I awoke with a jolt, hands shaking and sweat running down my back. Leah's voice echoed in my head, and the feeling of deja vu filled me with dread. It was as if I couldn't sleep in my own bed, my room filled with too many memories and too much hurt.

As the long weeks of summer went on, and the more my whirlwind romance with Grey took a shape and form I never expected it to - making out in his car during our lunch breaks, being able to actually go out in public without worrying about who saw us - the more I realized I would have to tell him the truth about that night with Leah eventually. Something sinister still lurked in the back of my head, the way monsters would lurk in closets when we were children. I was starting to believe they were never in the closet to begin with.

It was 3 AM, but I found myself behind the wheel of my car, driving across town in the few hours of darkness we had to Grey's house. I let myself in through the back door that I knew he always kept unlocked, tiptoeing through the kitchen and down the hall to Grey's room. I slipped off my shoes and my jacket, sliding underneath the covers and wrapping myself around his warm body. I knew he was awake, but I laid beside him quietly, letting his slow, steady breathing calm my nerves.

"Can't sleep?" he whispered.

I sniffed and shook my head. "No."

"Me either." He shifted his body to face me, and even in the darkness his bloodshot eyes and pale skin was more than apparent.

"You alright?" I asked, pushing a dark lock of hair away from his face.

"Well, I could use a beer," he muttered. "You?"

"I could use something stronger." I put my hand to my forehead, still sticky with sweat. "Vodka tonic. No ice."

Grey sighed heavily as he got out of bed, plucking a wrinkled shirt out of the pile of clothes on his floor.

After a few moments, I got up and followed him to the kitchen, squinting in the harsh, florescent lights. He slid a glass across the counter towards me, then opened his own can of beer. He looked down at it, flicking the metal tab back and forth.

"You know, I was thinking..." he said, his head still down. "You're over here almost every night anyway, and even when you're not, you end up here somehow. Maybe if you wanted to just...move in...it could help both of us."

He cleared his throat, then took a long swig of beer.

"You want me to move in with you?" I echoed.

"I mean, if you want to," he shrugged, tapping his fingers on the side of the beer can.

"Well, do you want me to?" I gave him a coy smirk.

"I asked you first," he retorted, mirroring my smirk. "So do you?"

I groaned and rolled my eyes. After a deep sigh, I said, "Yes, Grey. I want to move in with you."

"Okay then," he shrugged. "All you had do to was say it."

The following weekend, I packed what little belongings I had in my tattered navy duffle bag that I had hauled to and from college. My mother shuffled me out the door, kissed me on the cheek and gave me an off-hand remark that she'd see me tomorrow.

Grey had cleared the two top drawers in his dresser for me and bought new sheets, even though I'd secretly miss the cologne and cigarette smell I had grown so used to.

"You can put your shoes in the front hallway closet," Grey said. I collected my two pairs of sneakers and one pair of boots, making my way down the hall and dropping them in the front closet. On my way back down the hall, I  stopped in front of Leah's room, where the door was still shut.

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Grey was still in his bedroom before quietly pushing the door open.

I didn't know what I was hoping to find, but my heart sank at the sheer emptiness of the room. Leah's All Time Low posters were ripped off the walls, her purple sheets torn off the bed, leaving a dull mattress and even duller walls. Her white desk was gone, where we'd stuck a thousand stickers from cheer competitions and Tiger Beat magazine on the mirror.

The plastic glow in the dark stars that we put on her ceiling in middle school were all that was left of her. Even with the lights off, they no longer glowed.

"What did you expect to find?" Grey appeared behind me, causing my heart to jump.

"I don't know," I replied. "But I didn't expect it to be so...empty."

Grey sighed and shook his head. "Come on, let's finish unpacking you."

I followed him out, taking one last look behind me before shutting the door.

I was going to make my first order of business after moving in with Grey to fix up the dismal bathroom. The baby blue wallpaper peeled and cracked in the corners of the walls, and the lighting from the fixture above the sink was so foggy and yellow, it gave me a headache.

I dumped my toiletries bag into the off-white basin of the sink, putting a new toothbrush next to his and my pink comb behind the faucet.

