Snowdrop
by G.K. Elliott, age 14
We had been friends for a very long time.
She meant the world to me, but I never told her.
Not until it was too late.
We would spend days together, at the record shop, the bookstore, the guitar store — really anywhere was good for us. We would pack a picnic and go to the park, or the river. I would play her a love song and she would spin and spin and spin until she made me dizzy and I fumbled with my chords.
She played the instrument better than I ever would. She could make six strings into a broken heart, a ray of sunshine, a perfect day.
It was those perfect days I loved the most. We had no obligations, no tasks.
We thought all we had was time.
Dance, she would tell me, she would drag the guitar from my hands and pull me up from the ground. Then she would put her arms out and spin. Her hair would billow around her like magic, her dress would flutter in the movement, and her eyes would close in serene delight and peace.
Once she stopped twirling, I would take her hand and her waist and we would dance to the song of the birds and the river. We would dance like there was no tomorrow, we could live in today forever, because we had forever on our hands.
We had been so young.
Summers came and went, with them came bliss and comfort, and more afternoons spent in town and out of it.
“You’re not like anyone else I know,” I would tell her. “You’re different.”
She would laugh. To be anyone else would be different. You like me the way I am, don’t you? Because I could never change.
I would smile at her and tell her the way she was, was the way I wanted her, and we would both laugh.
The birds would coo at us, egging us on, from their perches high above us. Two friends spending their lives together, facing the world as a team, ready to take what would come.
What would come would be faced alone.
She loved the woods. It’s the only place I feel safe, she told me. I’m too fragile to be anywhere else. I can be hurt so easily.
I promised her I would never hurt her, as I ran with her through the trees. I promised her that I would be there to save her if she ever needed saving.
It wasn’t fully a lie, I guess.
She was so fragile in my arms, a flower just barely in bloom, too weak, too young to be so exposed to the dangerous world.
I would sit with her in the grass until my legs went numb, full of pricks and needles. She would chuckle when I cringed at the feeling. She knew I wasn’t in real pain.
When I was in pain, she was there. She would take my hand in hers and comfort me. And what a comfort she was. In turn, I was there by her side, there through darkness, through fear. Through whatever the world could throw at us.
I was there until the end.
Two teenagers living in their own immortal world. Their own world that would never change.
I barely remember who they were, but I know that they had both nothing and everything, and they were happy with it. I wish sometimes, as I sit and wonder what the future holds, that I could be that joy-sick again. But things like that are too fragile to last forever.
I could never see us growing old, I could never see her growing old.
Maybe I jinxed it.
I remember when the cold storms blew in. But they made no noise in my ears as I spent days on end by a hospital bed, a small hand in my own.
She had been a snowdrop, quick and early to bloom, yet just as quick to leave and never return. They leave a mark in your life that opens the door to a new age, a new time, a new season.
And once you see them and feel their petals, your life is never the same.
It didn’t stop raining for a long time. The cold weather mocked her hot, fever-stricken skin, the darkness a gloomy contrast to her pale, clammy face and hands.
I was there as she stared at the ceiling, as she cried for her mother, who held her other hand. I was there as she said my name and murmured, Do you see it? The sky has opened up. The ceiling has cracked open.
I was there as the clouds outside the window parted and a ray of sunshine fell onto us, onto her, cried as she smiled in some mistiful way, there as she left with all the happy summers of our teenage years.
As all we had ever been was captured in some sort of glory, our innocence, our warmth, as it all flew through that unseeable crack in the ceiling, as it flew away and never returned.
I could almost see her dance through the clouds, almost see her flash one last smile at me, as she twirled her special twirl and made her way to some unbroken place, some place where snowdrops never faded, never died. A place her heart could thrive unbroken. Where she could spin by the river all she wanted.
A place I would have to wait so long to join her in.
I held that hand in mine one last time.
I kissed that cheek one last time.
I pulled myself up, my eyes still locked on the clouds in which she had disappeared, and then turned and made my way out the door.
About the Author
G.K. Elliott lives on a small farm in Wenatchee, WA, and spends her days writing, drawing, reading, and singing. She enjoys tea, rainy days, clouds, and using her writing to glorify her maker.
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Image: Beyond the Water by G.K. Elliott (age 14), Issue #8. All rights reserved.
