For Zach Sobiech, life is crutches and chemo.

It’s making deals with God. It’s taking 13 pills at a time without water. It’s clumps of curly hair in the trash. It’s crying in bed late at night and laughing with friends. It’s declaring a ban on homework for his senior year at Stillwater Area High School.

It’s also finding ways to say goodbye.

Zach, 17, has a rare form of bone cancer and was told in June that he had months — maybe a year — to live. Now, he is writing and recording songs of farewell, including “Clouds,” a tune he wrote for his girlfriend:

Well I fell down, down, down

Into this dark and lonely hole.

There was no one there to care about me anymore,

And I needed a way to climb and grab a hold of the edge.

You were sitting there holding a rope,

And we’ll go up, up, up

But I’ll fly a little higher.

We’ll go up in the clouds because the view is a little nicer

Up here my dear.

It won’t be long now, it won’t be long now.

Zach was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in the fall of 2009. The cancer started in his hip and has spread to his pelvis and lungs. When a scan in October showed about 20 new lesions in his lungs, Zach’s mom suggested he start writing letters to say goodbye.

“I’m not good at writing letters,” Zach said recently at his Lakeland home. “So I figured instead, I could just write songs for people, and they might be around longer. It’s more powerful than writing a letter because a song can get stuck in your head. You find yourself humming it during the day.”

He wrote “For My Grace” for his sister Grace, who is 14. “I love all my siblings, but I have the strongest relationship with Grace,” he said. “We’ve been that way ever since we were little. I knew if I could write a song for anyone, I could write one for her.”

His song “Fix Me Up” is for Samantha “Sammy” Brown, whom he has known since they were toddlers. Zach and Sammy started singing together a few years ago; their first CD, “Blueberries,” will be released Saturday, Dec. 15, and features them singing to each other in “Fix Me Up”:

Just promise me …

Just promise me …

That you’ll never give up, and never look back.

I won’t give up.

I’ll keep on trying.

Dry your tears up.

All your crying cannot fix me up, my darling.

Listening to Zach’s songs after he is gone will be a comfort, Sammy said.

“It’s kind of his way of haunting us — in the most friendly of ways,” she said. “He doesn’t want anything left unsaid. A lot of his lyrics are things that you know that he’s feeling, but he doesn’t say a lot of that to anybody because he’s a teenage boy. It’s hard for guys at that age to be open, but music is an excuse for him to get it out there.”

RELEASE FOR EMOTIONS

Zach got a guitar for Christmas when he was 11 and started taking lessons from Joe Schertz, a musician who lives in West Lakeland Township. Schertz, owner of the School of Music & Mayhem, also works with Sammy and Zach on their songwriting.

On a recent Tuesday night at Schertz’s studio, the duo worked on a new song called “Apple.” Sammy jotted down lyrics in a thick spiral notebook while Zach and Schertz played guitar. Another friend, Reed Redmon, played percussion.

An apple a day …

But we all know that’s not true.

But I’ll take a bite, and maybe it might

give me more time with you.

Coming up with the next lines was harder.

“We could do something with an orchard,” Sammy suggested. “Something like, ‘But I don’t have an orchard …’ ”

Working on songs such as “Apple” is an opportunity “to get emotions out without freaking out in public,” Zach said.

When Schertz started urging Zach to write songs, he resisted.

“I always was a shy kid — I still kind of am — but he was always telling me to song-write, and I’m like, ‘I’m 13; I’m not going to put my feelings on a piece of paper,’ ” Zach said. “But once I started, I realized what he was talking about. I get it now. It feels good to be able to write a song and feel fulfilled. And getting everything out on one page and then being able to share it with people is even cooler.”

Schertz said Zach has a unique perspective because his life has a “time stamp” on it.

Zach agrees.

“You’ve got to take what you have, and I’ve been blessed with something, so I want to use it to the best of my ability,” he said. “You got it, use it.”

In his song “Months,” Zach details his illness in 12 steps.

February was metallic,

And still I March on.

April’s rain and more pain.

May nudges me along.

Zach’s parents, Rob and Laura Sobiech, are glad he is telling his story.

“You have something big and scary, and this is your story …” Laura Sobiech tells him. “There’s also great opportunity. People will listen to you. That’s the gift that comes with this: You have your podium now.”

‘CLOUDS’ ON THE AIR

Zach’s music career recently got a major boost. He was selected to be featured in the KS95 for Kids Radiothon, a benefit for the Children’s Cancer Research Fund and Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare. The two-day annual fundraiser has raised more than $12 million since it was started in 1999.

When Zach and his mom went to KSTP-FM in July to be interviewed for a piece that aired Thursday, Dec. 6, Zach played a cover of a Jason Mraz tune called “I’m Yours.”

KS95 producers wanted to hear more and asked him to send in an original tune. Zach sent them an acoustic version of “Clouds.”

