The Last Leaves Falling

by Sarah Benwell

  She turns the page again. Mama and Bah-Ba and Ojiisan standing behind me in my first school uniform. I remember that day. It was three whole weeks before the start of the term, but I had begged Mama to let me wear it, and show it to my grandparents. It was hot, and I should have been out chasing butterflies, but Ojiisan and I stayed inside all day, taking turns to play the teacher and the schoolchild.

  She turns the page again and again and again, and our whole life is there, baseball games and lazy summer days, mountain hikes and festival parades, Drama Club and Debate Club, and several of me curled into a chair or under tables with a book.

  I laugh at the picture of my mother climbing up into a cherry tree, brandishing a wooden sword. My legs dangle from the top left corner, and I imagine yelling down at her, “Can’t catch me, renegade! I am Lord Sora, the greatest and most noble samurai that ever lived!”

  “We’ve had some good times, haven’t we?” I say.

  “Yes.” She sighs. And her fingers pause, stop turning. “Yes. We have. So don’t you ever say you’re sorry; I’m not.”

  I’m not, either. Not for this. But every day I’m further from the boy I was, and I want him to be the one that she remembers.

  82

  I lie awake for hours, waiting for the dawn as that thought grows inside my head.

  It’s selfish, leaving everyone behind to deal with the mess I’ve made. But I don’t have a choice, I’m going to do that anyway.

  Is it different, if I choose to go?

  I watch the color sweep across the sky as though the sun were a small child with a damp cloth, and the sky a magic-watercolor-fun canvas. One touch and the picture is revealed.

  Yes, it’s different.

  But I don’t know which is worse.

  Is it worse to snatch myself away, or to drag everything out, make everybody wait for the inevitable?

  I try to imagine my mother walking in to find me gone, reading the words I’d left behind, and I cannot. But neither can I see her stooping over me when I am nothing but two moving eyes inside a hardened shell.

  I’m damning her whatever choice I make.

  But I don’t want to stay, not like that. I don’t want to lie day after day, unable to run, to go outside and see the stars or climb a tree. I don’t want to watch her hovering and not be able to reach up and give her a hug, or speak the words “I love you.”

  And yes, she’ll cry, she’ll mourn.

  But she’s going to do that anyway.

  • • • •

  Over the next few days, I watch the lines around my mother’s eyes, and listen to her gentle sighs, the slow, tired shuffling of her feet. She smiles, but it is strained, and I know she’s only doing it for me.

  I start to formulate a plan, and though it’s risky, and not without pain, I am sure it’s right.

  83

  I type “help me die” into the search bar.

  And that one word, “me,” brings it home.

  This time, I am not looking for theories. I want this.

  And if I’m going to do it, I’ll need help.

  For one brief moment I consider asking Doctor Kobayashi for my last wish: a trip to the Netherlands, with Mama. One last holiday, and never coming back. But I’d like Mama to travel when I’m gone, and . . . I do not think she would. Not after that.

  Besides, I doubt I could get Wish4Life to sign off on my death.

  I read, and I read, and I read. Of law, and court cases and human-rights groups campaigning against the very thing I want to do.

  I’ve memorized the rules: unbearable physical pain, death inevitable and drawing near, patient consent, the physician must have exhausted all avenues of pain relief.

  And I know how rarely they apply.

  It is not easy, and there are no answers. No samurai code that lays it out before me, tells me what, and where, and how, and gives society a safety net.

  I’m glad it is not easy, in a way, because they’re right, those groups. In the hands of the wrong person . . .

  Nobody should ever be coerced.

  I find a set of videos recorded by a man not much older than me with ALS, and I watch him waste away over two years, in ninety fast-forwarded minutes of footage.

  And a woman sobbing to a news crew about her sick daughter, robbed of breath and opportunity by one well-meaning doctor who should not have drawn that needle, found that vein. He had no right to make that choice.

