Dear Prudence... Won't you come out and play?

Prudence threw herself onto her bed, in bliss. She was grounded, but it was worth it. She'd gotten home at two in the morning because she'd asked Jude to take her to the park to play on the swings. He'd, of course, obliged. Even in the pouring rain, he gave her a piggy back to the playground from the parking lot and had a contest with her to see who could swing the highest. They went down the slide and wrote their names on the metal of the monkey bars.

It was pretty much the best day of her young, and soon-to end, life.

She had terminal cancer. There was no way it was going away. Cancer of the liver at the stage they'd caught it at was fatal. No ifs, ands, or buts. It was simply a question of how long you got to live before you died. She was 17. There wasn't much hope she'd see her 19th birthday. She felt she should be living every single day to it's absolute fullest. Unfortunately, her mother disagreed. Her mother felt she should be locked in a hospital, receiving the latest treatments that would do nothing so she could pretend something was happening.

But nothing ever did. Nothing ever would.