“It was beautiful, and it was touching, and it was poignant,” said Dan Seeman, vice president and market manager for KS95/Hubbard Radio in St. Paul. “Everyone who listened to it had that same reaction: ‘This is really good.’ This young man really struck a chord with a lot of people here … because he loves the music business, and we are in the music business.”

After Seeman heard the song, he was moved to do more. He called a musician friend, John Lynn, and told him about “Clouds.”

“I said, ‘Is there any chance to get a studio band together to do this for Zach?’ ” Seeman said. “John called back a day later and said, ‘I got a drummer, I got a bass player, I got a lead guitar.’ ”

Karl Demer, owner of Atomic K Records & Production in Minneapolis, and his crew offered their services. Mike Rominski, who works at Hubbard and owns Woolly Rhino Productions, videotaped the 5 1/2-hour recording session.

“Everybody donated their time,” Seeman said. “It was a wonderful experience for Zach, but the (musicians) loved every minute of it, too. It all just came together.”

Seeman said he hopes the music video of “Clouds” — which includes slides explaining Zach’s battle with cancer — becomes an Internet sensation.

“Here’s this young man who’s got a million-dollar smile and nothing but positivity,” he said. “I could not even imagine what he’s going through. There’s just this grace and this wisdom coming from this 17-year-old boy. We have a lot to learn from him.”

‘NO HISTORY OF CANCER’

Zach, the third of four children, was jogging with his sister Alli in August 2009 when his left hip started to hurt. He went to physical therapy for two months; doctors thought he might have a hip flexor problem, “something that wasn’t necessarily showing up as a break on the X-ray,” Laura Sobiech said. “It’s just very classic overlooking of osteosarcoma. It’s almost always overlooked.”

By November, Zach couldn’t bend over to tie his shoes. Doctors brought him in for magnetic resonance imaging and found the tumor — which had grown to almost plum size — in his femoral head.

“We had a lot of hope that it wasn’t cancer,” Laura Sobiech said. “I remember reading about osteosarcoma, and what that entailed, and just deciding, ‘You know, we’re not going to do that.’ He was a normal, healthy kid, and we have no history of cancer in the family.”

About 400 children and adolescents are diagnosed with osteosarcoma in the United States each year. Osteosarcoma tumors develop in rapidly growing bones during a growth spurt, said Brenda Weigel, Zach’s primary oncologist at the University of Minnesota and a chief medical adviser for the Children’s Cancer Research Fund. Tumors are generally found in the arms or legs, particularly around the knee and shoulder, but they can also arise in the spinal column or the pelvis, or any bone in the body, she said.

Survival rates depend on the location of the tumor and whether the cancer spreads. The overall cure rate is about 65 percent, but when the cancer spreads, there is only a 20 percent chance of survival, Weigel said.

“It didn’t really hit me right away,” Zach said. “I don’t know if it actually has yet. I remember waking up and finding out, and I was, like, ‘I’m going back to sleep.’ It didn’t seem real.”

The tumor, located where the leg turns at an angle to meet the hip, meant Zach’s hip bone was “very fragile,” Laura Sobiech said. “Any weight on it would break it.”

The 6-foot-1 teen, who dreamed of being a wide receiver in the NFL, had to start using crutches immediately and began chemotherapy. He had his tumor removed and hip replaced in February 2010.

“The tumor was 100 percent necrotic — he didn’t have any lung lesions, and the chemo was working,” Laura Sobiech said. “We were ecstatic because that’s as good as you can get with this.”

Zach continued with chemo treatments until July 2010. Five days after he completed chemo, computerized tomography — a CT — showed the cancer had spread to his lungs.

Four open-chest surgeries, called thoracotomies, followed. In all, Zach has undergone 10 surgeries, spent more than 100 days in the hospital for chemotherapy treatments and undergone 15 radiation treatments.

He said he takes life in three-month chunks — that’s the length of time between his CT scans.

“You live right here,” Zach said. “You live right in front of you. You don’t focus on anything in the future. You make small plans and focus on those. It’s the little things, honestly. It sounds cliche, but it’s true. It’s the little things that get you through the day.”

HIGHER POWER

Zach’s father, Rob Sobiech, is the logistics manager at DiaSorin Inc. in Stillwater. Laura Sobiech grew up in Lake Elmo, works at St. Croix Valley Dental in Stillwater and serves on the Lower St. Croix Valley Fire Department.

The family belongs to St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Stillwater. They keep a relic of St. Peregrine — the patron saint of those suffering from cancer — in the living room of their house near the St. Croix River.

“When Zach was first diagnosed, I remember thinking: ‘God can see us. We’re not just plugging along, living our lives,’ ” Laura Sobiech said. “I told God, ‘You can have him, but it had better be good. It had better be something big.’ ”

Zach likes to attend church by himself early in the morning. “Zach gets that this is just a part of life — it’s not all of life,” his mother said. “I think that’s how all of us have tackled this. Truthfully, we have always been given the grace to get through each big thing.”

Zach has roomed with children at the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis whose families are not religious, Laura Sobiech said.

