Samantha

Children were everywhere--on the slides, playing soccer on the fields of dying grass, on the bleachers, drinking Diet Coke because their mother's did. Samantha urged Orchid to play with her dolls everyday at recess. Today Samantha was gone. Tomorrow, Orchid was sure, Samantha would be gone again. Her absence gave Orchid nightmares. She'd remembered the quiet tears her mother had shed after Samantha's mother had called. At least, she thought her mother had called. Orchid left school early that day. It was raining.
Orchid heard shouts. She looked up from her tattered pink spiralbound journal, a birthday present from Samantha last year at her 10th birthday. The glittered butterfly, glue to the cover, made by Samantha herself, was beginning to wear away. Orchid wrote the last line to her version of pain relief--poetry. They wanted her to join in their game of tag. Orchid used the bathroom instead, hiding herself in the stall until the bell rang.
But Orchid did not cry for Samantha's absence. Samantha was in her journal, in her dreams and even the nightmares. Samantha's brown hair, strands blowing in the wind despite the crowd surrounding her broken body on the stretcher. Orchid didn't need her mother to tell. She'd been missing for two days after Orchid sleptover. Samantha had been ill, the strands of brown hair falling out in chunks. Last week, on her 11th birthday, she'd asked Orchid for one gift. That she'd never tell. Never tell anyone about the water spirits that called to her, that the Bible she kept underneath her mattress had told her not to follow. That God wouldn't want her to do this, that she had worth, purpose. But Samantha didn't know what to choose. She only felt the pain of needles, surgery and not being able to eat chocolate ice cream or pizza.
But Orchid didn't know how much she'd miss Samantha's smile. The one that made Orchid know friendship. The one who read to her poetry. The one who, before Orchid had returned home that night, whispered into her ear "don't tell, you promised. You promised you would live for me." The river had consumed her. It had been raining.
After recess, Orchid went back to her class. She answered questions when asked, turned in her math exam.
After school, she went to a small grassy grave in the cemetery down the street from the school. She laid the journal, along with an orchid she had kept in her bag, the one her mother had bought yesterday and would ask later that night where it had gone,beside the stone gray cross. She whispered goodbye. Later, she sat down by the river and watched the water flow.

By Ashley Dodge©