A group of friends tries to piece itself back together after losing its glue.
*****
It's a quiet October morning in Palo Alto, California, when the news break out--June Beaumont was...
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SOFIA
I was pretty certain I was only mere moments away from throwing up.
After the absolute worst hours of my life, I assumed I had enough time to prepare for the assembly. Thus, I sat down at Meridian's desk and tried to put together some jumbled sentences which would, hopefully, turn into a wonderfully sentimental speech in case anyone asked me to say a few words about June. It was sort of unnerving to do it in his room, especially while he was sleeping in a puddle of his own tears, but I had to do it. I had to be prepared for whatever that assembly would throw at me.
Except no words ever came out.
Okay, fine, I managed to write a few sentences, but they all felt so distant, as if June and I had never been best friends, and all I could talk about was how amazing of a ballerina she was or how she was certainly getting into Stanford. Those were minor details everyone knew about, and June was so, so much more than that.
I eventually gave up and went back to bed, feeling like an abhorrent human being for an entire plethora of reasons. For example, my best friend had died, and I was unable to talk about her as a person instead of as assorted accomplishments. Secondly, I had just gotten into bed with her brother. We weren't even doing anything, and I was just comforting him like a friend would do, but a gnawing voice in the back of my mind wouldn't drop the subject.
It wasn't the time to worry about my romantic feelings for Meridian Beaumont, regardless of how strong they were. We were both mourning June, whom we both loved dearly, and we needed someone to be there for us. That's all it was, and all that it could ever be.
At some point in the afternoon, his parents came home. I was too much of a coward to face them and their grief, which was, undoubtedly, a million times bigger than mine (as though grieving was measurable and comparable across individuals), so I quickly snuck out through the window. I'd done it countless times from the windows in June's bedroom, so I knew exactly how to do it without getting hurt or being caught, but it was on a different side of the house, meaning I had to be extra careful.
Meridian, like the true angel he was, helped me out, but not before softly brushing his lips against my forehead before I jumped. When I was out of their garden, he closed the blinds and I rushed back to my house, pretending not to notice how Grace's bicycle was still absent.
I turned off my phone and refused to touch it throughout the remainder of the evening. My parents didn't try to drag me downstairs and force me to hang out with them, but they took turns visiting my room to check on me and bring me food at regular intervals—an afternoon snack and then dinner.
