He remembered it very clearly, the night she had almost died. That night had given him a better understanding of her. He had thought he had known her, thought they had a lot in common, until then. It was on that chilly October night that he realized how different they were.
It had been a full moon, he remembered; in the chilly autumn air, the leaves were just beginning to turn color. She had awakened him by throwing pebbles at his bedroom window. It was three in the morning, and as he looked down upon her from his second floor window, she beckoned him outside. He had slowly and quietly snuck out of the house, only to find her usually beautiful face streaked and marked with tears.
He remembered how she had shown him the deep blue bruises that had formed on her back and the crimson blood that flowed from a large gash on her arm, the blood an even darker red than the newly fallen leaves it dripped onto. He would never forget the look of horror and pain that scarred her face as she described how she had been beaten.
They had walked. Aimlessly it had seemed, until finally reaching a deserted back street. There had been no one else around. He remembered vividly. There was no sound anywhere.
She had ripped the silence apart then, her pale red lips slowly forming the words, "I'm going to kill myself." He had watched in complete horror as she pulled out a pocketknife and said she was going to slit her wrists. He remembered having pled with her, begging her not to go on, asking her to please think about what she was about to do. She had continued by opening the pocketknife's blade. Then she had stalled; he had known then that there was a hope; she was not sure she wanted to die.
He remembered her teardrops, how they had fallen heavily to the ground, as if they were trying to pulverize all hope that she would change her mind and live. He would not give up, as she backed away from him, ever-ready to slit her wrists, he begged, and pleaded, and moved forward, desperately trying to take the knife from her.
Her eyes, he remembered her eyes; how they had once been a bright and cheerful blue, like an ocean on a clear day. It was hard to believe that those eyes were the same faded, empty looking eyes that pierced him now. Her eyes seemed to glaze over, and they bored into him like a thousand needles all at once. He realized that there was nothing he could do.
Then, as if she were a deer frightened by a sudden noise, she froze. He remembered her small pale hand slowly loosening its grip and finally dropping the knife. She had run to him, burying her pale tear-streaked face in his arms, as he was now her shoulder to cry on. Eventually they had parted. Two friends, suddenly now strangers.
He remembered how different and foreign she had seemed then, almost as if he had never really known her before. She had seemed so normal, who could've guessed. He realized now how different they actually were, and yet he now understood her more than he ever had before even though he realized he knew her less than ever. Their differences had brought them closer together, and he knew their friendship would continue, but that it would be a long, thorny road.
