She had fire in her eyes. Silken webbings of gold and charred magma molten into a shade that would have suited only her.They were situated, evenly, on the outsides of a button nosed kissed with with a mess of hardly visible freckles that much resembled a light sprinkling of cinnamon. Her mouth was small, but when she smiled and the corners of her lips tapered off into the rosy apples of her cheeks...it was all you could see. Life danced on her cheeks and into her eyes where it glittered and folded into little crinkles. Her hair was soft and straight. It fell in a blunt cut a few inches past the curve of her shoulders. Sometimes it was braided, burnt-gold ribbon weaved in simple but elegant twists. And sometimes it was thrown up into a loose bun that barely clung to her scalp, and yet she wore it perfectly. Her voice was smooth and funny, always a thread of laughter bubbling on each syllable she spoke. Sometimes it was drawn out into the buttery notes of song, and it sounded so perfectly that the only plausible thing to do was to stop and to listen. To her.

But there was something missing.

Maybe it was in her car, after school, when it hit. Maybe it was at home, tangled in the mountainous mass of blankets that was her bed, laying there, idly, with nothing but a million thoughts to keep her company. Thieves, is what they were. Those lonely times. Stealing the most precious of pieces and parts of her; of her thoughts and of her words and of her smile and her laugh. But almost no one noticed. Almost.

And now suddenly I’m having this revelation. A revelation, because she is my biggest fear. And I started writing this character and realized that the girl with fire in her eyes wasn’t just a mere figment of my imagination. No - she was real, she was tangible.

She was Natalie.

My biggest fear was losing that part of her that would laugh at my lamest jokes. The part of her that, when I would trip or fall or surrender to some other type of embarrassment that seems to happen much too often, would smile and make sure that I didn’t feel embarrassed ..and then ask if I was okay. And I never did once feel embarrassed, not while she was around anyway. I was always myself - always comfortable. Comfortable to laugh and to cry and to share my writing with. Comfortable enough to talk about everything from boys and parties to therapy and mental afflictions that we don’t deserve. Comfortable enough that when someone asked me who would be the first person I called if I felt as if I was about to do something stupid, she - not my mom, not my dad, not my sister, not my brother, not some 1-800 hotline - she would be that person. Natalie. The girl with fire in her eyes.