too young

I've known Kayla since the day she was born. Her brother is godchild to my father, so I'm kinda her godsister. But to be honest, I've lived so far away and hardly had any contact with her that I could call us close. But, back in the days when I still called myself "San Antonian," I would see her once a week. Her family threw alot of parties at their house, so we'd all hang out.

Kayla is four or five years younger than I am. I was the old one of the whole group (our Filipino group)-- I was about two years older than the other kids I played with. Kayla was in the same sort of predicament-- she did not have kids of her age to play with. I tried including her in some of our activities (the old kids' group), but she turned to hanging out with the younger kids. Mind you, the younger kids were born in '94. I'm sure it was frustrating for her to be left out of our activities, and I tried to include her in everything we did, but the other girls would complain that she was a tagalong or something. I made this plea to Kristine, my best friend, before I left SA in '99. "Please make Kayla cool."

Kayla was born to an unemployed father and an overworked mother. She never had the chance to go on family outings or family vacations because of her parents' situations. I'm sure she realized her economic situation early, because she is a smart girl, and maybe that was the reason she was so introverted when it came to the rest of us. We became so materialistic (the girls in our Filipino group). When I went to an SA party last December, all of us had a designer purse and cellphones. Kayla, who was in the middle of her 8th grade year, was playing with the elementary schoolers. So much for my plea.

Also, when I was in SA, My family took out Tito Boy and his kids and Tito Gil and his kids to dinner at the Marriot. Kayla, daughter to the latter Tito, hardly ate a thing. She didn't seem okay to me, and I guess that's because she hardly kept a conversation with anyone. I tried talking to her about her brother and school, but her responses were very brief, so I stopped asking questions.

Yesterday, the proverbial bomb dropped on Tita Gil, Tita Juliet, and Kevin (her father, mother, and older brother). Kayla has had a bony mass in her ribs, which they've known about for a while. Kayla became concerned when she watched a program about cancer, and so this past week they went to the doctor, and a biopsy was taken to see what the mass could be. The results: Osteosarcoma, which has metastasized throughout the rest of her body. Within five minutes of this news, they had to weigh her options with chemo and surgery.

Someone in my school also had a bone marrow cancer. He was in remission, but then the cancer came back and chemo was not enough to treat him the second time around. He died in my senior year. Suffice to say, my thoughts of her survival have not been positive.