'I might be ill.'

I'm two days short of my seventeenth birthday when you break the news.  It's the end of our first year together; a year that has seen us grow beyond all expectations, but which in doing so has stretched us to our limits.

'I found a lump.'

Why you failed your first driving test on a stupid mistake, why you've been so distant since Easter, why only last week you said you weren't ready to talk.  It all makes sense now.

You have cancer.  Or at least you think you do.

'It's 50:50.'  I can scarcely believe what you're telling me as the situation unfolds.  This doesn't happen to ordinary school kids like ourselves, only in the TV dramas we spend our free afternoons together watching.  I might not have believed you at all but for the fact that you're the closest I have, or will ever see you to tears.  It's not like you to be bothered by anything.

It's not like you to stumble over your words either, but that's what you're doing now.

'They, er, they did a biopsy.  I just have to wait-'  You trail off.

I glance about me.  The corridor behind is deserted; it's just us and the muffled roar of lunch time in the sixth form common room behind.  The room you lead me from on that old pretence of needing to talk.  I reach for your hand, sure that no one will overhear us.

'Tell me.'

And you do, finally, though I've never seen speech take such effort.  I listen as you relate diagnoses and  prognoses, repeating your doctor's words with only partial understanding.  One thing stands out to me, that with an 80% survival rate you are going to live.  But for you it's the chance that you'll be the one in five who doesn't make it, the cruel injustice of being six months off adulthood and facing your own mortality.

'Where-'  I swallow and try again.  I almost have to remind myself that it's you facing this, not me, that you're not breaking news of my own health.  It's just so hard to know what to say, if any words can be of any comfort.  'I mean, what type?'

'Testicular.'

I look away, blinking the tears from my eyes.  This is really happening.

'They say if I do have it,'  you continue, your tone clinical and detached.  I wonder how long you've been coming to terms with this before deciding to tell me.  'Then they've caught it early and it should be easy to treat.'

'That's good.'  I tentatively suggest from the edge of my chair as I move closer to you, choosing not to contemplate what that treatment will be.  My hand finds your cheek, trying to get you to look at me instead of the floor.  'Then you'll be all right.' 

You nod, but there's no conviction.

'But what if I'm not?'

'You will be.'

I had to believe it, for both of us, because you wouldn't.  But that didn't stop me sobbing into my pillow that night, the first night of many, in fear for your life.  I may have chosen to believe that the odds were in your favour, but that didn't mean you were the only one who could see a future that included your slow and painful death.

It's been over three years now since we rejoined our friends for what remained of that school lunch hour, with eyes wiped dry and fake smiles fixed on.  We were so young to trade the I love yous that ended our conversation, still naive enough to believe that two teenagers could make it through anything together.  But in the weeks that followed your positive test result and lead us swiftly into our AS level examinations, we came to realise the inevitability of our situation.  That your admission had changed everything irrevocably.

The harder we clung on the more we only suffocated one another.  I wanted to be there, but you could only retreat into yourself, unable to open up even to the first person you trusted enough to tell.  I didn't understand what it was like, and you would never tell me.  It was a recipe for disaster.

We've both broken the promises we made to each other that day; mine to never tell anyone what was happening, and yours to always let me know that you were doing all right.  For my part, it was too big a secret to keep alone.  It was your burden but I bore it almost all the time, unable to leap to your defence whenever someone slated you for your wayward behaviour or for skipping school.  But sometimes I needed someone to talk to when you wouldn't.  Someone in whom to confide the fear that one morning I would wake and you wouldn't.  I'm still breaking it to this day, to this letter, to explain away the pain you inflicted.

And you.  We never had the easiest of relationships, snatching moments of calm between the raging battles that caused others to question how we ever found one another in the first place.  So I wasn't surprised when you told me you'd replaced me, found your comfort in the bed of another.  Another who gave you what you were perhaps afraid you wouldn't get from me before it was too late.  Another who had been awaiting her chance since before we even began.  Another you're still trying to shake off now you're done.  But we stopped talking then; it was too painful to acknowledge your existence whilst wondering at what point I stopped being enough.  It was a full year before we were close enough for you to admit to the pain your treatment still put you through.  By that point I was letting go.

We both still bear the scars of those few months, I don't see how it could have turned out any other way.  Even if you had never found that lump we wouldn't have lasted long into the summer.  You were my boyfriend and my best friend, but we were never supposed to go the distance.  I think somewhere inside we both knew it, even if defeat took too much courage to admit back then.

But time is the greatest of healers, and there is hope yet for our wounds.  So maybe, ultimately, what happened was for the best after all.  Because we're both still here, and we appreciate the value of that so much more.  And this way at least my lasting memory of you isn't just of the first love who crushed my heart, but of a young man so much braver than he will ever want anyone to know.

'Are you all right?'  A friend asks, noting the absent way I pick at my sandwiches that April lunchtime.

You're holding your breath when my eyes meet yours, watching the exchange play out before.  But I won't tell, not this time at least.  I turn back to my friend and smile.

'Yes.' I reply.  'Fine.'

It may not be the truth now, but one day it will be.