  Twice, I have to push away from the computer and wait for my tears to dry. No. It is not easy, and when I think of what I’ll have to ask my friends to do, my stomach heaves.

  I just hope they understand.

  84

  In today’s Professor Crane and Friends, the trio visits Ye Olde Librarium, and the three walk into vast halls filled with leather-bound tales, old medical journals, and great tomes of history. The room is tall—thirty feet or more, and shelves run to the ceiling, with rickety ladders reaching to the top.

  I want to stare at it forever, to soak in the sight of it, reach in and feel the pages, but Mai does not leave time to linger. The friends quickly discover a secret corridor, locked behind a swinging bookcase, and they’re off, down a deep, dark tunnel filled with cobwebs.

  Down a set of winding stairs the corridor narrows.

  And there’s another door. Not locked, but stiff.

  It creaks.

  And there are boxes, long and thin, and even though Professor Crane tries to whisper warning, his friends are curious, and pry them open one by one.

  Is it treasure? Extra-special books, older than Kojiki?

  Something moans. Sits up, pushing the lid away.

  AAAAAAGH!

  The three friends tear back toward the library, but the ancient Library Tombs have been disturbed, and the creatures they’ve awakened follow.

  AAAAAAGH!

  Along and up and along again they run, but the creatures behind them are quick, gaining on them.

  They try to run faster, and there’s the doorway, up ahead. They’re almost there, but icy fingers lay upon their necks. Can they make it?

  “PROFESSOR!”

  *Snork* “Whut?!”

  And the professor lifts his head, and he’s in the library at a desk piled high with books, and there are no ghostly creatures anywhere.

  Raccoon Dog looks at him, one eyebrow raised. “You were snoring.”

  Professor Crane stretches his neck and unruffles his feathers before opening another book from his collection. “Nonsense. Cranes don’t snore. We do not have the throats for it.”

  • • • •

  “Do you like it, do you like it?” Mai squeals, bouncing so hard that her webcam shakes.

  I nod. And I do, but I’ve been working on my plan, and it’s ready, I think. I think it could work, and now that I know, it is weighing down upon me, so I almost cannot think, or breathe, or anything.

  “Yay! So what’s next? I can’t decide. The moon? Or should we just go to the fair?”

  I have to tell them.

  My stomach drops. But I have to tell them.

  “Um . . . there’s something I did not put on the list,” I say, so quietly that I do not know how they hear me, but they do, as though I’d yelled it through a megaphone.

  “What is it?”

  “Sora . . . are you all right?” asks Mai. “You’ve gone . . . sort of gray.”

  “There’s something I did not put on my list,” I say again, and my hands are shaking.

  “Sora?”

  “Well?”

  And I say it. The four hardest words I’ve ever pushed across my lips.

  “I want to die.”

  And I can’t believe they’re there, out in the open. So completely true and untrue all at once. And for a moment I just stare at nothing, and I do not even see my friends’ reactions until Kaito explodes: “WHAT?”

  I can’t speak. It is as though those four words have used up all of my power and there is nothing left.

  “Sora! Sora? What do you
mean you”—and he whispers the next bit as though the words are poison—“want to die?”

  I open my mouth to explain, but I cannot form the words.

  And then there’s Mai, quiet, and oh so still. “You . . . aren’t talking about the comic, are you?”

  “No.”

  There are tears in her eyes, and Kaito’s glaring, red-faced, muttering “no” under his breath over and over again. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”

  I wish that I knew how to tell them why.

  “Come over tomorrow? I’ll explain.”

  I just need to work out how.

  85

  Life clings,

  like dew upon a morning sword.

  Neither one outlasts the warmth of time.

  86

  As soon as my bedroom door is closed, Kaito pounces.

  “Does your mother know?”

  “Hush! Please.”

  “Well?” he demands, dropping his voice.

  “No. I couldn’t . . . I can’t . . .”

  He walks up to the window and back, pacing.

  “Exactly, Sora. You can’t. You can’t do this.”

