“Be her friend. She’s probably pretty scared right now and confused. Lonely, even. She doesn’t need you to feel sorry for her, honey. She just needs a friend. Someone who stops by and checks in on her every now and again. Someone to ask if she’s okay. Someone to let her know she’s not alone.”

Yeah. A friend. “I can do that. I can be a good friend, I think.”

She snickered slightly and bent forward, kissing my forehead. “I know you can. One second, let me get something for you.” She hurried out of the bedroom and when she returned, her left hand was in a fist. She sat beside me and opened her hand to reveal an anchor charm on a string. “Your father gave it to me when we were young, after my father died, and he made a promise to always be there for me whenever I needed him. He said he’d be my anchor when I felt like I was drifting away. He was always an amazing friend to me, and he still is. Maybe you can give it to Maggie, to make her smile.”

I took the necklace from my mom and thanked her. She helped me more than she knew, and if this anchor would make Maggie smile, then it was hers. I’d do anything to bring her beautiful ugly smiles back to the world.

“You okay today, Maggie May?” I asked with my hands holding my MP3 player as I stood outside of her bedroom door. She was standing by her window, staring down at the street when I arrived. She turned slowly my way and wrapped her arms tightly around her body. Her eyes looked sad, which made me sad, but I didn’t show it. I just gave her a small smile. “You okay today?” I repeated.

She nodded slowly, and I knew it was a lie, but that was okay. She could take all the time she needed to be okay, I didn’t mind. I wasn’t going anywhere.

“Can I come in?”

She nodded again.

When I stepped in, I straightened my tie—the green one she loved. My palms were sweating against my MP3 player, and my nose sniffled as we both sat on her bed. I didn’t know what to say. I mean, most of the time when people had a friendship, both sides talked. The more silence there was, the more nervous I became. My feet started tapping on the floor, and I watched as Maggie’s hands stayed clasped together in her lap. Her skin was extra pale, her eyes were extra heavy, and in that moment, I missed it. I missed the one thing that had annoyed me for so long.

I missed her voice.

“Can I hold your hand again?” I asked.

She slid her left hand into my right, and I sighed. Her fingers felt like ice.

“Squeeze my hand once if the answer is no, and twice if it’s yes, okay?”

She agreed and closed her eyes.

“Are you scared?”

Two squeezes.

“Are you sad?”

Two squeezes.

“Do you want to be alone?”

One squeeze.

“Do you think maybe…do you think I could be your friend?” I whispered.

Her eyes opened and locked with mine. I wondered if her heartbeats matched mine—wild, dizzy, panicked.

She looked down at our hands and squeezed once. Then she squeezed again, and my heart exploded.

I released the breath I had been holding.

With my free hand, I reached into my pocket and pulled out Mom’s necklace. “This is for you. It’s a friendship necklace. An anchor. I promise to be your friend, and be a good one, too. I mean, I’ll try my best. I’ll be your anchor. I’ll help you stay grounded when you feel like you’re drifting away. I just…” I sighed, staring down at the charm in my hand. “I want you to smile again. I want you to have the things you always wanted, and I’m gonna work hard to make sure you get them, too, even if it’s a dog named Skippy and a cat named Jam. I want you to know…” I sighed again, because whenever her eyes watered over, my chest hurt so much. “I need you to know that even if you decide to never speak again, you’ll always have someone around to hear you, Maggie. All right? I’ll always be there to listen to your silence. So do you want it? Do you want the necklace?”

She squeezed my hand twice, and a tiny, almost nonexistent smile found her.

“And if you want, we can listen to my music together. I know I said I’d never let you listen, but I mean, you can, if you want. Jamie made me a new playlist on his computer last night, and I put it on my MP3 player. I don’t know what he put on it, but we can listen together.”

She squeezed my hand twice again. I gave her one of the earbuds, and I took the other. We lay backward on her bed with our feet dangling off the edge. I hit play on the MP3 player and the song that started playing was “Low” by Flo Rida featuring T-Pain. Geez, Jamie. Not the perfect song for the moment. I went to change it, but Maggie squeezed my hand once, stopping me. Her eyes were closed and a few tears fell down her cheeks, but I swore I saw it: a tiny smile. It was so tiny some people would probably think it was a frown, but I knew it wasn’t.

My chest hurt, seeing the almost smile on her lips. I closed my eyes, and a few tears fell from my eyes, too, as we listened to Flo Rida. I didn’t know why, but whenever she cried, I did, too.

In that moment, I knew she had been right about everything all along.

She was right about me, and her, and us.

She’d be the one girl I’d love until forever.

No matter how life tried to change us.

May 15th, 2016 — Eighteen Years Old

Mama and Daddy never danced anymore.

Over the past ten years, I’d noticed a lot of changes between the two, but that was the saddest one. They still hugged each other each morning, and Daddy always kissed her forehead before he went to work at the university each day. As he walked out the front door, he always said, “I love,” and Mama would finish his sentence, “You.”

They still loved each other, but they never danced.

Normally at night, Mama spent time on the telephone, talking to her college best friends about me, different therapists, reading articles online, or paying bills. Daddy sat in the living room grading a stack of his papers from his graduate students or watching The Big Bang Theory.

In the past, Daddy used to try to turn on their wedding song, but Mama was too tired to sway with him.

“Dance with me?” he’d asked.

“Not tonight. I have a headache, Eric,” she’d reply.

She never knew it, but I always saw how Daddy frowned when she walked away.

“I love,” he’d say, staring at her back.

“You,” she’d murmur out of routine.