A SPECIAL REQUEST

By now we have arrived at the point where plot threads are being revisited. For a while there it probably seemed as though every chapter was going to have a new main character. Believe me we have hardly begun introducing characters, but the primary work is done.

Hopefully, by now you have decided that you relate to someone in the book and that you will continue to read just to see what happens. Though things have only just barely begun to happen.

From time to time as I continue along on this project I will make a special request of you, as I am today. Today's request is most simple and rather general, but later ones will be more specific and I'll even provide some basic 'how to' direction for those who need it.  But today it's a cinch...

All I am asking at the moment is that if you are enjoying Necropolis, take a moment to tell someone else. Perhaps you know someone whose reading preferences clearly match Necropolis... Just let them know.  Send them the link to the first chapter, and tell them you think they'd enjoy it.

If you are feeling more ambitious, then Facebook, Tweet, Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit, Blog, Tumblr, NetworkBlog it - or post on a forum you know of where people who you think might enjoy Necropolis participate.

I'll post again at a later date getting more specific on how best to do some of these things, but for now it's up to you how you spread the love.

Thanks!

Book: The First - Part: One - Chapter: 6 - Installment: i

The cool breeze of his breath on her damp neck sent a shiver up her spine. The tremor was more anticipation than discomfort. It was cool but not uncomfortable as he exhaled where he had just kissed.

“Mmmmmnnn.” Sarah moaned as Ruthven’s hands ran down her back, pressing in the small of it, pushing her closer to him. As they reached her hips his fingers reached the elastic of her panties she felt his fingers continue along her skin down the slim curve of her slight buttock.

Oh no…

But she let him continue. It felt good. God it felt good. No matter how much her father had angered her with the implication that she would never have the opportunity for physical love, the fact remained that she too had had serious doubts. To be laying here with Ruthven, one piece of clothing away from being naked with a boy for the first time was something that she had had never truly expected to be part of the patchwork of her life experience.

But Ruthven really likes me. That is what is most important. He likes me pale and skinny. Who am I to question that?

That she would have to stop him from going any further very, very soon was beginning to upset her mood. The anxiety raced.

God, to be able to just forge onwards. I wish we could. God I wish we could. Why can’t I be like other girls? What will he think? Stopping him – hell, telling him the truth – could be all it takes. He’ll never want to touch me again. This may be the only time I’m ever naked with a boy.

It’s okay, Sarah. Just let him go as long as you can. Make it last…

The panties curled up as Ruthven pulled them past her hips. He kissed her stomach as the cool air tickled her private area. He pulled them to her knees, and she told herself that that was all that mattered, she was for all practical purposes naked with a boy.

He kissed her navel and then just below.

Oh God. He’s moving too fast. I’m going to have to stop him… soon.

She grabbed his head. Tried to casually hold him close and slow him down, prolong the moment.

It didn’t work. Ruthven had set a goal and a pace and nothing was stopping his inexorable momentum towards her virgin lips.

She was wet, she could feel. Very worked up. She so wanted to let him continue, but she couldn’t.

That would be too irresponsible. I couldn’t live with myself.

The realities of her situation had been pounded in since she was a child. She took them for granted, but the call of her uncharted territory was putting all of that to the test.

His tongue found her hair and began weaving its way down…

“Wait…” She said.

He kept going. She could feel his breath against her wetness…

“Wait!” She sat up and pulled her hips away from his head just as he was about to make the plunge.

“You have to stop. I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I…”

“It’s okay. Look, everything is okay.”

“No. No it isn’t. There’s something I have to tell you.”

“I already guessed you’re still a virgin, if that’s what it is. I’ll be gentle. We can slow down a bit.”

“Ruthven… please don’t hate me.”

“I like you. I’m not going to hate you.”

“You will.”

“No.”

“Look, it’s not that I’m a virgin. I am. And, God… I want to fuck you like you can’t imagine.”

“I imagine it’s going to be really great.”

“No. It’s not. We can’t.”

“What’s up?”

“You’re going to hate me.”

“I just said I’m not going to hate you. What is it?”

“I’m sick. I don’t want to make you sick too.”

“Right. ‘Cause you’ve got an STD or something.”

“Exactly.”

“But you’re a virgin.”

“Ruthven, my Mother got a bad blood transfusion when she was pregnant with me. It’s how she died. It’s how I’m going to die. We both contracted an infectious blood disease. I don’t want to transmit it to you.”

