Prologue

Nobody knows when they are going to die.

Nobody!

Not a single person on this earth knows that. No psychic can foresee your death. No matter how much they try. It's not something you can calculate, or see by simply looking through a crystal ball, or by taking one of those tests that tell you who your soulmate will be, or what your personality says about you...

Although...there's a twist to knowing when you're going to die.

Knowing when you're going to die, gives you a new perspective on life. You start to appreciate things even more than you did before you found out your death-date.

Life has its own cruel and tangled way of forcing you to make drastic changes to your life. You've become so accustomed to the everyday routine: wake up, school, homework, sleep, repeat. Only to have it change in a matter of hours. Changed to the point where you don't even know what's real anymore. Changed to the point where, you're basically inside a stranger's body.

Changed to the point where, your entire world is flipped around like a pancake, and you have no idea how to turn it right side up again. And you end up burning.

That's what happened to Melissa. Senior student at Hidden Valley High. She had to put everything on hold when she received the news, her plans to graduate high school, marry the love of her life, have kids someday, watch them grow and become successful in their lives, but, because of her incurable disease, she won't be able to do that.

This indelible factor of her life has restricted her from accomplishing her future dreams. Now her only dream was to perish without pain.

Melissa stopped going to school, because what was the point anyway?

She was going to die! Like a driverless car down a steep hill, that's how fast her life came plummeting down. Brain diseases are not something to be messed around with, and she knew first-hand, how much energy, sacrifices and mental health it takes to endure the severity of the pain and the constant reminder of it.

It's best you have a positive mindset rather than keep thinking about your impending death, otherwise it starts consuming you from the inside, and then you can basically assume your already dead, all you need to do next...is stop breathing.

The only people who knew about her brain cancer, was Jace, her boyfriend, and her parents, but she couldn't bring heeself to tell her best friend, Stephanie Howards.

She hasn't been herself lately.

She's more remote than she'd ever been and as much as Melissa would have loved to help her or at least try to figure out what was bothering her, she was too caught up in focusing on completing her bucket list. Speaking of which, she wrote it down when she first found out about the cancer.

She was not expecting to have that bomb dropped on her so suddenly and everything was so...unforeseen, that she thought she just had to live a more pastime life before she dies.

Melissa was granted two years to live, and she had 100 things on her list. She was so fortunate to have Jace by her side, to help her execute everything. But as the cancer grew, so did every other emotion inside of her.

Melissa was even more agitated than before and snapped at every little thing, and the more she apologised, the more she and Jace grew apart.

It's not easy maintaining a relationship when one partner was going to die and the other was going to live their life after their death. Said partner will live on to find new love, get a job, have a successful career, marry, have kids, grandkids...

Her death...was inevitable. Soon she would just cease to exist. She'd only be a distant memory once she was gone. Remembered by her relatively good grades, her terrible fashion sense, Steph's best friend, that quiet girl at the back of the class...

She had her time on this earth.

She had accepted that. Eventually.

She relished all of her 19 years spent on Earth, and she was grateful for it.

Although the last few months had been very melancholic, there had been some incredible moments that she had shared with Jace, discovered some shocking secrets, and had some very valuable things ripped away from her in the process, but with all things considered, Melissa was content with how things had turned out. This was her fate, her destiny, and she had to live with it.

She's Melissa Stewart and this is her story.

This is A Dying Girl's List.