Her Words, Not Mine

The sky felt wrong. It was the same deep blue it usually was in early autumn. The low, fluffy white clouds looked both as comfortable and ominous as usual. But it all felt wrong. Dale wondered how the world had kept turning. It felt like it should have stopped moving days ago. When he’d gotten that voicemail of a call he’d ignored because he’d been annoyed. It hadn’t stopped, though. Why hadn’t it?

His eyes burned and Dale tilted his head back and blinked hard. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to cry. Whatever happened. He didn’t have a right to mourn. Not after what he’d done. What he’d said. What he hadn’t said that he should have. He owed her so much more than he’d given her, and now she was gone.

He sat on the front steps of her parents’ house, right where he’d sat next to her a million other times. There was chipped, white paint on the railing and he could see that spot where she’d picked at the paint to peel it back. She never had sat still or stopped moving. Even when sitting and talking, she was always fidgeting. Listening, but never truly focused on just one thing.

“Because I’m always thinking about what I’m going to do next,” she’d told him when he’d cared to ask her about it. “My next painting or drawing. I see them in my head before I get them on paper.” Even with her head half in the clouds all the time, Dale swore she saw, heard, and understood so much more than normal people. More than he had been able to see and understand about her.

His sense of loss was a physical pain in his chest and a hollowness in his gut that he couldn’t do anything about. It came in waves, and Dale gritted his teeth and clenched his fists to wait for it to pass. Outrage followed the grief and it made him want to scream. He felt his neck and shoulders tense. Later, he’d go out to his old man’s garage and take his frustrations out on a busted bunching bag that was more duct tape than bag. He could scream then, if he wanted. For the time being, he wasn’t going to do something to make himself feel better that was just going to make things worse for her family.

Her mother, Martha, was barely more than five feet tall and reed thin, but Dale had never seen the woman look more formidable. She’d done the speaking at the viewing and the funeral and was even somehow the one comforting everyone else in their sorrow. Dale had no idea how she was doing it. He knew Martha had adored her daughter. Could even argue there’d been some favoritism there. Amy was the only foster kid Martha and Brance had taken in that they had ended up adopting.

And Brance… Dale looked over his shoulder through the screen door that led into the kitchen. He could see straight through the house to the front door on the far side, but it was that little den off to the right of it that held his attention. She… Amy… had called it the ‘Sun Room.’ It was southward facing and more window than wall, always warmer than the rest of the house. It had the best light, so that was where all of her art supplies were. Her old man sat there, in her favorite chair, but there was no one home.

Brance’s eyes were bloodshot, vague, watery, and empty. He looked exactly like what Dale imagined a broken man should look like. The few people that were hanging around avoided that room, and Brance, like there was some physical force holding them at bay. Like his pain was more than they could bare looking at. Martha had been guiding him around like a blind man all day, but just then she was in the dining room. Smiling at one of her daughter’s high school friends.

Something dark and awful coiled into a tight knot in Dale’s gut. It was self-righteous, envious, and hateful and it wanted to get out. He didn’t understand the sudden shift in emotion until he realized who it was making Martha laugh. Steven Lamar Duff, the worthless, absentee boyfriend. Dale curbed his jealousy, but the hatred remained. To his mind, Steven had no right to be there. Stupid little white boy had never been anything but pain for Amy. Guilt crept in as soon as he thought it. Dale hadn’t really been there for her, either.

He clenched his jaw and turned his attention back to the sky and how wrong it looked. He shouldn’t have been thinking things like that. They were high school kids with high school problems and he was letting his grief and anger find misplaced outlets. He made a mental note to thank his old man later. He’d warned Dale that might happen. It didn’t make his desire to go start a fight go away, though.

Dale looked to his left, where she should have been sitting and picking at the old, weathered paint. “Whatta ya lookin at?” she’d say when she caught him staring, a hidden laugh making her voice warble. The left corner of her mouth always twisted just a little bit higher than the right and she blushed when she smiled. That ache came back, his eyes burned, and Dale jammed his fists into his pockets as he got to his feet. He needed to take a walk.

*          *          *

“Did you know?” Monika whispered.

Jessie had lost track of the conversation. The pair were crammed into an old armchair together and she had to lean away from the shorter girl to look down at her. “What?”

