Nearly three years ago, my childhood best friend Belle was struck and killed by a school bus. As their 20th birthday approaches, I’ve written a letter—reflecting on them, our relationship, their mortality, and my own.
These days my memories of you exist almost purely because they were documented, but there are things I remember without proof.
I remember your house. I remember the curtain between yours and your brother’s room—climbing into your pink bed, with pink drapes hanging over it. I remember staring out of the window into the backyard with you, both of us swinging our feet back and forth as we talked for hours. I remember Passover at your house. After a long dinner at a table full of people I didn’t know, we ran around together trying to be the first one to find the afikomen. I remember us being so upset that your brother found it in the cutlery drawer. I remember your chickens and how much they scared me, and I remember eating gumbo your dad made for us in your dining room. I remember sitting at the piano with you as you tried to teach me “Clair de Lune.”
My last real memory of you is in 2018—during one of my few visits back to New Orleans after moving away in 2014. I’m sitting in the front office of our old school—waiting to spend the day with you. You come to let me in and we go upstairs to your classroom. It feels surreal to see you and everyone else I grew up with. During recess you take me outside, and somehow everyone’s a circus genius and riding around on unicycles. Monsieur Sam is there too, and it’s his birthday, and we’re all eating red velvet cake. I’m reminded of how much I absolutely hate all things red velvet.
I don’t remember anything else from that trip. At least not moments that included you.
You died about three years ago now. I looked it up the other night—what happens to a body three years into death. It isn’t pretty—mostly bones, covered with a thin, waxy layer of leftover tissue. I’m sure you’d find your bones cool, though.
I never thought about my own mortality until you died—never thought about the possibility of dying young. It’s been on my mind a lot lately, leaving me paranoid of just about everyone and everything around me when I walk home at night. When I try to pinpoint why I’m feeling this way all of a sudden, I can only think about your birthday. My therapist agrees—the death of my childhood best friend is a pretty obvious cause. Still, when I think of the moment death comes, it feels final and peaceful. Much less scary than the paranoia that accompanies it.
I had a dream the other night about a nuclear war. I’m standing in a field holding my now best friend, the city nearby in the distance. We see that fatal flash of light and fall to the ground. I tell her I love her and it all goes black. I know your death must have been scary, too. I couldn’t even look at a school bus for a year after you died, and almost threw up when I had to ride in one on my 18th birthday. But I hope that darkness was peaceful for you. I hope it still is.
Sometimes I feel my love for you, and my missing you, isn’t warranted. We were best friends when we were little—you were my person and I was yours, but then that was it. We both moved on, grew up, and met others. But I always thought about you. I don’t think it’s possible to ever stop loving someone. You were my first person, and you’ll always be that for me.
The day you died I was at a festival here in Philly. I was seeing Ms. Lauryn Hill and Fugees and having the absolute time of my life. You died that same night, but my dad didn’t have the heart to tell me until morning. I found out before he could break the news, though. A friend from kindergarten had posted photos of you on her Instagram with a long message mourning your death. For a while I thought it was some weird joke. It didn’t make any sense for you to be dead. But you were. I asked around and I checked. I remember crying with my dad over you, sitting on his bed.
Four days later, on the beach in Wildwood, New Jersey, I sat under the harsh sun surrounded by people I hated watching the live stream of your funeral. On the way there, my ex–boyfriend swerved into oncoming traffic, going over 100 mph down the Jersey Turnpike. I screamed at him that you had just died and held onto the handle. “It’s not my fucking fault,” he replied, speeding up as he re–entered our lane.
I blamed myself for a while for your death. Unreasonably so. Getting hit by a school bus over 1,200 miles away from me certainly wasn’t my fault. But I wondered if maybe you would’ve been somewhere else that day had I never left. I wondered how many small moments I could’ve changed. Maybe you would’ve been at home. Maybe you left the farm two minutes later. Maybe your mom was picking you up, not your dad. Who knows. But it ate me alive for months.
I still haven’t finished the book you wrote—a collection of poems your dad found in your notes app. I can’t get through one without crying, or at least tearing up. Your occupation with death is what shocked me the most, though. I moved away when we were eight, but maybe you thought about it then too—when death would come, what it would feel like, what happens next. I was terrified of death at the time, mostly concerned by the word itself. My mensch of a mother gave up her own name so we could avoid saying it. The polar bears weren’t dying—they were “Diane–ing.”
You’ll be 20 by the time this comes out, so I want to wish you a happy birthday. I’m listening to “Clair de Lune” right now. I miss you.
