Lune

Before I started writing this passage, I was afraid of sounding ridiculous, so I put it off for weeks.

Today, I was on the bus home from school and, as always, the noise was getting on my nerves. But then, out of nowhere, this wave of longing and melancholy settled in my chest—a boy shoved another one, and I looked straight at the wide, unguarded smile of a stranger—and I thought: In adulthood, buses won't be this full of life. In adulthood, people won't laugh like this on their way home.

These past few days, I've felt as though a flame has been stolen from me. I'm either asleep or thinking about how much I'd rather be asleep. And when I wake up, it feels as if a hurricane has swept through my body, leaving behind an anesthetizing balm on every limb. I don't think I used to be like this.

And back when I really did sleep all day and only wake up late in the afternoon, I had company.

She was a corrupt girl (like me), reckless (like me), selfish (like me), and proud (not quite as much as me). We lived together, in the way two teenage girls who still live with their parents can live together. When I slept over at her house—or she at mine—and I watched her lying on her back, it was like looking at myself in another body, as though I were having an out-of-body experience. I didn't want to be her, and I certainly wasn't in love with her. She was what people affectionately call a sister from another mother.

The funny part is that she still lives just two blocks from my house. I still have her phone number, and every one of her social media accounts.

But if I tried to reach out, the person who would answer wouldn't be the one I miss.

It would be a pointless effort—the kind of effort I hate most.

I feel as though, for a year and a few months, we shared more than homemade meals and takeout, more than clothes and makeup, perfumes, or my bedroom and my house, more than the hardest laughs I've ever had.

We shared my soul.

And when we came apart, either that soul got lost somewhere, or it's still with her.

I hope it's still with her.

You don't have to give it back or anything. You can keep it.

Just look at it from time to time, and please—miss me a little. Long for me, feel for me.

Think of my colorful bedroom, my books, my music, my social awkwardness, my resentment toward men, my terrible cooking.

Think of me.

Think of me until I no longer need to write about you. Until your name stops surfacing whenever I'm telling someone about something oh so incredible I did over the past year. Until your memory becomes nothing more than something faded and bland.

Until I stop seeing so much of myself in you.