Chapter 7

Book: The First - Part: One - Chapter: 5 - Installment: ii

Tanya Meyers looked as bad as any woman waiting on bad news that Edmond had ever seen. She looked exhausted and probably had been drinking. 

At her best she must be pretty. Hell, at half her best she must be pretty.

“Sorry to disturb you Mrs. Meyers.” Shale greeted the tired looking woman. “This is Detective Lieutenant Edmond.”

“What is it?” she forced out, her worst fears evident in her subtext.

Scott took responsibility for the bad news.

“Mrs. Meyers, I’m sorry…”

She stifled a shuddering breath.

“What happened to him?”

“We’re still trying to figure that out. The circumstances are… unique.”

“What does that mean?” She begged for understanding.

“We’re hoping you can answer some questions. Right now we are quite uncertain about exactly what transpired ourselves. We’re looking for anything that might shed some light on the situation. To be perfectly honest – and not to give you any false hope – we’re merely confident that it is your husband we’ve found… although we’re quite certain.”

“Please don’t ask me to identify the body.”

“That won’t happen. I promise. May we come in?”

“I’m sorry. Please.” Tanya Meyers stepped away from the door, giving the two officers room to enter her home.

The only light was coming from the stairs to the upper-half of the split-level. Some children’s voices faintly trickled down, competing with the sound of a television set in the living room to his left.

“Go on in. Make yourself comfortable.”

Scott could barely see where he was stepping, but it wasn’t necessary, the house’s design was classic. He’d made countless visits just like this one to houses exactly like it. In fact, he’d grown up in a house which doubtlessly had the exact same cookie-cutter lay-out.

I’m sure I could find the bathroom with my eyes closed, I don’t need light to find my way in the door.

Scott and Shale took seats in the two arm chairs in the living room – it was obvious in the limited glow of the television that Tanya had taken station on the couch in her convalescence. A blanket was spread out on it and a cup of tea still steamed in front of a well compressed cushion.

“Can I get you some tea?” She offered.

“No thank you.” Both Detectives agreed in unison.

‘Like having a partner.’ Thought Scott. Pretty soon we’ll be just like an old married couple.

Tanya sat as expected on the crushed cushion of the couch, and pressed ‘mute’ on the remote, cutting short a news item about the latest threat to travelers: the most recent illness to hit the WHO etiological watch list.

Edmond pulled out his notepad. He could barely see the lines on the page.

“Do you mind if we put on a light?”

“If you have to. I’ve been crying so much, my eyes are hurting an awful lot.”

“I’ll make do.” He tilted the pad towards the glow of the television. It gave nominal light.

Lousy. But the lady just lost her husband.

“Mrs. Meyers, can you tell me, was there anything unusual about your husband’s behaviour in the period before his disappearance.”

“Well, I told Detective Shale Jeremy was sick. He’d spent about a week home from work. It had been getting worse. In the last few days he never left our room. Spent most of the time in bed. The night he disappeared, he wasn’t making any sense. He kept saying he was hungry, but he wouldn’t eat.”

“So you took him to the hospital.”

“I told Detective Shale all about this.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Meyers. We’re just trying to put this all together.”

“Can I ask, what happened to him?”

“Mrs. Meyers, it’s important to remember that we’re not entirely certain…”

“It was him. Don’t try to ease things for me. It was Jeremy. You know it. I can tell, you’re certain.”

“Well, yes. In a forensic sense, we’re not positive, but yes, I’m confident that it was him.”

“So, what happened to him?” Her tone didn’t leave much room for interpretation as a question so much as a command.

“We’ve got a jogger who claims he attacked her, and she killed him with a rock. But we have our doubts. We think he was already dead.”

“Then how could he be attacking her?”

“Like I said, it’s complicated.”

A voice from the hall interrupted their flow. “Mommy?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Who are you talking to?”

“There are some police men here, Carly.”

“Can we meet them?”

Tanya Meyers turned to Edmond and Shale.

“Of course.” Shale.

Two young children entered the room.

“Hi sweetie.” Tanya said to the smaller one. “Come here, give Mommy a hug.”

The child shook it’s head.

Exerting independence. Thought Edmond. I remember when Janne was that young. The older one must be Janne’s age.

“Christopher, come to Mommy, please. Mommy can really use a hug.”

The boy worked his way across the room deliberately, but making a point of taking his time. Tanya took him into her arms, laying her head against his tiny neck.

