Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Write something in the YOUNG ADULT or TEEN genre (06/07/07)
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TITLE: Goodbye Jilly | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jeannie Brooks
06/13/07 -
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Not that it’s important to the story, but my name is April Stone. I’m sixteen years old with all the baggage that comes with being sixteen. My dad always raises his eyebrows when he hears that…and questions with a smirk “how much baggage can a sixteen year old have”? Today, I could tell him…today I have enough baggage to fill a moving van. Enough baggage to feel so tired I can barely keep my eyes open as I sit here thinking about my life, and wishing I would wake up to find this is all just a bad dream. But it isn’t a dream. I’m wide awake, and Jilly is never going to wake up again.
Looking back, I don’t ever remember a time when Jilly and I weren’t friends. If you saw one of us, look around, the other one was sure to be somewhere close by. From the first time we met in “mother’s day out” we were as close as two people could be. The memories are flooding over me now, bringing a smile and tears at the same time. That’s how Jilly could affect you…she’d have you rolling in the floor laughing at something outrageous she was saying, and then she’d give you one of her soul searching looks that would have your heart skipping a beat, wondering if she really did know all your secrets. And I think she did, know all my secrets that is. Even when I stopped telling them to her…she knew, and she was my best friend anyway. Why did I stop being her best friend?
The choices I made weren’t really bad. I didn’t “cross over to the dark side” or anything. I just wanted to experience new things. The world is a big place and I wanted to experience all of it. And Jilly, well Jilly just didn’t get it. She was totally okay with life in her small circle. She’d laugh and tell me she had a huge piece of the world already, she didn’t need to look for more of it to be happy. But I did, and as I was expanding my world, without realizing it, I was leaving behind one of the most special places I could ever find, my best friends heart.
I don’t remember when we stopped calling each other. As I started making new friends, I just didn’t think about sharing my life with her any more. Don’t get me wrong, we were still good friends, I mean, we didn’t ever have a fight or anything. I meant to call her and see if she wanted to do something together, but there just were so many other friends I was having fun with that I didn’t think to call her. And after a while, we just didn’t talk. I’d see her at school and she’d smile and we’d wave to each other, but we just didn’t spend time together any more.
And that’s why I never even knew she was sick. She didn’t share with me, because I had stopped sharing with her. I never knew what she was going through, what she was thinking or feeling. I never got to say goodbye, and that is the hardest part of all of this. I never said goodbye…never said I’m sorry to my best friend. And Jilly, being Jilly, knew how much I’d hate that. So she said goodbye to me, and shared her most treasured secret with me in a letter…friendships never die and love doesn’t end. Reading the crinkled letter is hard now, because my eyes are filled with tears, so I skip to the last part and tears flow down my face as I read her last words to me. And I look at Jilly and say, “Goodbye Jilly, and thanks for being my friend.”
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