They found her body in her bedroom. Lying on the bed drenched slick with cold sweat. 15 years old, a high school freshman with dreams that couldn't be captured by even the stars. And now there she was, curled up in a cluster of stuffed animals and fuzzy blankets kicked down to her feet. I remember seeing her just a few days before, lively and healthy, with ruddy youthful cheeks still plump full of baby fat. Now they are ghastly and sunken. I wonder, where did the life go? Did it drip out from her pours through her sweat? Did it disappear like smoke through her ears? How does someone describe what it's like to see your best friend rotting and dead. At first I thought, she must just be sick, resting to recuperate. To heal. Her sunken cheeks will fill fresh with dreamy wonder. Her eyes would open she'd greet my all groggy and lazy. What's still a wonder to me is, how did nobody notice? How did nobody walk into her room and see her falling apart while she was still alive? I remember she was sleeping, not dead, she couldn't have been, never. I shook her awake, at least, I tried to. I shook, and shook, and shook, but she didn't wake. I'd felt her pulse, my thumb dug into her wrist. I felt that it wasn't there, lifeless and gone. But even so, the logical and sensical part of my brain won out. She couldn't be dead. She's ill, she's asleep. It wasn't like denial. It was knowing. I knew she wasn't dead. So I couldn't understand what the crushing weight of devastation was that was plucking my heart straight out of my chest. Perhaps that's because the foolish and irrational side of my brain knew something that the logical side didn't. That's why the life pooled out of my eyes in the form of tears. I held onto her hand, salty and bitter vitality dripping from my eyes and diving down her slim and pale wrist. That insane peck of thought in my brain began with calling 911. The ringing gave me time to rationalize time to gather whimsy into thought before I allowed the takeover of insanity. I was calling this number because sick people often times do need help, often times they do need visits to the hospital, checkups and prescription drugs. So I spoke calmly, I spoke carefully, I spoke of her like she'd only sprained her ankle. Because she was alright. An especially bad cold is all it was.