“I would like to say I don’t know how people do it without faith, but I do, I’ve seen it, and it’s not pretty,” she said. “It’s really hard sometimes. You just know that there’s nothing there holding them up, and it’s really painful to watch … because they despair.”

The Sobiechs’ faith led them to Lourdes, France, earlier this year. The water from Lourdes, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared in 1858, supposedly has healing powers.

A woman from St. Michael’s suggested the trip, and she and her husband offered to pay for Rob, Laura and Zach’s trip. Money raised at a benefit last year helped pay for Zach’s brother, Sam, and Grace to accompany them. In all, 11 members of the family and one of Zach’s best friends traveled to Rome, Lourdes and Paris for 10 days in March.

Lourdes was “possibly the most peaceful place I’ve ever been,” Zach said. “I just remember going into the baths, and it’s super cold, but when you come out, the sun was out, and you just felt super clean. And the river is right there, and it’s making noise … and you just felt happy. It was awesome.”

But by the end of the trip, the Sobiechs noticed Zach was limping.

“We thought that with the hip replacement that maybe the hip socket was damaged and needed to be replaced,” Laura Sobiech said.

Positron emission tomography — a PET scan — revealed that the cancer had invaded the left side of Zach’s pelvis. Surgery to remove it would have left him unable to sit up.

Zach says he’s not an angry person, but he’s had bad days. “You cry in bed,” he said. “You cry yourself to sleep, but it’s not worth wasting that time because you only have so much.”

The first week of school this year was especially awful, he said.

“It was like: ‘OK, senior year. The next thing is college. You’ve got to get ready for it,’ and I’m like: ‘No, I don’t. I really don’t,’ ” he said.

Despite undergoing intensive therapy that involved as many as 17 pills a day, scans in October showed that the number of lesions in Zach’s lungs had exploded.

“I emailed all of my teachers and said, ‘Here’s the deal: I’m just not feeling it. I’m not doing homework anymore,’ ” he said.

Zach still goes to school each day but spends a lot of time in class writing songs.

“He wants to learn, and he wants to be involved. He just doesn’t want to do the homework,” Laura Sobiech said.

Just in case his doctors are wrong, Zach has applied to the University of Minnesota. The topic for his college application essay — “Tell us about an experience that has changed your life” — was easy, he said.

“To be honest, I wish I could worry about school,” Zach wrote. “But instead I have to worry about how my little sister is going to feel when I die, how my family will get along without me, or what will become of my friends.”

His latest round of chemo seems to be doing some good. “It seems to be stalling it,” Laura Sobiech said. “The lesions weren’t growing any more, and some of them were actually shrinking. We’re hopeful that he’ll get several more months, but it can go downhill very quickly.”

Zach takes it all in stride, she said. “He knows where this is all going to end, apart from a miracle.”

If that miracle occurs, Zach jokes that he’ll have a different problem: He’ll have to complete all those missed homework assignments.

He hopes to make it to his 18th birthday May 3 and to his sister Alli’s wedding May 31. “That would be huge if we could do that and have him there and not in a whole lot of pain,” Laura Sobiech said. “We know our options are fading. It seems like, well, maybe we’ll get a little bit more time now. That’s kind of what it’s about now — it’s gaining a little more time, and then, maybe, a miracle.”

Zach and his friends don’t dwell on his cancer. His girlfriend, Amy Adamle, 17, of Woodbury, doesn’t treat him any differently because of his diagnosis, he said.

“He’s just Zach,” Amy said. “We both have our days, but we’re there for each other, so it works.”

Amy is “strong enough to share the load with me,” Zach says. “She knows how to say things in a way that fixes everything.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever really be ready to let go of him,” Amy says. “No matter what, it’s going to be really hard. I don’t ever really feel bad for myself — I’ve been so lucky to know him.”

Said Sammy Brown: “Most of the time when we’re together, we don’t think about it, or we don’t talk about it. I’m not saying that we can’t or that we try to ignore it on purpose. It’s just really easy, when we’re together, to forget about all that. I just feel lucky that he’s choosing to spend time with me when he knows he doesn’t have much time left.”

Zach sings of wanting more time in “Clouds.”

If only I had a little bit more time,

If only I had a little bit more time with you,

We could go up, up, up

And take that little ride.

And sit there holding hands

And everything would be just right.

And maybe someday I’ll see you again.

We’ll float up in the clouds, and we’ll never see the end.

Mary Divine can be reached at 651-228-5443. Follow her at twitter.com/MaryEDivine.

ONLINE

To see the video of “Clouds,” go to youtube.com/watch?v=sDC97j6lfyc.

To donate to the Zach Sobiech Osteosarcoma Fund or to download an MP3 of “Clouds,” go to childrenscancer.org/zach/.

IF YOU GO

What: A fundraiser for Zach Sobiech and the Children’s Cancer Research Fund, including live music and dancing. Semiformal wear is encouraged.

When: 6 to 11 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 15

Where: Withrow Ballroom, May Township

Cost: Donation

For more information: caringbridge.org/visit/zacharysobiech.