“There’s a good…” She got no further. The tears that she’d been holding back finally came.

“Don’t cry Mommy.” Said the young girl, joining the other two, wrapping her arms around the other two as best she could. “Don’t cry.”

This shit always makes me feel like an asshole. Thought Edmond. Can’t leave. Hate to stay.

Shale and Edmond were forced to sit while Carly Meyers tried to comfort her Mother, not knowing or understanding why she was so distraught, or that the reasons would affect the course of her young life.

With some effort, Tanya Meyers regained enough of her composure to speak again. She looked across the darkness at the two police officers.

“Carly, sweetie, you remember Detective Shale, and this is his partner Detective Edmond. Go say ‘hi.’”

“Okay, but don’t cry without me.”

A small hiccough of laughter came from Tanya.

From the mouths of babes. Thought Edmond.

“Okay dear, I’ll be fine.” Tanya promised her daughter, while she kept a near death-lock on her younger child, her own tears trickling down the skin of his neck, glistening in the half-light of the television.

“I’m Carly.” Carly said, offering her hand in a precocious manner that indicated that she knew this was the ‘adult’ way to present herself.

Edmond took her small hand in his hand and shook it gently.

“I’m Lieutenant Edmond. But you can call me Scott.”

“You’re a police man.” It wasn’t really a question.

“Yes, I am.”

“But you don’t wear an policeman-suit.”

“Uniform. We call them uniforms.”

“You don’t wear a uniform.”

“No. I’m a Detective. We don’t wear uniforms.”

“So you aren’t a real policeman.”

Shale chuckled. Edmond shot him a reprimanding look.

“How old are you Carly?” Edmond redirected the conversation.

“Seven.”

“My daughter is seven too.”

“Why don’t you wear a real uniform?”

“That’s a good question. I don’t know. It’s just the way it works when you are a detective. I guess we don’t frighten people as much.”

“Real policemen aren’t scary. They help people.”

“That’s right. I do have a badge though.”

He pulled out his badge and showed it to her.

“See. Just like a real policeman.”

“Yeah, right.” Carly said, in an over emphasized practice of sarcasm.

“Carly, be nice.” Tanya croaked out through her tear soaked throat.

Shale took the opportunity to break into the conversation. “Mrs. Meyers, you need some time with your family. We can come back.”

Edmond pulled a card out of his wallet and handed it to Carly.

“Carly, make sure to give this to your Mom for me? Mrs. Meyers, my number is on that card. I’ll call again in a day or two, but don’t be afraid to call me, okay?”

“I’m sorry I’m not in a better…”

“It’s alright. We’re just trying to fill in some holes.”

Carly took the card from Edmond and looked up at him. The motion of the images on the television set reflected in her eyes, making them twinkle at him. He smiled. She smiled back, and the two officers saw themselves out the door.

Chapter 6

Book: The First - Part: One - Chapter: 5 - Installment: i

“Just like before the cutbacks.” Offered Detective Shale.

“You mean being paired up?” Asked Edmond.

“Yeah. Like having a partner.”

“A bit.”

The medic alert bracelet had been traced. It had matched a missing person’s report. Detective Shale was the officer assigned. Edmond brought the detail to Shale’s attention. It wasn’t incontrovertible evidence of death, and a DNA match due to the state of the corpse… the report on that had boggled Scott’s mind. He didn’t know what to make of it.

But the family would need to be notified of the development as a matter of course in Edmond’s developing investigation. It was simply good form for Shale to be on hand.

Jeremy Meyers had been missing for nearly a week before the attack on Moira Chan. He had been a perfectly un-remarkable paralegal for a small law-firm on the North Shore.

“So what do we know about Meyers?” asked Edmond.

“His wife was taking him to the hospital and he bolted from the car with no explanation.”

“Hospital?”

“He’d been sick. Doctors thought it was just your basic run of the mill Flu, but he’d got worse and fast. Apparently he was barely cogent. Before he bolted from the car he started spewing gibberish and then ran off into the night. Didn’t even wait for the car to stop.”

“Any interim leads?”

“Nothing of any real value. We talked to some colleagues and friends hoping he might have gone somewhere familiar. And we organized a sweep, but nothing came up until he showed up attempting to rape Miss Chan.”

“I don’t know that it was rape.”

“So, I’m jumping to conclusions. Assault of some vein.”

“Perhaps.”

