The Last Leaves Falling Read Online Free PDF Page B

I really want.
    I wish to have a life .
    I wish to go to university, to work, to a Tigers game against the Yankees in twenty or thirty years’ time.
    I wish to meet my grandchildren , and feed them ice cream until they’re sick.
    I wish to be young and free and not in this wheelchair.
    •  •  •  •
    I hate everything about this sheet. The leading phrases, cheerful logo, even their name . Wish4Life? Really? It is as if they’re saying, “You are going to die. The best you can do is wish for life.”
    It’s insensitive and horrible and It’s. Not. Fair. I want to mash the sheet into a ball and drop it in the trash. Or burn it. Tear it up into a hundred thousand pieces and let them fly out from my window like rancid hateful snow or the saddest cherry blossoms. But . . .
    But Doctor Kobayashi has been kind. She means well. And she thinks that this will help. I can’t throw that away. So instead, I fold the paper back in half and slide it between the covers of a textbook I will never read again. Hidden. Gone.
    I have not mentioned Wish4Life to Mama yet. I can’t. I know that we could use it; go on vacation to the mountains or New York, or get a hoist put in above my bed without my mother having to work the extra hours to pay for one. But it feels like a cheat wishing for these things. Things I do not really want.
    Besides, the last time Mama and I wished for anything was when I first got sick. We went to the temple and we wished with all our hearts that it was just the flu, just growing pains, just my imagination.
    I do not want to stir those memories. I won’t.

11
    After a while, looking at the wish sheet makes my head ache, so I turn on the computer in search of something light and cheerful.
    I scroll down the list of open chatrooms, past StReSsBuStInG, Parents!No and ComicFreakz. Halfway down, I see that ILoveArnieSchwarzenegger is open, and I click.
TerminateExterminate: but WHY move to politics? I mean, his talents, his real talents are on the screen.
Arnie4Eva: *shrug*
TerminateExterminate: What, you don’t think so?
Arnie4Eva: Yeah, but maybe he just got bored.
TerminateExterminate: Bored? Of a metal endoskeleton? How?!
MisterSenator: I’LL BE BACK
Arnie4Eva: I dunno, like, I like history, but sometimes I want to do science instead, y’know? If I had to do one thing all the time I’d go mad.
TerminateExterminate: I suppose .
MisterSenator: I’LL BE BACK
Arnie4Eva: And he must’ve been good at politics, too. He was re-elected.
MisterSenator: I’LL BE BACK
TerminateExterminate: By people that elected George Bush .
MisterSenator: I’LL BE BACK
MisterSenator: I’LL BE BACK
MisterSenator: I’LL BE BACK
Arnie4Eva: *shrug*
TerminateExterminate: Shut UP, Senator.
MisterSenator: hehe
TerminateExterminate: Not funny dude. Not remotely funny.
TerminateExterminate: Anyway, Arnie4Eva, he was better at acting, obviously. The Terminator will be preserved forever.
Arnie4Eva: nothing lasts for ever
MisterSenator: Hahahahahahahaaaaa
Arnie4Eva: what?
MisterSenator: That’s pretty funny, coming from a girl who’s tag is Arnie FOREVER!!!!!
TerminateExterminate: Hah, yes. And anyway, it will . It’s preserved in the US National Film Registry. It’s THAT GOOD.
MisterSenator: Yeah, so good that it has the BEST CATCHPHRASE EVER . . . I’LL BE BACK.
Arnie4Eva: Don’t start that again.
    I log out and scan down the list again. Seeing SkoolWorries: For All Your Academic Concerns, I can’t help thinking of the crowd of children in the park, and the classmates I have left behind. I wonder if any of them are logged in tonight.
    I click on “room stats.” 147 participants. Maybe I can spot someone I know, guess who they are from their username or the things they talk about, and if not, there are enough people in there that I can lose myself amongst the crowd.
    For a moment, I cannot follow anything, there are so many conversations going on at once, but then I start to pick out different strands of it. There’s