She nodded again.
When I stepped in, I straightened my tie—the green one she loved. My palms were sweating against my MP3 player, and my nose sniffled as we both sat on her bed. I didn’t know what to say. I mean, most of the time when people had a friendship, both sides talked. The more silence there was, the more nervous I became. My feet started tapping on the floor, and I watched as Maggie’s hands stayed clasped together in her lap. Her skin was extra pale, her eyes were extra heavy, and in that moment, I missed it. I missed the one thing that had annoyed me for so long.
I missed her voice.
“Can I hold your hand again?” I asked.
She slid her left hand into my right, and I sighed. Her fingers felt like ice.
“Squeeze my hand once if the answer is no, and twice if it’s yes, okay?”
She agreed and closed her eyes.
“Are you scared?”
Two squeezes.
“Are you sad?”
Two squeezes.
“Do you want to be alone?”
One squeeze.
“Do you think maybe…do you think I could be your friend?” I whispered.
Her eyes opened and locked with mine. I wondered if her heartbeats matched mine—wild, dizzy, panicked.
She looked down at our hands and squeezed once. Then she squeezed again, and my heart exploded.
I released the breath I had been holding.
With my free hand, I reached into my pocket and pulled out Mom’s necklace. “This is for you. It’s a friendship necklace. An anchor. I promise to be your friend, and be a good one, too. I mean, I’ll try my best. I’ll be your anchor. I’ll help you stay grounded when you feel like you’re drifting away. I just…” I sighed, staring down at the charm in my hand. “I want you to smile again. I want you to have the things you always wanted, and I’m gonna work hard to make sure you get them, too, even if it’s a dog named Skippy and a cat named Jam. I want you to know…” I sighed again, because whenever her eyes watered over, my chest hurt so much. “I need you to know that even if you decide to never speak again, you’ll always have someone around to hear you, Maggie. All right? I’ll always be there to listen to your silence. So do you want it? Do you want the necklace?”
She squeezed my hand twice, and a tiny, almost nonexistent smile found her.
“And if you want, we can listen to my music together. I know I said I’d never let you listen, but I mean, you can, if you want. Jamie made me a new playlist on his computer last night, and I put it on my MP3 player. I don’t know what he put on it, but we can listen together.”
She squeezed my hand twice again. I gave her one of the earbuds, and I took the other. We lay backward on her bed with our feet dangling off the edge. I hit play on the MP3 player and the song that started playing was “Low” by Flo Rida featuring T-Pain. Geez, Jamie. Not the perfect song for the moment. I went to change it, but Maggie squeezed my hand once, stopping me. Her eyes were closed and a few tears fell down her cheeks, but I swore I saw it: a tiny smile. It was so tiny some people would probably think it was a frown, but I knew it wasn’t.
My chest hurt, seeing the almost smile on her lips. I closed my eyes, and a few tears fell from my eyes, too, as we listened to Flo Rida. I didn’t know why, but whenever she cried, I did, too.
In that moment, I knew she had been right about everything all along.
She was right about me, and her, and us.
She’d be the one girl I’d love until forever.
No matter how life tried to change us.
May 15th, 2016 — Eighteen Years Old
Mama and Daddy never danced anymore.
Over the past ten years, I’d noticed a lot of changes between the two, but that was the saddest one. They still hugged each other each morning, and Daddy always kissed her forehead before he went to work at the university each day. As he walked out the
front door, he always said, “I love,” and Mama would finish his sentence, “You.”