I finally spit it out, quickly and quietly, as if I am confessing a morbid sin. “Kelly, I think Santa is…my dad.” Your mahogany eyes widen ever so slightly at the news, but then after a brief moment, you reassuringly pat me and say, “Don’t be stupid! Your dad isn’t even fat.”
Turns out I was right. At eleven, I had garnered enough evidence and logic to realize that Santa’s handwriting was suspiciously similar to my dad’s, the same loopy scrawl with its careful dotted I’s and crossed t’s. But because you were my best friend, I let you think you were right, a habit that I would never be able to break.


I tap my pencil repeatedly against my knee, one for each letter I spell out. “W-e-n-s-d-a-y?” You shoot me a disapproving glance, smirking slightly whilst spelling it out correctly. To cover up my embarrassment, I scoff, “That’s dumb. No one pronounces the ‘d’ anyways!” Which is true, you know.
At twelve, I was simply hopeless at spelling. Spelling was your forte, so it was no surprise when you competed in the National Scripps Spelling Bee. Though I finally learned how to spell Wednesday, to this day my pencil still slightly hesitates before writing the ‘d’. I learned that words were funny like that, words where letters hid in the midst of other letters, and superfluous letters that never got pronounced (ie: pseudonym).


Your eyes are starry with excitement, your mouth about to burst with a flurry of words, your breathing slightly labored, the apple of your cheeks dotted crimson, as you relay the story of your first kiss. “It wasn’t anything special, really. The movies have it all wrong. It’s just a touching of the lips, that’s all.” But your eyes betray you.

At thirteen, I learned how to surreptitiously notice all the flickering glances and flirty exchanges between you and Sean. You told me about your first kiss, and I was secretly jealous. I was always jealous of your free spirited-nature, your ease with boys,….middle school. We cruised the wave of young adolescence with a whirlpool of outstretched emotions.

I stare at her with a mix of familiar exasperation and open disgust at her mouth, where a cinnamon cake is being obliterated into a vomit-worthy mush of mud brown and unflattering puce. “You do realize how utterly revolting your eating habits are, right?”
She just grins at me, waggling her mottled tongue at me as she does so.
Even at sixteen, you never learned to shut your mouth while eating. Actually, you never learned to shut your mouth, period. You loved hearing the sound of your own voice – and so did I.


I sing happy birthday to myself, and amble over to pick up the phone, grinning with anticipation of our night out.
“I’m ready for my present! When are you coming over?”
“Jen, it’s Katie, K-k-elly’s sister…s-she’s dead…”
The world stops for a split second, and then comes rushing back to me as the phone crashes onto the floor. Then suddenly I am running – running as fast as I have ever run, running until I can’t breathe, but I keep running anyways, as if I can outrun the news of your death. I run, until I can’t feel anything. I run, until it consumes me. I run to your house, I run to your sister, and I see the unfathomable, irrevocable, heartbreaking truth in her eyes.
Then I remember, and I almost laugh.
Happy birthday to me.
Do you know what getting punched hard feels like? When Colin punched me in fourth grade, I was finally able to understand the phrase “getting the wind knocked out of me.” For a scary second, you can’t breathe. As you gasp for air, the gut-wrenching pain kicks in. Even the slightest movement exacerbates the pain, and you can do nothing but wait for burning sensation to subside. That’s what your death felt like. The ultimate sucker punch.
I was seventeen, a precarious year where I teetered on the brink of adulthood. That night, I was catapulted into adulthood as I struggled with your death. I was almost angry to find myself thinking of you wherever I went. I saw your freckly grin everywhere, I heard your husky voice whispering my name as you always did in class, I felt the wispy waves of your hair tickle my nose, I could taste the scent of your lingering perfume, I automatically turned my head when I heard any word starting with K. Was there any part of my life you had not touched with your presence? I wanted to desensitize myself, rid myself of this lingering numbness.
Now, at eighteen years and eight months, the pain has alleviated enough so that I can conjure a bittersweet smile when I think of you. I’ve come to realize that I’ve fallen into a common trap. A misconception we hold is that death is for people with wrinkles lining their weathered features, the ones dependent on a cane as their second leg, the ones afflicted by time and natural biological processes. But death and life share one thing – they both do not discriminate.
I have learned something invaluable from your death. It is cliché, but almost everything cliché has an undeniable ring of truth. I know that I do not even know an iota of things that I am about to learn later in life, but Kelly, if there is one thing you taught me – there is one thing that overshadows death, and that is the knowledge of life.
One last memory.
I’ve finally persuaded you to answer a question for yearbook, since the deadline is tonight and I haven’t anyone else to ask. I love you for it, despite your grumbling, because I know how much you hate answering ‘dumb general questions that no one cares about’ (your words, not mine).
“If you were to die tomorrow, how would you want people to remember you?”
I expect a sassy remark, a coy reply, or maybe even no response at all. But you look me square in the eyes, and answer with just one word.

“Correctly.”
This is the memory that haunts me the most.
But I promise you will always be remembered, correctly.