honestly, I wanted to be them. That is what I was thinking when I came home one day and made my first fake account.

At first, I just wanted to see if he would accept and he did. Then I thought, he doesn’t know it’s me, maybe I’ll just send him a message. What’s the worst thing that could happen? But then he answered. It went on like this, I got a little bolder every time he answered me. Eventually, I was rushing home, shutting my bedroom door to talk to him. We talked about everything, we read the same books, he dreamed of travelling and he liked me. Well, he liked the fake picture of me and talking to the real me. It was the same with the girls, the ones who went to yoga together. I created a profile and I befriended them. It was so easy and suddenly I had a life. A real life with friends and a boyfriend all from the safety of my bedroom.

Who cares if they didn’t know that it was me? They liked me. We could talk about anything, straight into the night.

Then things with him got… deep. I have never felt like this about anyone before in my entire life. He made my body sense all kinds of things, he wanted to touch me and I wanted him. But he could never meet me, he could never know. He wouldn’t love someone like me.

So we kept sending messages. They got sexy. Honestly, I said things to him I didn’t truly understand. But it was the closest I would ever come to being loved by a boy. I knew it then and I was right.

But those were my personal messages. Those were my friends and my private life and I didn’t want it on display. I didn’t want my mother to read them. I didn’t want anyone to read them so I had to beg my sister. Dying and all I could think was I needed to hide the evidence, hide what I’d done.

I watched the show catfished awhile ago on MTV. I studied it really and tried to learn from their mistakes. But more than anything I was looking for a way out, a way to tell them and still get to be their friend. To still be loved.

I don’t think what I did was wrong. I truly felt the things I said and valued those relationships. The only problem was they didn’t know what I looked like, or what my real name was.

They won’t know I'm dead. They won’t mourn me. Instead, I’ll just disappear from their lives the way I appeared.

My sister is scrolling through my messages. She’s reading them. She wasn’t supposed to read them. I'm panicked. Stop, Stop I think. But she doesn’t.

“Wow” … “wow” she keeps repeating as she scrolls through my private messages. She reads the ones with him. She’s fanning herself with one hand and scrolling with the other. “Sis, you were fucking hot,” she says.

I close my eyes tight feeling violated. Just delete them all.

But she doesn’t, at least not right away. She reads every message. She goes through them all and then she pours herself a glass of wine and sits down on the couch. She’s shaking her head.

“Sis, I don’t know if you are here or if you can hear me but this is amazing. You had a life, a real-life outside of mom and dad. You deserved everything you wrote in those messages and more. Life gave you a crappy hand. But I think this guy, he loved you and these girls were truly your friends. I hate that you felt you had to hide who you are… were. But I love you. I love you and thank you for sharing this with me. Please don’t be mad about what I’m about to do. “

She stood up and walked back to the laptop.

No, no! What is she doing?

She learned over the computer and she types one message and copies it to all the chats. It read “my real name was Ashley, I went to school with you and saw you every day but you didn’t see me. I died this morning. I’m so sorry for what I did. There will be a celebration of life for me this weekend in the park off South Street, it was my favourite place. It would mean a lot to my family and me if you were to come and say goodbye”

With that, she finally did as I asked. She erased every conversation and she hit the “reset your password” button making it something our parents would never guess. She closed the computer and blew me a kiss and then she walked out of my apartment.

I just stood there in shock and horror. But then… I felt a sense of relief. I felt lighter. I felt as if I was light. I closed my eyes and felt the comfort and warmth wash through me and I let go.

I’m sitting here in the park hoping. Hoping for my sister that the people she cared about will want to celebrate her life, even if she wasn’t honest. I’m wearing a bright turquoise prom dress. My sister loved this dress. She watched me dress up on prom night and get picked up by my date. She saw me laughing with my girlfriends as we drove away, leaving her behind. I never realized how hard it must have been to see her little sister surpass her. I was always just so happy that she was still alive. Happy when she wasn’t sick and I could have my parent's attention. Happy when she was sick and I had the run of the house, no one caring what I got up to. Happy to always have my sister right there in her room when I needed her.

I’m focused on the sounds of the gentle waves lapping on the rocks. The sunshine on my face feels pleasant like a day with my sister. I sweep my bangs back and look over my shoulder, so few people. My parents are distraught. Their daughter who they fought with and sacrificed everything for is gone.

Then I see him. The guy she loved. He’s in a suit, his tie dangling around his neck like he didn’t know how to tie it. He’s shuffling awkwardly, he doesn’t know where to go or who to talk to. He has flowers with him, lilies, my sister’s favourite. He sees me watching him. He straightens his shoulders and walks up to the makeshift memorial we have created. There he places the flowers and begins to cry.

I’m about to walk over to him when I see others. More people coming to pay their respects. They introduce themselves to my parents and they begin to tell stories about my sister. They cry and they laugh for her with us.

He sees me watching him and he starts to come my way. I’m awkward, not sure what to say or do so I just stand still, silent and waiting. “You’re Ashley’s sister? She talked about you a lot. I feel like I know you. Thank you for telling me she was gone. I think on some level I always knew it was her, I was just waiting for her to tell me. Your sister was one of the most beautiful people I have ever known. Thank you for giving me the chance to say goodbye.”

Then he kisses me, a small peck on my cheek, and walks away. I watch him, never saying a word as he slowly makes his way out of the park and back to his life. The man who loved my sister.