47. Sienna
forty-seven
Sienna
“And we’ll take it from the top once again. Hit! One, two, three, four, five, AND six…seven, eight.” Daisy claps back to back as I hit each move to her count.
After my freakout and five minutes of panic in the pharmacy bathroom, I went to practice. We finished our choreo for the Winter Showcase and our exams weeks ago, so now we’re just perfecting everything.
My body is tired, I’m hungry, and I’m jealous that all of my friends get to watch the guys play Brighton tonight while I’m stuck here going over choreography for a grade.
When Daisy starts her individual run through, I count for her, marking each step.
Tension between the two of us completely dissipated after we’d found Jace being tormented by that girl in the quad a few weeks back. Now, we talk like we did when first met, calmly and like friends.
It’s kinda odd since Daisy is nothing like my other friends, but I enjoy her presence. It's warm and nurturing in a way.
When she finishes her last turn, a triple pirouette, I applaud her. We’ve been going at this for hours .
“My kids would kill to know how to do a triple.” I chuckle, my mind thinking back to the Minis group that I used to teach before my life was upended by a sneaky blond man.
Daisy gives me a confused look, her head tilting.
“No! I mean my kiddie dancers! I used to teach dance to toddlers. See, this is them!” I grin, jogging over to my phone, grabbing it and heading back over.
Daisy grins as she looks down at my phone with me, my lockscreen is an image of the girls and I after the recital in August. It’d been my first ever recital where I was the choreographer and not solely a dancer.
I’ve never felt so proud of those girls in my life. They came and performed their little hearts out.
“Aww! This little girl is so adorable!” Daisy coos, her pink stiletto shaped nail pointed at Delilah just as a text from Derek rolls in.
Derek
About to hit the ice, the guys are pumped and after this you NEED to tell me who’s been giving you those shitty Spanish lessons.
Derek
I mean seriously, “que te folle un pez?” that’s child’s play
Rolling my eyes, I swipe his messages away.
Since becoming “friends” with Derek, the big bastard has texted me daily. He reminded me to eat healthy yesterday, and the day before he decided that I was going to be the person in charge of teaching him how to do Deli’s mane of curls instead of YouTube University.
“Ignore him, he’s been going on a serial texting spree lately,” I say, laughing at my own joke as I turn to Daisy.
A muscle in her jaw tics a bit before she smiles brightly at me.
“I’m a little dehydrated…Want a drink?” she asks, stalking over to her bag just as my mouth dries.
Damn it, we have been working for hours. When was the last time I ate or drank water ?
“Sure, I’ll take anything you got!” I reply, turning on the music we’d been using for practice just as Daisy approaches with two bottles of pink liquid in hand.
Thanking her, I take the bottle she’d had for me, and gulp down its entire contents with a sigh.
I needed that.
Daisy watches me carefully, her eyes dancing with joy as I smile at her. She’s been awfully cheerful this past week, hopefully it’s a guy. I’ve been dying to go on a double date with someone lately.
“All good?” I ask looking back at her as I stretch my limbs once again, eyeing myself in the mirror.
In my reflection, I watch as Daisy nods, her lips pursing as she repeats my words, “All good.”
Gulping, I’m about to go back into our routine, but freeze when I can't swallow my spit. I try again, struggling to swallow as an itching sensation travels through my body and I tense up. My tongue feels like it has fur on it, itching and scratching the roof of my mouth as my neck begins to burn.
“What’s wrong?” Daisy’s voice vibrates throughout the room, the sound everywhere and nowhere all at once.
“I-I don’t know…I can’t…” I swallow, but my tongue thickens and my face itches yet again.
“Call Jace…His numb…My phone,” I wheeze, my lungs closing in on themselves as a fiery sensation travels all through my body.
What is happening to me?
Why can’t I—
“Sienna? Are you—”
I don’t hear her next words, or anything after that.
I don’t see when Daisy calls for an ambulance, or when she walks away. I don’t hear her packing up her stuff and leaving me on the floor as my body asphyxiates itself .
I don’t hear the paramedics shouting at one another to get a dose of epinephrine ready for me. I don’t hear their curses when they can’t find my veins or even their sighs of relief when they finally stick.
I don't hear any of it.
I don’t see any of it.
Instead, all I see and hear is him .
Jace’s laugh when I fake an attitude after losing a round of Mario Kart that he’d clearly cheated at.
His lazy smile in the morning when he wakes up and I’m already awake, staring and analyzing him.
Because when Jace Heart is asleep, I’m at peace.
I see Jace running after me as kids, chasing me through my uncle's backyard in the summer. I can hear the way he says my name when he’s pissed off at something that involves me, but never at me.
Jace is never mad at me. I can see him at his first hockey game, the one I begged my uncle to record since I wanted to be there for him but couldn’t physically.
I hear Jace’s snarky retorts and sexual innuendos.
I can picture our life together, him and I somewhere down south because we both hate city life.
He’d be there for everything, for me , and I’d always be there for him.
Scientists believe that in the last minutes of life, your brain plays seven minutes of your happiest moments. You see the people and memories that meant the most to you, the ones that count.
You recount everything, the moments both big and small. Your brain sets the moments in a way that brings you peace even when death looms to claim your soul.
In my last seven minutes of life, all I could see was him.