I was standing outside next to her in my light grey hoodie, the kind with those wretched lint balls that shame my washing machine and embarrass my closet. Those universal lint hoodies that everyone’s mom perpetually picks out from the clearance section without consent. The kind that you’d only be comfortable wearing around your best friend.
We were leaning against a 7/11, half-emptied slushies in each hand, numbing the tips of our fingers. It stained our lips blue with that artificially flavored blueberry bliss. The night tasted like so many others we’d spent together, in front of countless 7/11s and amusement parks. It tasted like the flavor in the cotton candy we shared at the boardwalk built too close to the beach and in our favorite Sour Patch flavor, the certain ones we’d fight over as kids.
I kissed the back of my hand as if I were stamping a canvas, just to see the color that defined so many nights like this one. Holding my hand up to the sky, I realized that my blue lip stain was bleached under the fluorescent lighting of an OPEN sign.
“I wish it could always be like this.” The thought escaped me before I even realized it.
She hit me with a smile, one that was naturally thin, as if she’d carved it herself with nothing but her fountain pen and didn’t have the patience to look up the recipe. Her paper thin skin glowed under the lighting, with every corner and edge of her body highlighted, emphasizing her delicate frame.
Sometimes I found myself worrying that she’s flammable. Or that she couldn’t swim. Or that her radiant, porcelain face would crack if I so much as kissed her forehead.
“I’ll teach you karate this summer.” I’d said about two summers ago. Last summer it was “I’ll teach you how to swim.” This summer, I offered to teach her how to drive.
It was a warm, humid summer night, the kind that is usually accompanied with a clear, starry night sky – at least, according to all the magazines piled up on the coffee table. I’ve never seen an actual starry night sky, aside from that TV show with the name I can never remember- the one that used to air every Monday and Thursday – and Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night Sky.
No, stars don’t cluster in cities as restless as mine.
Besides, she was the only star I needed that night.
She picked a lint ball from my hoodie and held it close to her eyes with her delicate fingers, inspecting it the way I fear she’ll do to me one day.
“What are you doing?”
She didn’t respond.
Instead, she continued to pick lint balls from my hoodie and blew them away, into the night sky, as if she were trying to replace all the lost stars.
“Come on,” she said. “We don’t want to be here all night.”
She hadn’t seen the truck.
Raise a glass to all the lost stars.
The world would be a better place if we pretended lint balls were dandelions. If we can’t wish on stars, we need to find something better. Something universally accessible.
Stars don’t exist in my world, not anymore.
I think I was the one who chose the flowers for her funeral.
The world would be a better place-
If she had seen the truck coming that night. And I hadn’t thought it possible that the world could afford to lose any more stars.