So tonight I was burning my favorite candle (thanks chicky!) and watching the flame flicker in the not-as-cool-as-I'd-hoped breeze from the fan that is masquerading as my air conditioning. I've been having difficulty sleeping and was hoping to clear my head with a little mind-numbing staring before going to bed. Instead, I ended up writing this. It's not good, and it's not what I'd hoped to write, but for the first time since you died I feel like I'm starting to be able to put it into words. It's always been a difficult friendship for me, ever since that first night when we really talked to eachother, but I think now it's getting easier. Anyway, here it is, all unedited and midnight-stupid. Fanfreekintastic.

I saw your face across the campfire that night, and I knew you needed me. And so, when the ritual ended and the group began to peel off into smaller segments, I found myself walking down the road with you. It was dark and we had no flashlight or moonlight or miraculous heavenly glow to light our steps. We felt our way slowly with our feet, a few steps apart. I did not touch you, because I thought I might break you if I did. Neither of us spoke. Suddenly you fell, collapsing in on yourself as though you’d been struck. I held you in the road, in the night, in the forest, and rocked you as you shook. I cried for you then, as I’ve cried for you so many times before and since. Your pain has always been greater than I, drowning me in its anger, and I’ve never known what to do. That night though, for the first and last time, I reached you. If I close my eyes and think of you, I can still see the outline of your face as it appeared when you finally looked up at me. You told me all the secret things that had been gnawing at you. The abuse, the drugs, the loneliness. Then, in that near-perfect night, our bodies hardly more than shadows lit by the paleness of our skin, you told me that when you looked at people you saw darkness, always. The color leaked out of them and bled into your discussions. It terrified you, the evil that you saw in people. You told me lastly of the darkness that you saw hovering always above my right shoulder, and I told you what it was, and it was your turn to cry for me. It seemed to last forever, that moment, both of us crying, broken and battered on the warm pavement. Eventually, though, it ended and we rose to go back to camp. On the way back you told me that I was the only person you’d ever seen light coming out of, the only person you’d ever believed wouldn’t harm you, the only friend you really believed you had.

I wish I could have been there for you like that forever. But I wasn’t. I think I failed you at the end. I think, maybe, that if I’d been there for you somehow that last night, that you wouldn’t have had to cross that barrier and walk onto the freeway. It’s not that I feel guilty, exactly, because I know you didn’t blame me. I know it wasn’t me who hurt you. But I also know I didn’t make things better for you, and I wish I could have done that. That is why it haunts me, I think, the image of you I have in my mind, striding down the center of the freeway, typewriter in your arms. You must have been so angry, to make someone else kill you, and to take your words with you. I hope somehow you are aware of what happened afterwards. I hope you know that Megan stole a bunch of your stuff from your mom’s house. They’d picked up all the pieces of your typewriter, and she took a few of them. She gave me the D. It’s barely scuffed, just a little bit on the edges, and I hope you know I have it. I will keep it safe always, as I could not keep you.