“Don’t,” Marcus, Jessie’s bandmate and their mutual choir-buddy was glaring daggers at Monika from where he stood by the window.

“She knew her the best,” Monika tried to defend herself, and then Jessie released what she had asked.

“Seriously?” Jessie demanded around the sudden lump in her throat. At least Monika had the good grace to look apologetic. They had dated once, but recently, Jessie felt like she had never really known Monika. Her favorite color was green, she liked her hair best in its natural, curly glory, she hated the smell of shea butter but hoarded coconut scented lotions like there was no tomorrow, and she preferred the vanilla frosty over the strawberry one. Jessie could name a million other facts about the girl, but who the hell was she really? She used to think Monika was strong, independent, and caring, but ever since Amy had… passed… Jessie had found Monika attached to her hip and seemingly clueless about how anyone around her was feeling.

“None of us knew,” Marcus was still glowering down at Monika, towering over both the girls from his unnaturally tall vantage point. He was blonde, freckled, and awkward as a scarecrow on a broken pole most of the time – socially as much as physically. But, just then, Jessie thought he actually looked a little scary.

“Take it easy, she didn’t mean anything by it,” Jessie heard herself defending Monika, and managed to not feel like an idiot until Marcus looked at her. “Thanks, though. Really.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, looked uncomfortable, and then looked back out the window again.

A tense silence settled around them, none of them really knowing what to say or not to say to the others. Instead, they all just listened to the world around them or got lost in their own thoughts. Jessie watched Steven chatting up Amy’s mom in the dining room. Somehow, he managed to still be charming and relaxed, like none of the world’s troubles could touch him. Amy’s mom seemed the same way. Smiling, laughing. Some part of her wanted to hate them for it.

“You can’t tell by looking at the outside, what is happening on the inside.” Monika muttered from her side.

“What?” Jessie looked down again to find Monika staring in the same direction.

“Something Amy told me.” Monika’s voice cracked, her deep brown eyes started to water, and Jessie’s heart broke for her.

“She was good at that.” Marcus said.

“At what?” Monika asked.

“At seeing,” Jessie answered.

Marcus just nodded and took a sip from a soda can that he didn’t seem to realize he was slowly crushing. Jessie tucked her arm around Monika and let the girl rest against her side. They lapsed into silence again, and Jessie let her fingers play with Monika’s springy curls until she felt herself relax for real.

“She seemed so happy.” Monika was thinking out loud. Marcus and Jessie both tensed. “She was always smiling and laughing.”

“She always did have a joke on stand-by,” Marcus agreed, but Jessie could hear the pain in his voice as clear as the sobs hidden in Monika’s.

“Or a verbal bitch-slap for when I was being stupid,” Jessie added, surprised to feel happy when Marcus almost cracked a smile.

“Yeah,” he sighed, “she was good at that, too.”

“Verbal judo master,” Monika agreed, laughing a little.

Jessie pressed her face into the other girl’s hair and shut her eyes tight against the tears that threatened. She held her breath, mentally counted to ten, and then sighed it out. “She always won.”

“She always lost,” Marcus said. “Every single Mario Cart game we ever played.”

Jessie laughed. It sounded wrong, felt worse, and ended as quick as it started. “I meant arguments.”

“I know what you meant,” Marcus smiled at her. There was pain there, a lot of it, but something else, too. “She always won our arguments, too.”

“Was she always right?” Monika asked.

“No,” Marcus and Jessie answered as one, and the three shared a collective moment of amusement that eased their discomfort a little.

“But she still always won,” Markus finished, and then the moment had passed.

Quiet came again, but it was a companionable silence that settled in around them. For a little while, it was like Amy was still there. Jessie wasn’t sure if that made the hurt less, or more, but as she quietly cried, Monika wrapped her arms around Jessie and pulled her in close. Jessie clung to her while Marcus politely avoided looking at the pair.

*          *          *

Toni sat in her junker of a car and chewed on her lips. She’d avoided the viewing and kept her distance from the funeral. She knew no one would want to see her, so why was she doing this to herself? It wasn’t like Amy could see her or anything, right? Amy was Baháʼí, like her parents and her foster siblings and most of the natives around the area, and believed in all that afterlife stuff, souls and spirits. But Toni didn’t.

Did she?

“Damnit,” her voice cracked and she gripped the stearing wheel so hard her knuckles turned white and her fingers hurt.

