It was mid August and she'd finally turned thirteen. She claimed I couldn't be such a bully over her age anymore. Even for a summer day, that day was particularly hot. We were both sweating through our tank tops and watching as the sun fried all our exposed skin. "Sunscreen is for pussies!" She laughed as she dragged me towards the old oak tree in the park. We'd climb the the highest branches that were sturdy enough to hold our weight without snapping and sit there in silence. The best silence. Silence with her. She said, she used that time to think, she thought up everything atop those branches. At least that's what she said. I don't remember when or how the habit of only thinking on those branches sparked up but I'm glad it did. I feel like even now, when I sit on those tree branches I'm surrounded be every thought she's ever had. The things that formed her. Her beautiful, eccentric mind. After we'd spent hours sitting in the branches, mindlessly tearing at leaves and peeling bark her face lit up, like watching a switch flicker on in her mind that gave her some sort of an idea. She always made the same face, even as she grew older and her plump cheeks thinned out, and her pink braces disappeared. In that same spot on the tree after every thought she found herself settling on, she'd make that face. She'd just turned 13, so she thought she finally knew everything. "Let's steal my moms car and drive to the coast!" She said seriously. She'd always say the most bewildering thoughts in the most serious of tones. Because she meant them. "Are you crazy?!" I almost choked on the shock of hearing that. She'd never once driven a car, not even the bumper cars at amusement parks. "I'm thirteen now, I know everything" she didn't really say that, but the grin on her face perfectly conveyed those words. "I'm not letting you drive us anywhere, that's like asking to commit vehicular manslaughter!" I frowned and pulled a cluster of leaves off a branch and tossed them at her, watching as they delicately floated down to the ground, no where near reaching her. "I'm serious! I doubt she'd even notice I'm gone, and by the time she realizes her cars missing we'll be long gone, we'll take some money from her purse for snacks and whatnot and come back sometime in the future, still somehow smelling like a salty coastline and we'll act like nothing happened at all. Wouldn't it be funny?" She said with a proud grin. "We're not doing that. And I'm serious. How would you feel if you were driving with no idea on rules or experience and you hit a little girl and her mom, walking from who knows where! What matters is you'd carry two extra lives on your conscious forever!" I snapped. I loved my best friend but it didn't make me unafraid of things like death and insanity. "Okay fine. If you're that serious about it we'll scrap that idea. She loved me enough to care how I felt. But this time, I wish she would've cared about me. Thought about me somehow, taken me into consideration. I'm still here! Left alone without you! It's not fair! Those words scream through my mind every time I think of her now. So loudly they echo through the corners of my brain.
