Yours Truly,

• Divashli Dayal, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2019

I was lazily walking down the bustling road, trying to get my mind off what had happened. It had been two months, but I still couldn’t think straight. I loved her tenderly. I would’ve happily given up my life for her. She brought happiness into my melancholy life. I still remember her charcoal hair blowing in front of her forehead when I gave her kisses. I still remember her soft chuckles whenever I called her ‘beautiful’. I remember her eyes, silver like lightning, when I looked into them deeply. And don’t get me started on her smell. Her cinnamon smell always tingled my nose. It had me under a trance, I loved it. Now it haunts me.
It was winter, when we met. We went to the same school. We started as classmates, but I don’t really know how it happened. When spring came, things started to blossom. Her laughs were so uplifting, and all I wanted to do was protect her from everything she feared. She was a small girl, one year my senior. Her looks were alluring. Her intense gaze, and sharp features had me in a blissful daze. She made a statement around the whole school. But she couldn’t care less, something else was stirring inside of her. Like a delicious cookie, she was soft in the inside and hard on the outside. She was very precious to me. Her name was Destiny.
She was rather hollow-cheeked, but I never knew she was starving herself. One day she even came to school with bruises on her arms. I asked how she got them in the first place, but she always brushed me off.
Our one-month anniversary came by. I was so excited. I sprinted to her house, thinking of ways to spoil her, just to see her smile and hear her say my name repeatedly.
As I entered her street, I saw an ambulance parked in front of her house. The doors of the van were open to take in her body. I felt my heart stop. I sprinted to her, teary-eyed. As I saw her lifeless body on the stretcher, my soul had left my body. Her cheeks were bleached, her lips as red as blood. Her closed eyes had heavy dark bags. My endless screams she could not hear.
I entered the van to get a ride with her to the hospital. I never thought that this day would come. As the paramedics drove as fast as they could, all I did was watch her pale face, frozen. My mind was blank. She should have told me. I remember I cried a lot that day. Her leaving me, without telling me, was the hardest thing to comprehend. The doctors couldn’t save her. I walked back to her house, disappointed, politely asking her father, who was clearing his daughter’s belongings, for her recently worn sweater. He bought me a black sweater that had bleached spots. Looking at it made me cry. I had bought her that sweater. She died wearing that.