Thirty-One Letters

Three

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief—Aeschylus

A row of expensive-looking photography equipment spread across the racks.  Tripods, camera bags and straps, even professional backdrops for the avid portrait photographers. 

Hadley merely continued through the aisle, searching for the camera bodies and lenses, finding them in a sleek glass case. They gleamed up at her, unforgiving in their demand for her to pick one out.

Not for the first time, she reconsidered what she was doing. Following instructions laid out by her dead brother. It sounded crazy. Maybe it more than sounded...it was crazy. 

She would do it — there was no doubt about that — but maybe it meant that she was going a little insane but that wasn't foreign territory for her anymore. Sometimes she felt as if her entire head was going to explode and all of the things that used to make sense and no longer did would just escape, leaving her an empty shell with a brain that didn't work.

"Can I help you with anything?"

Hadley looked up sharply to see a smiling girl with yellow hair and bright blue eyes staring at her. The nametag on her shirt betrayed her name: 'Sarah.'

"Uh, yeah, sure. Just, um, that one please." Hadley pointed at the cheapest camera in the case which happened to be a thin silver model. Nothing flashy. Just a standard digital camera. Sarah opened a cabinet underneath the display case and pulled out a rectangular box.

"There you go." Hadley was beginning to wonder if someone had instructed this girl not to stop smiling. If anything, her grin just kept getting wider, exposing more and more perfect white teeth. "Do you need help picking out a camera bag or any other accessories?"

Hadley shook her head. "No, thanks."

Sarah beamed brightly. "Well, okay then. If you need any other assistance please don't hesitate to come and find me or any of our other sales representatives."

The girl walked away and Hadley breathed a sigh of relief. Happiness, even the fake crap that girl was selling, was too dangerous these days. She walked to the front of the store to where the cashiers were located, paid for the camera, and left the store. 

She'd only taken a few steps beyond the door when she saw her.

Across the street, waves of chocolate brown hair falling down her back, and fair skin that was near blinding against the tanned skin of the second girl beside her. Her head was thrown back in a laugh and her eyes, which were the same colour as her hair, sparked with humour.

Hadley tried to sneak away unscathed, tried to scuttle off before anyone noticed her, but the damage was already done.

"Hadley?" the girl called, already darting across the street and leaving her other friend, a girl Hadley didn't recognize, behind.

"Hey, Casey."

Casey Armstrong had been Hadley's best friend since preschool. They'd grown up together, surfing in the ocean, figuring out how to apply makeup and throw a punch, not to mention learning about boys and dating and all of the other stuff that came with growing up. 

There had seldom been a time that they weren't speaking to one another until Hadley had all but cut ties with her after Tanner's death.

It hadn't been an intentional act. She hadn't woken up one morning and decided not to be friends with Casey anymore. The truth of the matter was that Hadley didn't know how to be friends with Casey now. Didn't know how to be friends with any of the people she'd been friends with since everyone she knew, Tanner had known too.