If you have clicked on this story, it either means you are way too curious, or you are one of us. Then again, I have too much curiosity too. Know that once you scroll down, there is no going back. You can't just walk away and forget about it, because the memories and dreams will haunt you. So be ready for the journey ahead. Because it is going to be a tough one. Anyone that isn't ready, go ahead and click out of this page.The rest of you, take a deep breath and scroll down.
The next day, I woke up feeling like a feather. I was light and ready to go. I put in earbuds because, for some reason, music healed my exhaustion. I went from room to room, asking people if they wanted me to paint their walls. I did one for an old man, who asked me to paint a picture of his son on the wall in front of him. I told him that I couldn't paint the whole wall of his son because this was meant to last for a long time and other people would get to paint something on it as well. But I did have an idea. I split the wall up into squares using dark blue paint and painted a portrait of his son in one of them. Then, I wrote “Larry Comenter's son, Ben” under the picture. The idea was that anyone who stayed in the room could have a picture of a loved one painted in a square. Then there would be a wall full of people that love the person that stayed in this room. I was trying to make memorable things.
I did others too, but there was one more that touched my heart. I went into a room with a little girl, about five, who had cancer. She wanted dogs and unicorns on the wall. While I was going to get more paint, I heard the girl's doctor telling the parents that the girl was going to die. Not on my watch. I thought and went back into the room. When I painted, I did everything that the little girl told me to do. I wrote her name, Andy, on the wall. I made a Dogicorn, which is a half-dog, half-unicorn. I put candy and all sorts of animals on the wall. When she asked me to paint her bed, I painted the plastic part of it pink. Andy had begun to trust me, and she whispered something in my ear. “Am I going to die?” She asked, and I shook my head. “No,” I whispered, trying more to convince myself than her. Andy looked away, and I saw a scar on her shoulder. “What happened there?” I asked, my hands barely touching the scar. Suddenly, overwhelming pain went through my body, and I gasped. “Are you okay?” she asked, but I didn't respond. I fell to the floor, my body shaking violently. Blackness was clouding around my eyes, but I could see Andy still there, shaking me and trying to wake me up from the darkness I had entered. I felt a warm feeling pushing me. It pushed me towards a place I somehow knew would never come out of. My body, enveloped in pain, wanted to go there. But I could still see Andy yelling in my ear and smacking my face to try and help me. I wasn't going to die. Not when I knew that this little girl had to go through so much more than it seemed; her parents were divorced, her brother ran away after they disowned him, her parents never came to visit her, everyone at school thought she was a freak, and she had no friends. I let the feeling of surviving, the feeling that Andy had held on to for so long, fuel me. I forced her body to stop moving forward, and I let my mind guide me back to the world. When the pain had started to ease, I slowly but steadily got back on my feet.“Woh, I feel a lot better,” Andy said, looking at the shoulder. The scar was gone. Completely healed. “How did you do that?” “I don't know,” I asked, as the pain slowly left me. I could tell something was different. Andy looked better. And I still felt the same as usual, so I could tell that I hadn't magically transferred her cancer to me. I wasn't sure how I knew, but I did. My brain was trying to process everything that had just happened, but it mainly focused on one question: How did I know about Andy's hard past? I finished the painting job, went back to my room, and collapsed on my bed. I ate some more Cheeto's, probably too many, but I wasn't exactly focusing on the fact that Cheeto's aren't good for you. I was focusing on the fact that the second I touched Andy's wound, it had healed itself in a matter of seconds. There was no explanation for it. Somehow I knew that if I told anyone, I would be in trouble. Like, let's take you to a lab and study you more than you already are being studied and dissect your body to find anything unusual, trouble. So I waited and kept it a secret. The next day, when I asked Dr. Emton how Andy was doing, he just shook his head. He said, “I'm so confused. One day she's on the edge of death, and the next day she is completely healed. I'm not sure if there is an explanation.” there sure isn't, I silently thought.
