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3:55 p.m. - 09/09/02
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I feel a little too sick to write about this, but then, I'd feel a little too sick not to write about it, too. I'll see how far I get.

I woke up this morning to a message on the phone from Shandi. She'd called just after midnight, something I can never remember her doing, and sounded pretty rough. She gave me her home number, her cell number (they can have cells in school now, I guess), and asked me to call her as soon as I got the message; she'd try to return it on her lunch break. She said two or three times that it was important, as if her calling after midnight didn't make that all too clear. And even though my mom, who saw me starting to shake, who saw me take my extra meds, kept saying, "Calm down, Mary. Remember you called us when you fell, and you're fine" I knew it wasn't like that. If she were struggling, she would have said she just needed to talk. Important, call me, those things meant something had happened. Call me at school; I'll return it on my lunch break meant something was bad.

And I knew. I knew there's only one thing that can happen in the world of high school to bring about those words. It was like watching the train that wrecked me last December speed closer, but having no idea when it would hit. It was like Sara and I were on the phone again, and now I was waiting for her to re-tell me something I already knew. Waiting to reexperience pain I'm not yet over.

Except I can't say it that way. Because this isn't the "second time it happened." This is separate, at the same time it brings up all those things that never went away. This is separate and deserves seperate attention, even if it draws on all the months-old pain.

A girl I know, a friend whose name is Ashley, was killed yesterday, some fluke accident while she was in the pool. Right now the theory is she had a heart attack, as she had high blood pressure problems, but no one knows for sure. She was killed. And she was my age, and we sat at the same table for lunch on the rare occasion that I went to it. She was my friend and we both played clarinets, but she laughed more, and worried less, and I liked her even though I didn't know her well. I didn't have a clique, but if I did, she would have been among it. I didn't have a group, best friends, but if someone had pegged me in one, they would have guessed it to be hers. I can't describe her. I want to say her name and have people know. The way we do. When someone calls you and says, "Ashley ****" and you know her eyes, her smile, her expressions, the little quirks of personality, the hearty way she laughed. I want everyone to know all that already because I don't yet have the words.

I feel guilty, of course. I always do. I feel guilty that I'm not a mess, that I'm not bawling. I feel guilty that I still haven't lit a candle for her, and that I'm not crocheting like a girl possessed. I know that everything I did/felt in response to losing Tracy still did not feel like enough, but I feel lax in not doing the same things. I knew Tracy on a level I know very few people, despite how little time I spent with her; we had access to each other that's rare outside of red. And so maybe it affected me more, and I hate that, I absolutely hate that, because one girl is not above the other, and I want to make it clear that Ashley is as real and wonderful as Tracy, and I was equally unprepared and I failed equally to be around her when I had the chance, and what happened is equally terrible, equally wrong.

I thought a large part of the pain with Trace was that she died of suicide, but this is just as violent, just as sudden, just as wrong. Is life completely random? Are things like this allowed? If I had it my way, we would leave the world in the order we came into it, and things would just stop now because I can't keep feeling this. Bad things don't come in threes; they come in fifties, and I'm forgetting how to breathe.

The 'second time' you expect to faint. You expect, waiting for the phone to ring, to drop it to the floor, to fall into darkness, to collapse below your needs, fold like a lawn chair, and have your mom come to your rescue. Maybe it's just that you've done so much falling lately, it seems routine- but maybe you just feel that ill with it, and want the correct level of drama. Because sitting afterward, typing, doing homework, listening to music, it isn't enough. Somewhere, something should completely break down, should say that a world has ended. Nothing does.

We're lucky...how little energy it takes to wake up in the morning. That our hearts beat involuntarily, our breathing continues even when we don't have the energy to monitor, make sure. We're lucky that existence continues by default. Even today.

chord

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