I opened the medicine cabinet above the sink and had to do a double take at all of the little orange pill bottles that filled the shelves. There was barely enough room for me to put a bottle of Midol and Melatonin. I started shuffling through the bottles, filled to the brim with all kinds of pills, from tiny white ones to round purple capsules, all with Fischer, Greyson on the labels. I didn't recognize any of the medicine.

"Hey Grey," I called into the hallway. "What should I do with all the medicine in the cabinet here?"

Grey poked his head out of his bedroom door, his eyes wide when he saw me standing in the bathroom with my hands in the cabinet.

"Oh uh..." he hurried into the bathroom and pushed me aside, grabbing a handful of bottles and clutching them to his chest. "Don't worry about it, I'll move them."

His voice shook when he spoke, and it put me on edge.

"What are all those for, anyway?" I asked. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said. "Totally fine. Just uh...precautions. Sleep medicine, headache medicine, that kind of stuff."

He turned and walked out of the bathroom, but I was on his heels in an instant.

"Grey..." I called after him in a warning tone. When I got to his bedroom, he was already sitting down on the edge of his bed, his eyes dark and empty and his hands shaking.

"I know you're lying," I said firmly. "Tell me what's going on."

Grey continued to look down at the floor. "I didn't want you to find out like this."

"Find out what?" I asked, my voice starting to climb in octaves. "Just spit it out Grey. Normally having that many drugs is a felony, but all of those had your name on it. What's going on?"

He groaned and rubbed his face with his hands, his cheeks blotchy and red. After what seemed like hours of silence so thick I could reach out and grab it with my bare hands, he spoke.

"I had been feeling off. It started at the beginning of the summer." He swallowed hard, his voice still shaking. "Eventually I went to the doctor, who sent me to a neurologist in Anchorage. The next thing I knew, they were doing all kinds of tests and scans and...there it was."

"What?" my voice was barely a whisper.

"Brain tumor. Malignant."

I started to feel sick, and I was afraid if I opened my mouth I would vomit. My stomach churning and ached.

"But..." I tried to find words to say in the haze that was coming over me. "But you can get surgery, right? They can cut it out and you'll be okay, right?"

"It's not that simple," Grey said in a low voice. "The surgery is dangerous. I have about a 50% chance of surviving it. Without it, the tumor will spread and start fucking up all the intricacies of my brain. My memory, my motor skills, and all the grey matter in my brain will basically be useless."

"Are you going to do the surgery?" I asked.

"I uh..." Grey buried his face in his hands and shook his head. He let out another deep sigh. "I don't think so."

I swore I heard my heart literally shatter in my chest, sending shards of glass all over my chest and stabbing me. I was in real, physical pain.

"Why wouldn't you tell me?" I couldn't tell if I was angry, or sad, or some kind of horrific combination of both.

Grey stood up from the bed and tried to reach his hand out to me. "Kenny, listen-"

"Don't Kenny me!" I snapped, swatting his hand away. "Is this some kind of sick fucking joke to you?"

Grey shook his head, tears starting to glaze over his eyes. "No, it's not. Kennedy, please just let me explain-"

"No!" I was hysterical. "There's nothing to explain. In case you've forgotten, your sister is dead Grey. She's dead, and she's not coming back. How could you just throw your life away when you actually have a chance to live! Even if it's small, it's still more of a chance than she had!"

I felt hot, fat tears roll down my cheeks. My chest ached and burned, like someone was setting fire to my insides. I tried to back away into the hallway, bumping into the doorframe of Grey's bedroom.

"I might have broken your heart once, but it was never intentional." I struggled to get the words out, a hard lump sitting in my throat from holding my fury of emotions back. "But this? This hurts so much, I think falling off a cliff and breaking every bone in my body would be less painful. I'm done. I can't be part of this."

"Kennedy, wait!"

Grey called after me, but I ignored him, dashing out the door and into the warm summer air. I ran down the driveway, out into the cracked concrete of the sideway, and I ran until I couldn't feel my feet and my lungs begged for air. I ran to the tiny spit of beach at the edge of town, collapsing into the rocky sand, and I screamed.