They sat in silence for a few blocks before Shale spoke up again.

“So, how does this relate for you?”

“I wish I could say.”

“What’s the reason for the secret?”

“No secret. Not on my part. It’s just the weirdest DFO I’ve ever seen. Thought it was a junkie at first, but… well, a week just isn’t enough for that kind of descent.”

“Not really.”

“And then there’s the DB.” Lieutenant Edmond told his faux partner Moira Chan’s story about killing her attacker with a rock and how certain he had been that she was mistaken due to the degenerated nature of the corpse. Then he filled in with the coroner’s report.

“From what I understand, by the time the body was ready to be bagged they had to do it with a wet-vac, took a lot of dirt with it and brought in the Hazmats for good measure.”

“Jesus.”

“Practically dissolved. When they took him downstairs it was about an hour before they realized that the liquid that was left was evaporating at an accelerated rate.”

“Acid of some kind?”

“Perhaps. But it wasn’t damaging anything else. There was moss mixed in with the dirt that was completely unharmed.”

“Seriously.”

“Not a word of lie.”

“Seriously?”

“Don’t ask again.”

“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yup.” Edmond practically inhaled the word.

Installment ii

INSIGHT - Sarah's Illness

When I first started imagining the Necropolis series, Sarah was very nearly an after-thought.  She was a secondary character who would play a crucial role at a secondary turning point later in a later book.

My earliest thinking about Sarah didn’t do a lot to make me interested in her.  I don’t recall the specific sequence of thoughts that massaged the character into one I became interested in.  Surely it had something to do with her being inherently weak – a victim of her illness.  But as many authors will tell you, some characters have wills of their own; and Sarah is an excellent example.

She is smart and she refuses to lay down at the foot of her disease, and this strength of character carries over into her actions.  Yes, she is frail but that only makes her more interesting to me.  She must overcome her troubles with cunning and the sheer force of her intent.  And that is precisely what she did to me.  She refused to be pushed to the side as an incidental character and showed me that she is not only integral to the plot, but that she is in fact one of the main characters throughout – and that I am going to enjoy writing her as much as any character in the book... at least that is how it currently seems.

It has been years that this story has been rattling around in my noggin, and in that time a lot of things in our world - the world Necropolis borrows most heavily from - have changed.  This has required some tweaking to the plot as I didn’t intend the tale to be a period piece. (At least not until after it is published.)  I had every intention of it being contemporary.

Originally, it had been my plan that the disease that Sarah had contracted from her mother was AIDS.  It fit my intentions very well.  But time has changed that plan. 

In the time since Sarah’s story was first conceived AIDS has quit being the ticking-time-bomb death-sentence that it once was.  Don’t get me wrong.  AIDS is a serious ailment.  In the early 90s I played a show at a hospice in Montreal that my Mother volunteered at, and there was no hiding how dire the situation of the patients who had progressed the furthest was.  It is an afternoon that I will never forget.  In the intervening years I’ve known a number of HIV positive men.  The most dramatic example I met over fifteen years ago – the late 90s.  He was then under the assumption that he wouldn’t see the 21^st century.  I still see him around occasionally now and if anything he looks healthier than he did then.

AIDS no longer carries quite the aspect of the reaper that it once did.  And so, I had to make an adjustment to Sarah.  I needed to either switch off what type of disease she had; or change how it affected her story-arc; or both.  The ideal situation would be to simply find a new disease that had the elements I needed... but that has thus far proven to be a bust.  I’m no doctor, but I like to think I have an above average comprehension level when it comes to science-based subjects and I’m no stranger to doing on-line research – indeed I’ve collected a number of paycheques for that very task – but finding a disease that weakened it’s victim (and ideally compromised the immune system); could be transferable from mother to child in utero; was communicable using blood as a vector, but wasn’t at risk of infecting everyone in sight; and, was both decidedly fatal yet could be survived for as much as decades... that was truly too much to ask.  Which is not to say that such a disease doesn’t exist.  I simply haven’t found it... except for AIDS.

There have been some close contenders.  Both Wiscott-Aldrich Syndrome and Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disease (SCID) have functional aspects that I could make narrative hay with, but the first is inherited and the second congenital.  (The distinction between inherited and congenital is mighty slim for us non-doctors.  For starters, inherited diseases are congenital, but congenital diseases aren’t inherently inherited.)  In any case, they simply weren’t what I needed.

There was one more option available to me though...

