I sat on the steps alone and looked at our house. The live oak that had crowned our yard with its deciduous glory year after year seemed sad in its lonely post. The drought was taking its toll. The tree had stood proud for over a hundred years, and now, in a single summer, it might be wiped from the earth. Something about its cruel story resonated deep in me. The fragility of life. Robby's. The tree's. Ours. Mine.

My eyes traveled up to the window that was my room, vacant now. I didn't feel the tears at first, had no idea they were falling. It was the wetness of my pajama leg against my knee that alerted me at all. But I wasn't crying for Robby. Not this time. I was crying for the girl who used to live in that room. The girl who had nurtured a secret crush on Prescott Peters since second grade, who ate paste when someone dared her to, who chewed gum and doodled stars on the corners of her homework. The girl who passed notes to Mia Perez every time a teacher's back was turned until Mia moved away four years ago. The girl who loved to draw so much she carried a sketchbook with her everywhere, who lived vicariously through the fictional lives and loves of her favorite YA characters, who couldn't dance or carch a ball to save her life, but could name all fifty states and their capitals, make the meanest peanut-butter-and-banana sandwhich this side of the Mississippi, and say "I love you" in seven languages.

And now, sitting across the street on the front porch of our new neighbors' house, it seemed so far away. Like a movie seen once, something flat and purely entertaining -- a romantic comedy. It was bright and flashy and larger than life at the time. It filled the audience with hope and laughter and the belief in tomorrow. And it was simply over. The screen was blank. The audience was gone. The theater was empty. But knowing it wasn't real didn't take away the longing for it to be.

It was a silly, girlish life, but it had been mine. It had been enough. How many pieces of myself had I lost already?

Resurrection Girls by Ava Morgyn