I couldn’t see Rudy or Tom inside the deli, only the empty booth where my empty root beer still sat. I thought of the ice melting in the cup. It was how I felt, cold, and getting smaller. But I was about to think completely for myself for the first time.
I believe the man in black leather knew I would come no closer to the car at the same moment I knew it. “Smart girl,” was the last thing he said to me.
For a couple of years, I allowed myself daydreams that Leitha had run away. Rudy and Tom went out looking for them as soon as I ran back inside and explained. Everyone in the neighborhood searched for days, some for weeks.
The year Leitha and I would have turned eighteen together, I hoped for a letter or a call telling me she’d been hiding. But Leitha had never hidden anything except maybe her fears. It was what made her different from the bold girls of today.
Of course I felt responsible. I should have clung to her, screamed, something. The truth is, I never really believed anything that girl did until after she’d done it, and I was left feeling shocked, but usually admiring her.
Usually.
I own five pairs of black jeans. They range in color from black with a faded purple tinge to deepest midnight. I don’t wear them in mourning. I wear them with the brightest colored shirts and shoes I can find, with red dye on my hair and a sunny smile when I can. It’s a statement I can never fully explain. Put most simply, I’m not hiding anymore, but it’s bigger than that. It may be impossible to understand by anyone other than the ghost of my friend who disappeared into a stolen white Mustang twenty years ago.
She’d understand it. I was a quiet girl. But we were best friends.
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