Faye made an effort to look away from Rebecca's soft cheeks and her perfect lips. "What's meant to be so good about boys, anyway?"
"They have their moments," said Rebecca. "Some of them do, anyway. Maybe not the ones in our class, but once they're a bit older, maybe."
"Sounds like a long wait." Faye kept her gaze on the floor.
"They just take a few more years to grow up, is all. Give them a while, you'll see. Besides, if you didn't like boys, who would you like?"
"Faye!" called Rebecca's mother from downstairs. "Your mother's here!"
"I'd better go." Faye stood up. "Thanks for the Fryer episode."
"That's OK." Rebecca looked at her the same way she looked at caterpillars and butterflies, her eyes focused with well meaning curiosity. For a second, Faye forgot to worry about the choice she had to make and about deciding how much she could tell Rebecca and just let herself get lost in her smile.
Faye stared up at her familiar posters of female rock stars as she lay down on her bed in deep thought.
On the one hand, she didn't want to die. She figured the person who'd recover from the brain surgery, however nice he might be and however happy he might become, simply wouldn't be her. Sure, he'd resemble her like a brother might and he'd keep her memories as a strange sort of memento, but he'd have different drives, different ambitions, a different outlook on life. Wouldn't he?
Besides, she couldn't bear the thought of giving a complete stranger, someone who didn't even exist yet, all of her emotional baggage. The memories of trying to cope with her birth defect, of trying to make sense of it, and of being constantly bullied at school because of her differences... she didn't even want this knowledge herself, and the thought of crippling someone else with it made her cringe.