Can You Hear From Heaven?

• Janelle Anderton, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2010

Time seemed to freeze, the world had truly stopped. Nothing mattered anymore; as soon as those words had left her mouth I had felt my earth crash down around me. It wasn’t real, it just couldn’t be.
The words didn’t sink in, they hadn’t and they never would. It couldn’t be true. My mouth tried to move, to make some sound, but my voice was frozen in my throat.
It isn’t real.
I was numb all over, something inside me was screaming but I couldn’t register. Nothing was real…
‘Honey, I’m…I’m so sorry,’ I felt her words rather than heard them, and then her arms were around me, comforting me, holding me. It still didn’t matter. I couldn’t put my arms back around her, I was frozen in place by my own despair.
It was just yesterday she was with me, laughing together, crying together, doing what best friends do. It felt like an eternity away that she had told me she was sick, but I couldn’t believe it. Nothing like that could happen to good people like her, it just wasn’t fair. So, I had refused to believe it and we went on with life like nothing was wrong.
And now she was gone.
‘It’s Jolene,’ mum had told me through tears as she hung up the phone. ‘She didn’t make it.’
It was all wrong; the world was wrong, my mother was wrong, the doctors were wrong, life in general was wrong.
‘No,’ I finally managed to whisper. Death couldn’t claim those who were good, caring, loving people. It couldn’t because I said so. ‘No, it’s not right.’
‘I’m sorry, honey, she didn’t deserve it.’ Mum replied through streams of tears.
I pushed her away from me and ran. I ran to nowhere in particular, I was just running and running until the sky above me shuddered and trembled with an incoming storm.
I was lost, and hurt. My insides ached, they longed for my best friend to be here with me. She would be the only one to understand why this had happened, why it was her and not someone else.
Looking up at the dark sky above me, I screamed with all my might. I drew in a deep breath just as the rain started to pour down upon me. The wetness streaked my face as I collapsed to the ground and my tears mixed with the rain so I couldn’t tell one from the other.
‘I love you,’ I whispered to the cold rain, knowing wherever she was, she would hear it and be able to move on. ‘I’ll never forget you.’
Knowing it was true, I forced myself to stand and started for my long journey home.