Like You, Kind Of by Love Gordon
She bopped her head to the music on the car stereo. Julie, who was her best friend, and hoped to be a pediatrician, laughed and settled back into the passenger seat. Quinn, who’d made a good start on her oncology degree, grinned and bopped some more. She found the particular CD in question under Daria’s bed last week; it was the first time in nearly five years that she’d been in there. She’d dusted up a bit, and taken the CD-R for a spin; she was absolutely in love with by now.
“So, what’s this song called? I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere.” Julie asked.
“Oh, gawd, I don’t know. I just found this CD-R under my sister’s bed and stuck it in the stereo… it turned out to be pretty good,” Quinn replied, turning left onto Guadalupe St. They both were privileged attendees on scholarship at an exclusive medical school on the coast of Florida, the Sundance College of Medical Studies, which had turned out some of the world’s most prominent and skilled doctors. Quinn, with her 4.0 GPA in her senior year and but only a 3.5 GPA in her junior year, was accepted on probation, but after surviving her first year with another 4.0, Sundance’s administrators decided to keep her. It was a very rigorous and academic institution, unlike Pepper Hill.
“You have a sister?”
“Yeah. She died when I was sixteen, though.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“Well, it’s… my last two years in Lawndale were pretty bad, Julie. Daria died, and then I got really involved in my schoolwork and pretty much lost all my friends… They weren’t real friends, I guess. It’s not something I like to remember.”
“What was she like?”
“Like you, kind of, except waaaay more cynical. She was a writer, really talented. I wish I could be as good of a person as she was.”
Julie looked at her oddly. “Quinn, you’re at Sundance to dedicate your life to helping people. You head the charity ball committee every fall, and you got that music producer boyfriend of yours to donate five hundred bucks this year. You’re the nicest person I know. How can you say you’re not as ‘good’ as she was? What kind of person was she if she wanted you to think that you’re not ‘good’ enough?”
Quinn pulled into the driveway of the breezy bungalow that she, Julie, and another girl rented. Tossing her red hair, she turned off the car and removed the keys from the ignition. “It’s not that she wanted me to feel like that… but she was such a wholly good person. Aside from one time, I can’t think of a time when she did anything that was harmful to anyone, other than the occasional snide joke. She always tried to think of other people. The time that she kissed her best friend’s boyfriend, she was so upset. And that was the only time she ever… really did anything that she would regret. I think, maybe, she was like that because she knew what death felt like.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She had leukemia. It went away, after a while, but she wasn’t the same. Daria, as one of Mom’s hippie friends once said, had an old soul. And I, like a fool, overcompensated and went totally the other way. I absorbed my self in shallow teenage boys ‘n’ fashion crap. When the leukemia came back, it went so fast, just two months after we found out, she was dead. It was a painful way to go, too. I never wanted it to be like that for her. For anyone.”
“That’s why you’re going to be an oncologist?”
“Yeah.”