The memory I have of you now is faded from the clear picture I had in my head years ago. You weren’t that pretty, just hitting puberty and awkwardly trying to adjust to a woman’s frame wrapped around a child’s mind. I was in fifth grade and you were nearly 6′ tall. We both read books far beyond what anyone should’ve put in our elementary school hands–who thought it’d be a good idea to give us both copies of Reviving Ophelia, anyway? During the rise of the beanie baby, you balanced a childish love for the giraffe you renamed Petree (like the skittish pterodactyl from Land Before Time) and copies of Steven King novels I was unsure I wanted to join you in reading. It seemed like all you owned were hardcover novels, thick and intimidating when you left them on the corner of your desk through those seemingly-endless school days.
Your parents had a beautiful (read: expensive) mountain home on a large plot of land. I remember our slumber parties: staying up late, waiting for your parents to go to sleep so we could log in to AOL chat rooms and talk dirty with strangers. Unsure of what to say to these possibly-older guys, you’d turn to me and tell me to remind them I was “virgin as the day I was born.” It was never us these men were talking to of course, it was the women in photos we stole off websites with lean physiques and perfect breasts falling out of their bikinis. This was pre-webcam, just entering 6th grade and you already knew how misuse the Playboy website like a professional. We weren’t always friends, frequently falling into the cliquey behaviors children do in attempts to define themselves for what they are instead of what people assume them to be.
I don’t remember when your leukemia was diagnosed, but I had already quit seeing as much of you that next year once you moved on to middle school. My mom took me to the hospital to visit you just as I started sixth grade. Your mom didn’t leave your side the whole visit, leaving us to awkward parent-approved conversation topics. In the hour I stuck around, you brushed your teeth at least four times to prevent thrush. I watched you vomit in the sink too, uncomfortably aware that the chemotherapy they told me was saving your life was also ravaging your body. By then you had already buzzed off all your hair, I guess so the shock of it falling out in clumps would not be as severe. Still not used to it, you rubbed your fuzzy skull hesitantly all afternoon. I guess you didn’t believe it yourself, not that I blamed you.
All of my lunch periods that year were spent folding paper cranes in the art room, all because of some stupid fucking book a teacher read us in the hopes we’d make you a thousand of them. But then you’d be healed, and we’d be heroes. The other girls lost interest, but I kept at it. Several months later I dropped them off with your mom, later hearing you’d gone into remission. You were so glad to be alive that I stopped hearing from you–but I wasn’t mad. A second lease on life should be embraced, especially by a 13 year old girl.
Early spring the next year, first period, they interrupted class to tell us that you’d passed away the night before. Put simply, I lost it. The science teacher ushered me to the auditorium where the rest of your friends had been sent to cry together, out of sight & mind from the rest of the student population. I don’t remember the encouraging words teachers tried feed us, but I do remember that they were all equally as choked up while trying to do so. You can’t comfort a child when you need a hug too, I think. When I got home that night, my dad told me that only the good died young. I had a complex over that for a while, thinking if I lived past 16 I had done something terribly wrong. It took a few years to realize he was just quoting Billy Joel. Thanks, Dad.
For weeks I hid in the school counselors’ office. I didn’t know how to relate to anyone when all they could offer was “sorry” or worse, when they cried too despite never having met you. I felt guilty about the time you had called me to go to a movie and my mom hadn’t been around for me to ask permission, so I didn’t go. You must have been so lonely after all that time in the hospital. I remember you telling me everyone acted like it was such a big deal when really you were “just sick.” I wasn’t invited to your funeral or wake, though in retrospect it’s so much better I didn’t have to look at your pretty, dead face.
There’s a part of me that hopes I remember you forever, but a small part of me knows better. Something else will take over the space holding onto the pieces of you I have trouble recalling now, right? I found the photo of the girl with the tattoo around her navel we used to send our late night chat companions recently. Now when a dirty text-based communication occurs, you come to mind. Nobody would ever believe that line re: my virginity now, but I’m tempted to use it in your honor. Just a way to remember, a silly inside joke between myself and a girl that’s been dead for over a decade.