Lemonade Stand
SoraRikuKairi
Happy Birthday, Michelle :D

- - -

“Lemonade! Lemonade! Fifty cents per cup!” a girl with auburn hair called out with her hands cupped around her mouth. She was smiling behind her fingers at the boy beside her while he stirred sugar and water and lemons together.

He echoed her cries, shouting to the top of his lungs, “Come get your lemonade!”

- - -

“How much did we make, Sora?” the girl asked the boy; they were sitting cross-legged on top of their handmade lemonade stand. After being out in the warm spring sun and finally packing in when the mosquitos came out, they counted up their profits for the day.

“Kairi! It’s over fifty munny!” the boy exclaimed thrilled. He smiled at the girl as they both hopped down from their lemonade stand and ran into the house behind them.

“Riku! Riku! Fifty munny, Riku!” Kairi cried to the boy lying down in the living room. And the boy smiled.

- - -

They remembered.

It was around midnight when they both received a call from his mom, crying. She told them Riku had been at the hospital for a check-up when they discovered the tumor in his chest where it could not be reached without killing him.

What did it matter, he told them. He was going to die anyway.

But his two friends didn’t give up hope that easily. “We’ll raise money,” Kairi had suggested. “We’ll all go to the city together before…” And then the silence hung over them in the air, nearly suffocating. She didn’t have to complete her sentence to be understood.

- - -

“We only need… sixty more munny until we can take you to the city,” Sora said to his friend. He was grinning at him and at that moment, he felt like everything was going to be alright. Everything might just seem normal for once. Until Riku started a coughing fit. The girl rubbed his back soothingly, and Sora looked away.

- - -

After managing to get Riku safely strapped in the back seat of the car, Kairi and Sora climbed in with small smiles on their faces. “This is it, Riku,” Kairi said. “We’re finally getting you off of this island and taking you to the city!” Riku chuckled quietly, careful not to send himself into another coughing attack.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

- - -

Kairi stood next to Sora, their arms around one another. “You did it, Riku,” Kairi whispered through her tears. “You got off the island like you wanted to. You saw the city.” She sniffled and struggled to put a smile on her face for him as she placed a flower before his tombstone.

- - -

A/N: This is in honor of Alex, the brave little girl who raised over a million dollars for childhood cancer by selling her lemonade :)