Zita and Zora

Be forewarned, when I was writing this I listened to really sad music. To be fair, I did not intend for it to be sad at the beginning. I just turned on instrumental music and could only find really depressing music. So I did what anyone would've done. I made a story about two identical twins, one of whom gets cancer! Heh, yeah I'm weird... so any way! Read, enjoy, and review!

My plan for Monday was to go to Zita and Zora’s birthday party, but of course, things didn’t go as planned.

That happened often with me. Too often, for my liking. I would make a plan for a certain day, then my brother would break his arm or my work would call saying that someone got sick. Next thing I know it’s the next day and I got nothing done. So it was only natural that it should happen to me on my first big event of the year.

When Zita, Zora, and I were in elementary school, we lived next door to one another. Naturally, we became fast friends. They would call me Zelma, saying it was a diminutive of my name --whatever that meant. I would constantly mix their names up. No, the one who I thought was Zita would say, that’s Zora. Sometimes I wondered if they were actually tricking me, but it was impossible to tell. I would memorize what they were wearing, but when the next day rolled around I had to remember that Zita was wearing the pink skirt.

It took almost three years until I finally got it right.

On the summer of sixth grade year, Zita came over her hand hanging low. Her blond curly hair was looking alarmingly flat.

Zora is sick, she had sobbed, They are going to take her to hospital in New York.

I had never felt more sick to my stomach then when I heard that news. It seemed as though my whole world had turned upside down.

Within a week, my best friends had moved to New York. I was left alone.

Later, I got more new. Zora had a tumor on her arm. They were doing Chemotherapy to reduce its size.

I was scared for my best friend. Every night, I would pray. God, don’t take her away from us. Don’t take her away from Zita.

Considering what I went through in the five years that it took for Zora to recover, I could only imagine how Zita must have felt.

She and I had talked every so often. But after the first year, it was less and less. Everytime, she called her voice was more and more distant. I spoke to Zora, upon occasion but it was especially difficult to ignore the elephant in the room.

Now in the summer of my eleventh grade year, my two best friends were moving back.

I would see them for the first time in five years that night at eight.

I couldn’t help, but feel nervous.

My feet were moving so quickly against the padded floor that they looked like a fan when you turn it on high.

There was a knock on my door.

“Anselma? You dressed?”

“Yeah.” I replied, continuing my pacing.

“Good,” my brother opened the door.

He scratched his head, nervously.

“So here’s the thing…” he started

I stopped pacing, “I swear if you tell me we can’t go because you need the car for one of your stupid gigs I will rip off your arms and feed them to cat.”

“Woah, someone’s on edge.” my brother said, not the least bit scared by my threat.

“No, the thing is…” he stared into the wall, “I kind of lost your invitation…”

I shrugged, “I already memorized everything I need to know.”

Sometimes, it pays to have a photographic memory.

“No, but it’s at one of those places you have to show your invitation to get in.”

My eyes widened, understanding what he was saying, “Shoot. We really got to find that invitation.”

“That’s what I was saying!” my brother blurted out.

I ignored him.

“Let’s find that thing…”

He started out the door, “And Keon?”

He turned back toward me, “You will be yelled at later.”

My brother grinned, “Didn’t expect anything different.”

It took us almost two hours to locate the missing invitation. It was hidden in a closet along with random enveloped and shredded paper.

How it got there I had no idea. All I knew was that I was almost a half an hour late.

It didn’t take a guilt trip for my brother to drive me. He was already feeling terrible I could tell.

Keon knew how important this party was to me.

When I arrived, it turned out I didn’t even need my invitation. The man just let me in.

The first person I saw was Zora. She was sitting next to her mom. She looked pale, tired, and very different. She had grown several inches. Zora looked much thinner than she had before. Cheek bones were heavily defined, but her eyes were bright. A smile graced her pale face. She laughed at something a friend had said and it was like a wave throughout the wave throughout the room. Everyone relaxed, as if all their fears about what could happen to her had vanished.

A huge weight seemed to have been lifted of my shoulders. She was alive. She was well.

“Thank you, God.” I whispered.

I searched the room for Zita, and was shocked at what I found.

She sat in a corner booth all on her own. Her eyes heavily strung with darkened bags and she looked just as thin as her sister. It seemed like the cancer had took more of a tole on Zita than Zora, even though Zora had been the one with a tumor.

I barely felt the floor against my feet as I walked toward her.

“Zita,” I greeted her.

Zita looked up with tired smile, “Hi, Zelma.”

I wanted to sob, “You are the first to call me that in a long time.”

She looked so bedraggled, so unlike the Zita I knew.

I couldn’t stand it any longer, I knelt down next to her and hugged my best friend.

“How have you been?” I asked barely able to control my own tears.

“Don’t you mean how has Zora been?” she asked, breaking away from our embrace.

I sat down across from her in the booth, “No, Zora is fine. I want to know how you have been.”

Then Zita talked. She told me everything. Every thought that went through her mind during the time we had been apart. Every trip to the hospital, every surgery. While I listened to her, Zita spilled every detail. She cried sometimes. But it was a cry of relief.

It was over.
My best friends will be okay.