“If you ever have questions, just look in my diary.” Amy had told her.

They’d driven out to the middle of nowhere and thrown a blanket down to stargaze together. Toni could still feel Amy’s slender fingers linked between her own. They’d laid there in silence for what seemed like hours before Amy had just said that out of the blue.

“What do you mean?” Toni had asked.

“I mean after,” Amy explained. “If you don’t understand. If you feel you need to know something, that’s where you should look.”

“Okay,” was all she had said.

Toni hadn’t really understood exactly what Amy had meant then. She told herself that she hadn’t known what Amy was going to do after she took her home. No one else had known, but Amy hadn’t told anyone else so far as Toni knew. That she was thinking about ending things. Toni hadn’t thought she was actually going to go through with it. They were just thoughts. She figured Amy had shared them because Toni had felt the same way before.

There were scars on her thighs where Toni cut herself when those feelings welled up. The ones that said life wasn’t worth living and death was the better option. She cut until she couldn’t feel anything but the pain, and then life went on as it always did. She’d never told Amy about the cutting. Maybe she should have. Or at least said something. Anything.

Amy had parents that loved her, siblings that looked up to her, friends that adored her. She hadn’t been popular, exactly, but she was well liked. Her art was fantastic, she’d been accepted to a major arts college. She was pretty in that naturally feminine way that made her seem like some human incarnation of mother nature. She was smart and funny and everything seemed to just happen the way Amy wanted things to happen.

How could she give all that up? How could she leave Toni alone? She knew Amy was her only friend. The only one that saw her for who she really was.

“Why did you leave me behind?!”

“Why are you shouting at yourself?” Toni startled and stared out the driver’s side window. Dale stood not far off, watching her with a wary interest. “I know you. You’re that… that girl, right? The one she sat in the bathrooms with a few months back?”

Toni blanched, swallowed hard, and then made herself nod. “Y-yeah. That’s me.”

“We’ve never actually met, I’m Dale.”

“I know who you are,” Toni said. Dale raised an eyebrow at her tone and Toni looked down at her hands. “Sorry, I- uh… I’m not usually welcome.”

“Yeah, I know.” Dale looked more like his mother than his father. Part native, just like Amy, but Toni wouldn’t have known it if no one had told her. He kept his dark hair cut so short she could barely tell it was there and his skin was a few shades darker than most. It was his eyes Toni found disquieting. They were black and intense and seemed to see right through her. “So, you gunna go in?”

“What?” Toni’s voice squeaked.

“I’ll walk you up.” Dale offered and started to walk toward the car.

“Wait, what? Why?” Toni grabbed the handle inside the door as if she could keep him from pulling it open.

“Because,” Dale said, stopping a few feet away and holding his hands up in a placating gesture. “She cared about you. A lot. That’s important to me.”

“Amy told you about me?” she wasn’t sure why, but that made her throat close down to strangle her voice. It dipped an octave, but Dale didn’t even react.

“Yeah, she told me.” He said. “I know the whole story. The girls harassing you in the restroom, your parents, the struggle with the school.”

“Everything?” Toni wasn’t sure if she wanted to groan, laugh, or cry,

“Yeah, everything.” Dale waited a beat, let Toni get herself together, and then tried again. “So, if you’re comin’ in, I’ll escort you. You do whatever it is you need to do, and I’ll escort you back out, too. You mattered to her, so you matter to me.”

*          *          *

“Oh, no,” Deli groaned, “this isn’t going to be good.”

“What? Why not?” Julia stopped watching Marcus brooding over Jessie and Monika to look up at Deli. He was only a year older than her, but twice her height. “What’s going on now?”

“You seriously don’t know?” Deli gave her a look, but all Julia could do was shrug. Deli rolled his. “Honey, just wait. You’ll see. You think her mother thought I was toxic? Please, I was as harmless as vanilla ice cream as soon as Toni showed up.”

Julia’s confusion got visibly worse and Deli huffed a disbelieving noise at her.

“Come on, we’ll watch the fireworks from the safety of the front porch.” Deli pulled Julia along behind him, out the front screen door and in the opposite direction from Dale and Toni coming in the back way.

“But I wanted to say hi to Dale,” Julia complained.

