DARA

I was shocked, not expecting something like this. “When did you know?” I managed to ask.

“Last year before school ended when I started having headaches. That’s why we went to Japan, to get a second opinion and hopefully find cure. It’s small but its location makes it very difficult to operate. Surgery could cure me or kill me. But either way if the tumor gets big it could compress on the part of my brain which controls breathing. So yeah, either way I could be dead” she said calmly.

I wanted to shout at her for not telling me, to scream at her for sounding so clinical about it. But I couldn’t, she was my bestfriend, my sister. And if this is the way she wanted to deal with it I wouldn’t stop her.

“How long have you got?” I asked, hoping she had time.

“When I was first diagnosed they told me that it would depend how fast the tumor will grow.” she said.

I did not know it but then tears were leaking from my eyes. Bom reached out for my face and wiped them.

“I did not know you could still cry” she said.

I did not know either. I was looking at her, afraid that her time was running out even as we talk. She seemed to have read my mind.

“Everyone dies, Dar. My timing just .” she said, and just as suddenly, she broke down.

I was again feeling the heat coming from my eyes, so I cried with her. I hugged her and patted her back running my hands on her long hair. After a while she was pacified.

I don’t know how to ease her pain but I wanted her to never cry again. I promised to myself that I will try all I could to make her days happy.

I was going home thinking about Bom, about me, about life and where we fit in the grander scheme of things. Bom was a good person, she never hurt anyone, why was life unfair?

I remember my father telling me that life always strikes a balance. I always thought that it was about good and bad. But now I think I understand it better.

I feel a tilt in the balance between Bom, Ji and I. As painful as it is, I know what I must do.

For life to be fair to someone, it has to be unfair to another.

I must share Ji with Bom, to make her happy even if it hurts me, even if by doing so I risk losing him.