We sat together in my pitch-black room so that all we could see was the faint glow from the stars on my ceiling and the pictures we painted with our quiet words. There was a lull in the silent whispers and under the guise of half-minded exhaustion we began to talk about it. The one thing that we never talked about, the one memory we made a silent pact to avoid, the one topic that we managed to keep buried between frivolous conversations had suddenly found it’s way to our lips. Even now, I’m not quite sure how we started to discuss Death.
There was a day a mere matter of months (though they felt more like years) ago that we first met Death. Of course we’d all known about Death from countless movies and we had cried as pets or distant relatives died, but this was the first time that Death became so immediate that it leered over our daily lives close enough that we could see his billowing cloak moving behind every shadowy corner. The five of us were only thirteen. We’d hardly known enough of life to know Death, but It stops for no one.

Everything that happened in the resulting months was a blur, like life was now a string of disjointed scenes, and action did not follow action as it should, nor retribution the crime. It was not until over a year later, past even that whispered midnight conversation, that I was able to piece everything together.

Death had torn us apart and changed us in ways that stories never tell you about, not for lack of trying, but in so far that words can only show us so much of human experience.

Some of us in the group became colder and more distant than before, others used It as an excuse to destroy the weak foundations of friendship, and so Death took two people away from the dark-eyed girl. To others we could not be distinguished from regular teenage girls fighting, but our arguments made less sense and held all of the passion of misplaced blame.

Though Death had affected each of us differently, it also changed us in one common way. We learned silence solved anything. If we never spoke about it, then maybe nothing happened and we could all return to the way things were, and if you disagreed then you were labeled insensitive and disposed of.

Though all of this sounds cruel for children, we hardly knew what to do with grief and the ways it released itself were so unrecognizable that we couldn’t stop it, even if we tried.
Given this, you can imagine my surprise that somehow the dark-eyed girl had consented to talking about the one unforgiveable topic. Even in my hazy consciousness, I recognized my opportunity. For quite some time I felt helpless to watching my friend turn into someone else in search of some sort of blind closure. My fear of doing nothing was surpassed by my fear of being dismissed in both my attempts of help and my friendship as I had seen happen before my very eyes.

I was clumsy about it though and in my tiredness I replaced my would-be comforting speech for some vague muttering about the dark-eyed girl’s father being with God now.

There was a pause when I finished, and I could practically see her mulling over the picture my words painted above her head. I thought I had finally gotten through to her, but then she replied quite calmly with words I will never forget, “I don’t believe in God. I’m just not that kind of girl.”

I could hardly imagine what she meant, but tried to see life through her eyes.

A place where God neither existed nor didn’t based on her beliefs, but that there were just some people who were meant to worship this empty figure, and others who weren’t. A place where problems disappeared if you asked them to, and she could become fine if she just became someone else. A place where somehow she and I were inexplicably and irreparably separated because you had to be a certain kind of person to hope for a second chance at life.

It was only then that I realized why she had changed so much since her father’s death. She was a person of action now, and thoughts disinterested her, She knew that if she thought hard enough she would be brought back not to the jovial face of her childhood but the face with a permanent cold mask. The reality in a pair of eyes turned dull and hands fallen limp shattered her even more than she wanted to believe. She couldn’t deal with the pain, so she wrote him out of her past and present hoping he wouldn’t affect her future, hoping also that I wouldn’t see the crack in her that she was trying to fill with empty meaningless words and uncharacteristic actions. She had convinced everyone, including herself, that she was all right, but she hadn’t convinced me.

My lips were already working out the ideas. I had the words to tell her what I knew about her. I was ready to admit that I had stumbled upon her secret before even she had, but then I caught sight of her shadowy figure rolling over and glancing casually in my direction, unaware of everything I was suddenly made painfully aware of.

There was no way to break past her stubborn ignorance, so great was her new illusion. Nothing I could say or do would ever shatter her new worry free world.

So I kept my eyes trained on the fading stars and whispered, “That is beautifully tragic,” and turned over where I lay listening as the stranger's breaths became slower and deeper. Finally, I let my unchecked tears fall, brimming with unspoken words.