“Dale has no time for you, honey,” Deli explained in a patronizing tone. “I know you have a flame for him,” Deli watched the other boy trot up the back porch steps, “Hell, I do, too. But he only ever had eyes for Amy.”

Julia frowned, but didn’t argue. Deli was right, after all, and the fireworks were already getting started. Amy’s mom met Dale and Toni at the door, Steven close behind her.

“What is this about?” they heard her ask, blocking Dale by standing in his way. The boy was farm strong and he could have thrown Mrs. Locklear easier than he did a bale of hay, but he stopped and just looked down at her.

“One of her friends. She came to say goodbye,” Dale explained while Toni tried to hide herself behind him.

“She?” Mrs. Locklear asked.

“I don’t see any girl out there,” Steven added his own aggression to the tension. “Just a jerk dressed in drag.”

Everything went quiet. Suddenly everyone in the house was looking at the backdoor. Dale stood there, looking calm as you please, but his eyes promised violence as they landed on Steven. “Toni was important to her. They were friends. She just wants to say goodbye, and you’re going to let her.”

“I’m not allowing that thing in my house.”

“Thing?” Julia gaped up at Deli. He stood tense and angry beside her. She’d never seen him look so furious.

“Martha!” Mr. Locklear startled everyone by shouting, but obviously startled his wife most of all. He’d looked small and withered, sitting in that tiny purple chair that had been Amy’s favorite. When he stood up out of it, he suddenly looked more imposing and more dangerous than Dale. Julia thought he looked like what she imagined a warrior should when he was about to do battle, terrifying and ready. “Let the girl in.”

“It’s his fault!” Mrs. Locklear shouted back at her husband and everyone seemed to step back from the pair at the same time, even though no one actually moved and the couple were shouting across the width of the house at each other. “He’s the reason we lost Amy!”

“No, she’s not.” Mr. Locklear lowered his voice. He wasn’t shouting anymore, and there was so much pain in him that his words were broken, but there was no room for argument in him. “She didn’t take Amy away from you.”

“Yes, she- He! Did!” Mrs. Locklear was unraveling, becoming hysterical before their eyes, and no one seemed to know what to do about it. “He’s why my little girl is dead. He confused her, got into her head, gave her weird ideas-”

“Martha!” Mr. Locklear shouted again, and his wife stopped her screeching.

A tense silence followed, and was broken by Dale’s mother walking forward and taking Mrs. Locklear by the hand to walk her off somewhere that Julia and Deli couldn’t see them. Steven tried to body block Dale. They were about the same size, but Dale was stronger, and pushed Steven out of his way like he wasn’t even there. He let Toni go ahead of him, but followed close behind her, glowering at everyone that so much as glanced at them – Deli and Julia included.

Toni stopped at the foot of the stairs, right next to the Sun Room. She fidgeted a moment, chewing on her lips, and then turned and looked up at Mr. Locklear. “Um-uh… thank you. I-well… I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” He told her, and then folded himself back down into Amy’s purple chair.

Toni looked like she had something else to say, but then her eyes my Julia’s. Julia smiled weakly, waved, and then Toni must have thought better of it. She nearly ran up the stairs. Dale followed quietly behind her.

*          *          *

“Hey,” Steven shouted after the pair as they ran up the stairs. “Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

“Leave off it,” Darius tried to hiss in a whisper, but his voice was so deep he only managed to sound like growling gravel. Steven wasn’t listening anyway. He tried to follow Dale and Toni up the stairs, and Darius planted his hands on his back and shoved him toward the front door to keep Steven from doing anything stupid.

“Hey, what the hell!” Steven started cussing under his breath, tried to push Darius off, but the drummer had stronger arms than the lead singer. A couple of kids from that art club Amy had been in rushed to get out of their way as the boys spilled onto the front porch, and then down the short steps and into the front lawn.

“Stop!” Steven shouted, smacking Darius’s arms away from him and making the other boy’s just-opened soda go flying. “Get off me! What’s your deal? You’re on their side, that it?”

“No, I’m on your side.” Darius tried to keep his voice calm, tried to keep himself calm, but his heart was beating so hard he could feel the blood pumping in his neck. Something about the way Steven was acting was making him nervous. “You don’t need to start a fight with anybody. Not here. Not today.”

“I didn’t start this!” Steven was in Darius’ face and jamming a finger into his chest before he could react. “They started it. Everyone knows Dale had a thing for Amy.”