I could simply make something up.  What I don’t like about making something up is that there is more than enough “making stuff up” in this book for my taste.  The big conceits of the story are all the fabrication I really want to bow to.  I look forward to the challenge of justifying the obvious fictive science as best I can against the real science of our world.  Naturally there is going to have to be some creative license in the boundary between the two, but as much as possible I want to invent as little as possible.  Having to create a new disease for Sarah as early as chapter four isn’t in my mind a good start.  Like any lie, the more you make up, the more you have to do mental gymnastics to keep the dissonance between reality and the lie in check.

So... what to do?

I love the character of Sarah too much – and have put so much advance thought into her story to really want to rob her of the plans I have for her.  So changing the effects of her illness on the long-arc isn’t really on the table when I think about it at any length. 

Instead I am taking a two-pronged approach.  I have invented a disease.  I am borrowing from a variety of sources – AIDS being the single biggest.  This way the disease can be exactly what I need it to be... for now.  I am not spending any more time delving into medical literature except to flesh-out the corners of Sarah’s ailment with borrowed details from real-world counterparts as necessary.  However, should someone who knows their stuff – or even someone who doesn’t but who is eager to show off their superior Google-fu – has a suggestion that fits my four primary requirements (1: Weakens it’s victim, preferably with a compromised immune system; 2: Transferable in utero; 3: Uses blood as its sole (or primary) vector; 4: Is lethal though not necessarily for many years.) then please, point me in the right direction, and if the proper fit comes along, then it is rewrite time!

Is it too much to hope that a haematologist starts reading this novel?

Book: The First - Part: One - Chapter: 4 - Installment: ii

The buzzing of her cellphone broke her out of her reverie. Sarah glanced at the call ID. Ruthven.

“Hello?”

“Buff.”

He called her ‘Buff’ or sometimes ‘Buffy.’

“‘Buffy?’” She had asked the first time.

“Yeah. I’m a vampire, and you slay me.”

“Ugh.”

Inside it secretly delighted her. She pretended to find the reference offensive. How dare he relate her in any way to some fakey Hollywood type! But on the other hand Sarah Michelle Gellar was someone who boys thought of as ‘hot’ – and being thought of in any way as ‘hot’, even so tangentially, made her happy though she wouldn’t dare show it.

“Stop it. Where are you?”

“Downstairs. Door is locked.”

“Can you blame them with misanthropes like you stalking about?”

“Come down, let me in.”

#

Sarah’s father didn’t get in her way when she wanted to go to University. In turn she had agreed to go to one of the Universities in Vancouver so that she wouldn’t be more than a few hours away, even in bad traffic. She stayed in residence, but came back home to Fort Fraser most weekends. Reading breaks were a regular negotiation. Now in her third year, this was her fifth. It was only the second she was spending on campus, and the first one that she’d spend the weekends of on campus as well.

 #

“Is it a boy?” Her father had teased.

“No. I just really have a lot of lab work to get done.” She lied. “They really pile the work on in the advanced courses.”

“I figured it was something like that. Make sure you call if you want a break though. If you want some company or something.”

“Thanks Dad. I’ll be fine.”

“If it was a boy, you’d be careful, right?”

“It’s not a boy, Dad!”

“Of course.” He meant it. That hurt.

She’d never done that before. She’d never lied to her father. It must have been how she had got away with it, he didn’t know what to look for.

He deserved it. “Of Course!?” Of course it’s not a boy? Thanks Dad. Thanks a lot. But guess what, you’re wrong. Your terminally ill daughter actually IS attractive to boys. At least to Ruthven.

#

“Have you found anything good?”

“Some stuff on some sites that ought to be fun.”

“I don’t want fun,” said Ruthven. “I want something unique. Maybe a bit scary for the newbs, but something new. Something even the elders won’t have seen.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. I don’t know what you’ve done before.” Said Sarah, defensively.

“Okay, look. This is my chance to impress Hathandra. I could get raised to the elder’s circle if I host a ceremony like no one else has ever done.”

Sarah didn’t really understand what he was talking about, but the context was clear enough. Of all the websites she had found, one had been particularly dense in its content. She wasn’t even sure it was about vampires, but if it in fact was, it was truly for the hardcore fan.

Don’t ever let him know you think of him as a ‘fan’.

Ruthven was much more than just a ‘fan.’ He liked to think of himself as a vampire. Sarah suspected that he had even tried drinking blood.

