A surprise before dying

“So, I have a surprise for you.” Ashley said with a breathy grin.

I really hope its cake.

“Nate and I planned a camping trip for you at the lake the night before you leave. Everyone’s going. We can swim; hang out by the campfire, whatever you want.”

“Oh wow!” I overacted. “That sounds like so much fun!”

This is the worst surprise ever. I hate camping. We did it every weekend when I was a kid at Scotts Flat Lake in Grass Valley. It was terrible. I never got to sleep because I was always cold and I hated sleeping on the ground. I sleep on my stomach, and putting this much stomach on hard dirt ground is not good for my breathing. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack every night, the no-give of the hard ground congesting my diaphragm and lungs and making my Grape-Crush-breath diminish more and more until I expired. That’s what they said when they found Grandma, the morning after she died at sixty-five years old. “She just went to sleep and expired.”

My mom said it was because she put butter on her pizza, which is fine. I only put hot sauce on mine. That was my safety thought when I had heart attack dreams as a kid.