“Man, you’ve gotta let that go. Dale never did anything.”

“And then Amy went behind my back with that… with that…” Steven cast around, looking for an insult strong enough for what he was feeling, but he didn’t know anything good enough. “He got in her head and messed her up! Just like her mom said. You heard her!”

Steven was pacing, shouting, raking his hands through his hair, and crying. But Darius wasn’t even sure his friend knew just how unhinged he looked. All he could do was keep his hands up and move side to side to keep himself between Steven and the house.

“I know you’re hurting, but you have got to breathe, brother.” Steven glared at him, but Darius kept up. “You’re scaring me, here. Seriously, you look like a maniac.”

“I’m not crazy!” Steven was shouting again.

“Yeah, well, you look it. Kinda sound it, too, so…”

Steven swung at him, but Darius had expected it might happen and was ready to bat the other boy’s arm away. They sparred with each other from time to time, and Steven was usually a pretty good opponent. But, just then, he was blind with his emotions and each swing was powerful, but wild and unfocused. It made it a lot easier for Darius to contain and control the flow of the fight.

“Guys, stop,” one of those art kids, the girl, shouted from the porch.

Darius would have been happy to, but Steven wasn’t listening. The girl yelled at them again, but the other kid with her hushed her into silence. That was good, because that meant Darius could ignore them and focus on Steven. He never swung back on him, he just bobbed, weaved, blocked, took a couple body shots, and let Steven wear himself out. Thankfully, it didn’t take long. Less great, however, were the soul-wracking sobs that came out of his friend when Steven finally crumbled to his knees, exhausted.

Darius could handle violence. He’d been around it all his life. His father, his uncles, his brothers, they thrived in it and so did he. What he couldn’t handle was the raw outpouring of grief and guilt that was crumpled up on the ground in front of him.

“Out of the way!” That girl pushed past him. She was barely taller than Steven was, kneeling there on the ground, but she threw her arms around him and held on tight. Steven clung to her and cried harder. She looked so fragile and small, Darius thought she should have fallen over under the weight, but she didn’t. Her back was ramrod straight and she held Steven up as if he weighed nothing at all.

“Why?” Steven croaked out. Darius couldn’t have begun to know which why his friend was asking. Why had she killed herself? Why had she cheated on him? Why hadn’t she told any of them she wasn’t happy with herself? Or her life? Or them?

“I’m sorry,” the girl was whispering, but Darius heard it loud and clear over Steven’s sobbing. “Only she knows the answer to that.”

Steven buried his face against the smaller girl’s neck and cried harder.

Something painful and uncomfortable suddenly made Darius’s chest feel tight. He didn’t know what he was feeling, but he didn’t like it. “I’m over this,” he muttered. Neither of them seemed to hear him, so he turned away from them to head back inside. He needed another soda, anyway.

*          *          *

Heather wiped another tear from her cheek and turned another page. To think Amy had been keeping a diary all that time and she’d never known! She wondered how they’d shared a bedroom for eight years, and yet she’d never once seen the little journal before. Amy hadn’t done a very good job at keeping up with it, and some pages were covered in random sketches and doodles, so maybe that had helped.

Some pages had one or two sentences. Brief notes that a day had taken place but nothing interesting had happened. Others were funny stories about friends or family stuff. All of them had been obviously embellished for effect, but they were very much Heather’s favorites. Part of her wished Amy had decided to put as much effort into writing as she had put into painting. She would have been brilliant!

Others, however, were a painful collection of self-doubt, guilt for something Heather couldn’t guess, anger at a “Him” that Amy never named, and asking someone – “Lizzy-Bet” – for forgiveness. Much of it didn’t make sense to Heather, but it didn’t really need to. The emotions behind the words came through loud and clear. It got worse the closer she got to the last few pages, but no matter how many times she had tried since finding the dairy, she couldn’t read it all the way to the end.

“It’s just over here.”

“Yeah, I know where her room is.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“Course you didn’t. S’okay. We kinda grew up together.”

Heather startled. She knew the owners of both voices, but it was weird to hear them talking to each other. And the interruption, the intrusion on her solitude, her time with Amy, was irritating. Still, she put on a welcoming smile as the bedroom door opened. “Hey Dale, Hiya Toni.”

