My oldest sister is in Harvard. My next sister is in Princeton. And I have leukemia.

I am just as smart as both of my sisters. I got into Yale before the diagnosis. The doctors said that I would not be able to live on campus or even attend class regularly, because I would have to come back to the hospital for chemotherapy treatments. I would lose all my hair. My long, glorious, perfect straight red hair, so different from my sisters black curls and my mother’s brunette waves. I got my hair from my father, but he’s not around anymore.

I lost ten pounds in two weeks. In any other circumstance, I would be cheering. But not now, when I know that the worst thing I can do is lose too much weight. I thought back regretfully at all the diets I went on when I was fourteen. They may have worked at the time at giving me the results I wanted, but I would do anything now for my weight back.

There was a fifteen percent chance I would live, but it might as well have been zero. I lost all hope for anything good that may happen to me. I get paler and thinner with each passing day, and I can’t keep my food down. What goes in at lunch comes out the same way it went in before dinner. That’s just the way it works. Sometimes, if I am lucky, I can keep down breakfast, as long as it is something plain. But such things have no calories, so I just lose more and more weight, which isn’t what I want anymore.

I had my acceptance letter from Yale framed and hung up in my bedroom, but I had since taken it down. I couldn’t bear to be reminded that I would not be attending the school of my dreams come this August.

I used to be able to hide the effects of my treatments by putting on makeup and tying my hair up, but even that doesn’t hide it all anymore. My oldest sister bought me a wig that almost matched my original shade, and I wear it all the time now, but it just isn’t the same. And even though it irritates me to no end, I can’t help but wear it so I can at least pretend that I look somewhat normal.

I have leukemia. It has taken over me, become my entire life. I am stuck in the hospital until God knows when, but I don’t think I’ll ever be going home. I can’t even feel it when they take blood from me anymore. That’s how weak I am.

Strange as it may seem, I am not afraid. I used to be terrified that I was going to die, but now I’m just waiting for death to come take me. I can’t stand to see my family like this. I don’t want to make my mother come here straight after work and stay until she is forced out by one of the nurses. I don’t want her to keep getting up two hours earlier so that she can come here before she has to make the now longer commute to her first of two jobs she has to do to pay for my medical bills. I don’t want my sisters spending all of their free time talking to me on facebook, or calling me, or visiting me each and every weekend. I want them to have lives outside of me. I cannot be saved. But they can.