#

University had been a revelation for Sarah. She’d always lived on the fringe of the big city, both literally and figuratively. But when she went to University things changed. The shift that she had expected when she moved into the public system in senior high as everyone had to re-establish their positions in the social order was absolutely present at University. She was well aware that she wasn’t the only one who took the opportunity to reinvent herself.

While Fort Fraser was effectively part of the sprawl that made up Vancouver, it was also, in effect a small town. The single senior high-school was evidence enough of that. It shared the attitudes of many small towns, despite its proximity to a larger cultural centre. There were no Goths in Fort Fraser Senior High. She was aware of the culture from television and books, but she was never truly exposed to it. Most of what she’d seen was in fact poking fun. Goths were an easy target for television sketch comedy. And that shooting in Colorado - she had been a kid, she couldn’t recall the school’s name – if anything that had made her wary of the kids with their dyed-black hair and black clothing.

At University though, Sarah found that they gravitated to her. It didn’t take much for her to put her finger on why. Her dark hair, her pale complexion and her sickly thinness naturally made her what so many of them strove to be with cosmetic assistance. Her wardrobe needed a quick overhaul, but before long she fit right in.

Ruthven had arrived at UBC this year - a college transfer student in anthropology. They’d met through mutual friends. Sarah hadn’t explored the vampire sub-culture, but when Ruthven started taking interest in her, she started to brush up her knowledge. He’d kissed her at a party hosted by the SCA two weeks ago. No boy had ever kissed her before. He knew she was a virgin. He didn’t seem to care and wasn’t rushing her much. Which was good, ‘cause she wasn’t sure how she’d address the truth about her condition and all that followed, but she knew it was only a matter of time before it became an issue. After all, he was a boy.

Chapter 5

Book: The First - Part: One - Chapter: 4 - Installment: i

Reading break.

Sarah believed that if she stayed in school for the rest of her life she would never embrace the declared intent of 'Reading Break.' Did anyone?

All she could ever imagine wanting to do during the week off was just exactly that – take a week off. Sure, she could use the time to catch up on her work, or possibly even get ahead on something.

The one thing she patently refused to do was the work that had been assigned ‘for reading break.’

What kind of asshole…?

Professor Hughes. She knew that there were other instructors on campus who didn't seem to understand the concept of reading break, who assigned specific assignments to be done during those nine days. Professor Hughes just happened to be her particualr bug bear.

He wanted a thirty minute presentation from each student and they would start presenting them in random order on the Monday after reading break, so everyone would have to be ready on their first day back. A dozen and a half thirty minute presentations were going to take at least two weeks to get through – pretty much the rest of the semester.

How ironic. Sarah thought. He's too lazy to teach the class himself, so he's giving us more work than we can handle so that WE can fill up the remaining class time teaching each other.

Sarah had already chosen her topic. Advanced search strings. It was something that she had developed a knack for. If she had to present on the first day back, she could improvise a reasonable amount of material.

Now, she was preparing for next Saturday night. It was a full-moon and Ruthven had big plans. 

Her boyfriend, Ruthven’s, real name was Kevin, but he had taken the name of an English nobleman who had been rumoured to be a vampire. Ruthven was fascinated by vampires. Sarah thought vampires were interesting, but she really thought that Ruthven was fascinating. And by all measures, Ruthven liked her. A lot. It was unfamiliar territory for her. Boys didn’t like her. Or at least they hadn’t until Ruthven.

Sarah looked at herself in the mirror built into her dorm room closet. She was skinny. Very skinny. Always had been. Always would be. However long 'always' was.

She’d watched her Mother waste, whither and die, and she knew that she too faced the same eventual fate. She was lucky to have made it this far. She’d spent a lot of time as a child with other kids like her. About a third of them were already dead. Sarah herself had very nearly not made it to her first birthday. A simple case of pneumonia that would hardly have affected any well cared for normal child had brought her to death’s door. That was their first sure clue that her Mother had passed on the deadly disease to her. But she had been a fighter. With heroic effort from her doctors she had survived and begun the immediate lifelong treatment that would leave her frail and sleight.

As puberty hit other girls and they grew into women, Sarah watched hoping that one day she too would blossom into robust health, but knowing that it would never happen. Yes, she became a woman, but she’d always be pale, always be sickly thin. Never be sexy.

When her Mother died, she was fifteen. She begged her father to let her go to a normal school. To live a normal life. To be like ‘real’ kids.

