Davie

Beginning

Foster Asami was my best friend - or at least I thought he was - and I'll never forget what he loved about books. It was a hot day in August, and as school got closer, he and I were working on our summer reading assignments for our AP Literature class. Foster, for as long as I knew him, was vivid reader and his resplendence made his essays and notes so colorful, but it was never the text that led him to the final conclusions.

It was the blank pages at the end.

At the end of every book (at least every book I've ever seen) has at least one to three pages of blank space due to the printing process and this is what he told me:

"The empty pages are the most important part of a book because they aren't meant to be there, but they happened. The author didn't mean for their presence to symbolize anything, making their whole purpose to be pure and innocent - which makes the book feel whole and complete. But the best part of their existence, Dave, the whole reason I love them so much, is because that's where you can write your own story."

I will never forget that. I think all of us that knew him, Nikita, Stella, Garrett, Kid, and I alike, will never forget certain things about him. I'm twenty-five now, and I'm going to see Nikita for the first time since he helped move in Stella to her dorm her freshman year of college in a few weeks, and I'm genuinely terrified.

I am currently writing this in the back of my year book, under Foster's signature, in an outlined box he made. Above his left-handed H.A.G.S and name, he wrote, "I don't need to write you a story of our friendship, write your own in the pages left over (but in case you don't have any here is a box designated for just that)." I have a page and a half that I can use, but I'm being very conservative - or at least trying to - so that I don't run out of space.

I know that writing isn't going to make him keep living or anything, and I'm probably going to cry a lot writing this, but I know, in the end, I'll feel better. Writing in this box years after it was made makes me remember what his handwriting looked like and sitting in my old bedroom makes me feel like I'm a kid again. This sounds so depressing - it is - but I just need to remember him.

Forgetting is something Foster never did and goddammit I will never forget the one person who taught me that clear vision isn't involuntary - it's a choice.