A rough draft but a break through from writers block. A bit of Sierra:


I reached for the day old fortune cookie with hunger in my eye. After breaking it into halves, I consumed each with a cautious mouth. How many more of these would I get to eat so peacefully? I savored the cookie and consumed my fears, forcing them both to the depths of my belly.
On the bed before me lay the inconspicuous fortune. After all of the fortune tellers I'd seen, I've learned to take their not so pretty predictions with a grain of salt and a bitter smile.
"After reviewing your charts and considering how fast this disease destroyed your mother, I'd say you have five years most." "One full year and then who knows." "I regret to tell you that you have six months left to live."
They never asked to look at my sweaty palms though, so maybe doctors aren't the most accurate fortune tellers out there. Fortune cookies, however, are where it's at. A fortune cookie predicted my first kiss, a fortune cookie predicted I would inherit my mother's greatest treasure, hell a fortune cookie even predicted my falling out with Emile. Lying there innocently, my lucky numbers (12, 13, 22, 30, 33, 34) dared me to flip them over. With slight hesitation I picked it up and flipped it over in my hands.
"You will live a long and prosperous lie."
And there it was, in my hands, with a faded 'f' in the last word, the truth shining faintly up at me. If I had been a sensible girl, with a sensible girl best friend, we would have agreed that you have to take it as it's meant to be read, with that fateful 'f'. I, however, am neither sensible nor normal. I have faith in my fortune cookies and I refuse to believe that one of them would blatantly lie to my face like that. There had never been much hope for me to live a long life filled with wealth or grandchildren or fame.
Sure, the realization of this stings a bit, but it puts things into a better perspective for me. I can't let Emile be mad at me forever, because the truth is I don't have forever. If I want to do all the things slightly insensible girls do with their male best friends, I was going to have to stop dragging my ass. If I want to set Hailey up with my boyfriend, I'll have to do that while I'm still well enough to go to school. And if I'm going to have an affair with my boyfriend's best friend, I sure as hell can't fall in love.
I went into my room and grabbed some sticky tape from deep within my desk drawer. Laying down on my bed, I placed the stickied fortune cookie where the wall met the bed and smoothed it out. Maybe someday someone will come in here, prepared to tear down everything that resembles me, and they'll stare at this fortune for a long time and wonder if the 'f' had always been so faded. I don't care if they cry or if they laugh, but I really do hope someone else will contemplate this fortune and the sad girl who laid in this bed.