“Oh,” Toni stopped in the door and blushed profusely. “Hey, Heather… can we?”

“May we come in?” Dale said the words, but he wasn’t asking. He had gently pushed Toni in ahead of him and shut the door behind them before Heather said a word one way or the other.

“Yeah, of course.” Heather closed the journal and got up. She wanted to be understanding, but she also wanted to tell them both to get out. Maybe it was best to beat a hasty retreat before she did something she’d regret later. “I’ll just get out of yawl’s way.”

“Actually, you might be able to help.” Toni looked ashamed of herself for whatever it was she was about to ask, so Heather just waited until the girl got herself together and finally spat out quickly: “Amy-had-a-dairy-she-told-me-to-look-for-it.”

“Oh,” Heather blinked and looked back and forth between them. She thought about lying, and then guiltily nodded. “Yeah. She slipped a note into my dresser to tell me where to find it. Here you go.” She picked it up, and then held it out, but Toni kept her hands at her sides.

Heather’s lips pressed into a thin line, and then Dale cleared his throat and nudged Toni. “Go on and take it,” he said.

“Have you read it?” Toni asked, her voice suddenly very small and fragile.

“A little,” Heather said as gently as she could. “I can never seem to finish it.”

“Are you going to take it or not?” Dale wasn’t mean about it, but his annoyance finally made Toni move. She took the book and Heather moved aside to sit on her bed. Dale mirrored her, sitting on Amy’s bed on the opposite side of the room.

“She said that if I didn’t understand, the answers would be in here.” Toni told them, and then just stood there, staring at the journal and not opening it.

Part of Heather felt betrayed, but she pushed that stray emotion away. It was hard enough figuring out whether or not she was sad or angry for what her sister had done to them all. Trying to sort out how she felt about Toni and Steven and the rest of them and their relationships with a sister Heather had apparently barely known… was more effort than she could muster up the energy for.

“You’re not taking it with you.” Heather waited until Toni looked up at her, and then took a deep breath. “I know you liked Amy, and she liked you, but if you want to read that, then you should get started. That’s all I have left of her, and I’m not letting you take it away from me.”

“Don’t worry,” Dale said from where he sat, still as a stone. “She won’t take anything you don’t want her to.”

“No, I won’t,” Toni agreed, swallowed, and then sat at Amy’s desk, where Heather had been sitting before. Toni took a deep breath, sighed it out, and then opened the journal to read. She knew without knowing why, that what she needed was at the end. So Toni started at the back and flipped the pages until she saw the purple ink of the gel pen Toni had given Amy on her birthday.

*          *          *

Toni,

I know you thought I was joking and I’m sorry I manipulated you that way. It’s not your fault. I wanted you to know that first and foremost. I didn’t want to hurt you or anyone else. I wish you could forget that I existed at all. Maybe it would have been better that way, to have never met you. Then you would have one less reason to cry.

I wanted to tell you everything. I did. But I couldn’t have handled the way you would have looked at me. There were days I thought I was going to be okay, or that I would be eventually. Times when we were together and everything was just right. Everything worked. But nothing can ever be like that forever. I couldn’t be like that forever. I don’t belong and that is not meant for me.

You should know that you were my very best friend, and my lover, and maybe even my soulmate. You were, Toni. I know you loved me. I loved you, too. But I didn’t love you like you deserved. Like you loved me. I don’t hate you for that, I’m just sorry I couldn’t be better for you. I never really liked the idea of being alive, and the thought of being dead makes everything so clear. It makes me feel happy, to join that great void of nothing. I won’t have to feel anymore, just emptiness and peace. I look forward to that.

So, I want you to be happy for me. I know you won’t be, but I want you to, because this is better for me. I have found what I needed. I’m going to sleep, and this time, I won’t have to wake up again. I won’t have to feel anything ever again. But my last wish, the last thing I want, is for you to be happy, Toni.

Find your happiness, whatever it is, and then make it yours so much so that no one can ever take it away from you. And, if you can, tell them all that, in my own words, I am happy. I am resting. I am finally at peace.

* * *

In Loving Memory of a friend, renamed here as:

Amy Rose Locklear, Born: July 1986 - Died: August 2004

Your gone, the world kept turning, and we’re still here. It still doesn’t make sense. We still don’t understand. But we love you, we miss you, and I hope you really are happy, resting, and at peace.