  “I . . .”

  “You what? You’re sad? We’re not enough for you? You’re tired?”

  “No! But . . . yes. It’s difficult.”

  “What’s difficult? You’re giving up!”

  There is a bitterness in my friend’s voice I would not have thought possible, and I feel lost. Trapped. I look to Mai for help but she is still by the door, and she is looking at me with the same expression that she wore on that first day, and even though they’re here, I feel as though I have been cast onto an island all alone.

  “I don’t have a choice,” I say, willing them to understand.

  “There’s always a choice,” he snaps.

  And I feel the anger rising in my chest, my throat, spilling out across my tongue in a salty, bitter wave, because there isn’t. If I could choose to live, I would. If I could choose to stay, to make my mark upon the world, I would. But I am going to die, and the only thing I get to choose is when, and even that depends on them, because I cannot do it by myself.

  “No,” I spit. “There isn’t.”

  “Yes there is. What about all this, here, Sora?” he asks, gesturing wildly. “Why would you choose to—”

  I shrug. I want to explain, to tell them everything about my fears, about Yamada-san, and the video diary guy, and what I think about when I lie awake at night. But he can’t even say the words, and I do not think he’d hear me.

  “What? You can’t answer me?” His words get faster, more forceful. “You expect us to let you go ahead with whatever this is and you cannot even answer? Why, Sora? Tell me that! Please, tell me that.” His eyes blaze, defiant; a challenge.

  And I can’t.

  “Well, fine, if you’re just giving up, I guess you won’t be needing these!” He lurches across the room, and swipes the books from my shelves in one movement. “Or this!” And he’s up on my bed, standing, ripping the poster from my wall and grabbing it with two fists of rage. Tearing. “And you won’t be needing us!” He leaps down and grabs Mai by the wrist, the left half of my poster hanging from his other hand.

  I wait for the door slam. For them to disappear, taking our memories and friendship and my one chance with them.

  But Kaito stops, and turns.

  I steel myself for another attack; tense up, as though my body could run if it chose to do so.

  It does not come.

  And he deflates, his anger gone. And as he crumples to the floor beside my bed he looks like a sad, spent balloon.

  I want to laugh, to break the silence, but my throat is dry and it’s all I can do to stare.

  Mai lowers herself beside him, and their fingers interlace. She takes a deep breath, leans against him just a little, and raises her eyes to mine. “I think I get it.”

  Relief pours through my veins, fast and warm. But Kaito pulls away from her and says, “I don’t. I’m sorry, Sora. I just don’t.”

  I wish that I could make him see. Let him hear the careful sorrow lacing every conversation, let him wake up in the middle of the night with his insides screaming, let him feel every indignity and every fear.

  “I’m doing this.” I make myself look at them as I say it, try to make myself sound stronger than I feel. “But . . .”

  “But what?” Mai whispers. And I’m glad it’s she who asks, because I think she almost understands.

  “There’s something else. . . .” I can tell by their faces that they don’t believe I am still talking, don’t believe I could throw more at them. And I wish I didn’t have to but I do not have a choice. “I’m going to need your help.”

  87

  “Taste?” My mother holds a steaming spoon toward me, and I suck up the red sauce.

  “Wow! That’s—”

  “Too spicy?”

  My eyes prick with tears, but then my throat warms with a chili afterglow that slides into my chest, heats me through all over, and then I taste the tomato-lemon-peppercorns and my tongue dances. “No. I like it.”

  She smiles, and turns to stir the pot.

  “I hope you’re hungry.”

  As she turns away, I see what it will be like when I am gone: an empty table in my mind’s eye, and my mother standing here alone with a pot too big for single portions.

  Will she turn, expecting me to be here? Ask the empty room to taste her food?

  I picture her sitting here in the silence, listening to one less set of chopsticks against china, and I hate it. I want to scream at her to get out. Run. Sit in cafés and restaurants and sweaty, thumping nightclubs. Anything to not be here alone. I want her to promise me, right now.