She had always felt like a porcelain doll. Pale and fragile. Left up on the shelf up out of reach of the boisterous kids, running and playing. She wanted to at least be allowed to pretend to be like them. To be with them.

“I’m fifteen. I know how to take care of myself.”

“Sarah, you can’t.”

“No. You can’t. You can’t stand the thought of losing me like you lost Mom. Well guess what Dad. You can’t stop it. I’m going to die. Just like her, too weak to lift my head, shitting myself ‘cause I can’t draw enough breath to speak.”

“Sarah, don’t talk like that.”

“It’s true.”

“They could find a cure.”

“And if they don’t then I’ll have spent my entire life waiting rather than living. You’ve got to let me go now. I’m not talking about going and living in Ebola stricken Kenya. I’m talking about going to a normal school with normal kids. I’m talking about doing something fun for once. Having real friends. Not a bunch of sick kids conducting our own vigil over each other. Imagine for once that I could go through a year of school without having to attend a classmate’s memorial, thanking God that it wasn’t me. ‘Cause next time maybe it will be me, and I’ll have never had that chance. This could be my only adventure, to pretend for once that I’m a normal person.”

She knew that she had practically shamed her father into letting her go, but she didn’t really care, because she had been right.

The adventure hadn’t been quite as exciting as she’d dreamed. In fact, substantial portions had been utterly disastrous.

Sarah had figured that changing schools just as she got to senior high-school would put her on an even playing field with everyone else. All four junior high-schools in town merged into one senior high-school for the final two-years. She had made the mistaken assumption that the intermingling of groups would mean that she would be little worse off than anyone else who was suddenly being subjected to three-quarters of a grade worth of new classmates. But she’d miscalculated the strength of the existing cliques from the junior high-schools, in fact for all practical purposes she was entirely ill-prepared for clique-based social circles. The Health Foundation School was small, and with a constant spectre presiding over all, it would be inhumane to break down into sub-units and she and her fellow patients seemed to have a built in understanding of the lonely futility of ostracizing one another. It was not so in her new classes.

The first day she had arrived, perky and excited to make friends. She’d be ‘that courageous and funny girl who was so cavalier about the fact that she was dying.’ She would simultaneously charm and appall her classmates with her shocking joie de vivre.

“What are you going to wear to the prom? I’m thinking a shroud.” She made herself laugh.

But it wasn’t that way. The doors to the social circles were closed. Each of the groups from each junior school closed ranks as they sized up each of the other schools’ social order.

“Who are the cool kids at D. Park High?”

“Whatever you do, don’t accidentally associate with the geeks from Kelley Heights Junior… but which ones are the geeks?”

The pale skinny girl with the sunken eyes, didn’t have a chance, no matter how witty she was. But Sarah was happy just to be there. The simple fact that she didn’t have to spend an hour everyday traveling into the city to the Health Foundation School was a bonus to her.

She decided not to exacerbate her situation by being ‘the dying girl.’ She kept it to herself. Which wasn’t hard as she largely kept to herself and watched from the sidelines. Despite her intentions to be the life of the school with her dark humour, her father got his way, she was never involved with her school mates, in fact she quickly found that she didn’t even really know how to be involved. She stuck to herself, nearly invisible. Like a ghost.

Sarah loved to watch. She had a favourite place on the bleachers where she’d watch sports. Any sports really, but she particularly enjoyed soccer, and the boy’s team had been the Fraser Valley champions for two years running. The school library was a revelation too. A new form of voyeurism for her. The H.F.S. had made monthly trips to the Vancouver Public Library and everyone was allowed to check out one book, but they didn’t have a library in the school itself. Sarah was delighted that she could take out as many books as she could carry, read them and return them for more as fast as she could absorb them. She would find a book on a subject that intrigued her – by Christmas of grade eleven she’d given herself primers on each of Renaissance art, soccer (of course), and the history of silent film. She would find a subject, read a book or books on it – usually splitting her attention between it and a game from the bleachers. In her computer-class she’d download a host of additional material to her laptop and mix it up with the book reading.

She knew that she could have been expanding her horizons like this at the H.F.S. but she hadn’t fully realized it back then. Being out in the world gave her a greater sense of freedom that she extended into a voracious hunger for knowledge.

From an outside view she may have seemed very alone, but she had found something that contented her. Not happy, precisely, but content.

Installment ii