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The last notes of a pop song faded out over the movie credits and the real world re-formed itself around Brendan. In place of the happily-ever-after kingdom full of flowers and birds and kings and queens, there was a small cold cubicle of a room, bare and icy white. Inside there was barely enough space for a single chair, a small cart, a tower of IV tubes and pumps- and the hospital bed where his twin sister Daniella lay. Brendan had tried to brighten and decorate the room the way he always did when he sat with her during chemo treatments. He hung multicolored fairy lights over her bed (battery operated), placed a bouquet of outrageously bright flowers on the cart (fake; real pollen and allergens were bad for the immunocompromised), and laid out a stack of bagels and tub of strawberry cream cheese if she felt like eating lunch (She never did). These things kept most of the scary away, but not all of it. It was not the worst cancer. It wasn't even in the top twenty. That didn't make Brendan feel any better when his very weak, very tired sister- who had been sitting up while watching the movie, with wide, interested eyes-fell slowly back on her pillows in exhaustion. IN the silence brought on by the movie's being over, the noise of the IV pumps clicked loudly over everything. Daniella opened her mouth but didn't quite yawn. " Okay, Tangled viewing number three: check!" Brendan said with a smile that wasn't quite forced. "what do you want to do now?" "Read to me?" her sleepy brown eyes lit up for a shining moment how could he say no to that? and then he was the book she shook at him and his face fell. "Come on," he groaned. " We just watched the movie. Can't we read something else?" "No, I want to hear about Rapunzel," Daniella said, sticking her lower lip out (with, Brendan was actually glad to see, a little bit of her old sisterly self coming through). "AGAIN. unless you don't think your sixteen-year-old sister who has cancer deserves it..." "Oh. My God." Brendant ook the book reluctantly. " Okay, I get the whole reverting-to-childhood thing. But why Rapunze? Like, so much Rapunzel? Your hair is-was-black. And you don't even have it anymore." Only her brother could talk to her like this: her brother had to talk to her like this. when he got all weird and and sad-faced like her boyfriend and Mom and Dad, and used the strained words nurses did to talk around what was really happening, that's when Daniella got scared and angry. None of the terrible thing happening to her seemed to really get her as much as her obnoxious brother being all sweet and nice. But he had caught her, just once, looking in the mirror at the few puffs of hair that remained on her head, all that was left of her shining piles of box braids. Her throut had distended like a bird eating fish as she swallowed again and again to keep the tears from coming. "Read. The. Book" was all Daniella said now. Tiredly. She was making her eyes shoot lasers at him with what little oomph she had left. brendan sighed and flipped to the beginning. He shivered. They kept the little chemo rooms cold for-some medical reason he couldn't remember. He always brought along Daniella's old tiana quilt: now it was tucked closely around her along with the hospital blankets a kind nurse had autoclaved so they would be warm.