  But she’s humming to herself, almost happy, and I can’t take that away.

  88

  Mai and Kaito would not stay to hear the details of my plan. I understand, I do, it is a lot to take in, and even more to ask of them, but we have not spoken since, and I wish they’d come online.

  What if they tell their parents? Mine? What will happen then?

  Will I be locked away inside some psychiatric ward? Strapped to a bed until my body holds me prisoner all by itself?

  Or maybe they won’t tell, but they’ll hide from me until it is too late. Until I could not swallow anything they tried to give me anyway.

  Would they still come to visit?

  I log in to an open chat room, try to fill my head with familiar voices, lose myself in other people’s chatter; other people’s chatter, but above them all my inner voice is screaming out in fear.

  Meekkat: I give you: PIE.

  BambooPanda: Did you MAKE that?

  Chocol8pocky: WOW

  Meekkat: Yup. In HomeSkills. It is chocolate cherry.

  LikesEmWithSparkle: That’s AMAZING Meekkat. Good work!

  Chocol8pocky: GIMMEE

  BambooPanda: CHOCOLATE cherry? How do you do that?

  Meekkat: Sorry, pocky, I already gave it to my sister.

  Meekkat: I put in squares of chocolate with the cherries, silly.

  BaSeBaLlWiNs: O_o if you could make like, a dozen of those, you’d have a whole team fighting over you.

  Chocol8pocky : Awww :(

  Meekkat: Hahaha, but Baseball, pie makes u fat. It is not good for athletes.

  BaSeBaLlWiNs: PIE IS VERY GOOD FOR HUNGRY ATHLETES! Pie and pizzas and ice creams. Don’t you know that’s why we play?

  BaSeBaLlWiNs: Especially THAT pie.

  Meekkat: Awww, thanks ^_^ Maybe I will make some more and then invite you over sometime.

  It does look exceptionally good, golden pastry and shiny purple cherries. I wish that I could make one. Three: for Mama, Mai, and Kaito. And I’d write messages on top in extra pastry. “I love you.” “I’m Sorry.” “Everything will be all right.”

  And, at least until they’d finished eating, they’d believe it, and everything would be all right. Because the pastry does
not lie.

  • • • •

  “Why?” Kaito’s determined face fills my screen.

  “Because—” But too many answers crowd my brain, half-finished and unutterable.

  “See! You don’t know. You can’t just do this!”

  “I’m not—”

  “No, Sora, you are. And I just don’t understand how you of all people could throw your time away.”

  Me of all people? What’s that supposed to mean?

  “Sorry?”

  “You already have limited time. It sucks. It’s stupid. But why would you throw that away? Why aren’t you grabbing every single second that you have and clinging on?”

  “I . . . Because . . .”

  “Because what? Tell me, please, because I’m trying to understand how you could do it. Even before you add asking your friends to commit murder. Fuck, dude! That’s what this is. You’re asking me to pull the trigger.”

  “It’s not like that!”

  “It is! In the eyes of the law, and the blood on my hands, it is!”

  He’s so indignant, so sure, that I want to punch him, to scream at him that at least his stupid games would be useful for something then. Target practice for the real thing.

  But I don’t. I take a deep breath and I look him in the eye and say, “It’s not that simple, there isn’t actually a legal—”

  “Ugh! Not the point, even without all that, even just the you-leaving-everything-behind part, I’m trying to understand Sora, but I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

  I think of Yamada-san, lying in that hospital bed, gasping, desperate, trapped and reliant. Which is worse: arguably-murder, or that? And I have an idea.

  “Let me show you?”

  89

  After the usual questions—How are you? How is the pain?—we fall quiet, and I know she’s waiting for me to start the conversation. But I don’t know how.

  The bonsai’s trunk looks pale and weak, as though the centrally heated air has sapped the life from it, and I wish that I could open a window and help it to revive.