The Desolating Tale of Karen O'Hale
“Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.” ― Mitch Albom
A great while ago, when the world was still quite vivid to me, the sun beamed lustrously and the breeze flowed faintly through the summer sky. I had long forgotten that days like those existed. Ren O'Hale was illustrious and I, nebulous. She was the dream- this quintessential pixie dream girl. She was manic, even. She was my Holly Golightly. I've always noticed Ren and she eventually noticed me. I just wished it had been sooner. Maybe then, I wouldn't be writing the tale of her desolation.
I met Ren when the sun decided to be a wallflower and the breeze asked for the attention it needed. She was shivering-alone- at our school parking lot and wasn't wearing a jacket. It was the movie moment, you know? I could've walked up to her and I could've given her my jacket, but the realization was- I wasn't wearing one. Ren O'Hale had better people to talk to than boys who didn't wear snazzy leather jackets. I mean, she was Ren O'Hale. She wasn't insanely popular or anything, but everyone always liked her. She had this sense of purpose and was an untameable free spirit.
And I met her on the day she decided to let that all go.
Ren made me feel real in a sense that I've always just felt so invisible. The minute she touched my left arm was when I knew I really was alive and she gave me that. That feeling of worth- that I'm worth something. On good days she would talk about Apollo and read me poems from The Waste Land. She'd brush her fingers through my hair and smile at me sadly. She was melancholic as fuck, but I liked her more that way. I remember one day she called me the wind.
"You're like the air, you know? Invisible, but not to those who really see your importance."
That day at the parking lot was when everything about me felt real and everything about her felt so fragile. And broken. I knew she was slipping away. I wish I knew where.
It took her two weeks to tell me why. She said that it was her sister's birthday last month and that she was supposed to be nineteen by then. I knew about Lizzie O'Hale and her passing. I remember Lizzie when she was a senior last year and Ren and I were still juniors. They would walk to school together hand in hand. Liz wearing this black hoodie, while Ren always wore these shirts that were flowy and this sunflower headband on her hair. She always looked like a fairy.
"I always called her Beth. It suited her more. Most people loved calling her Lizzie or Liz, but not me. I stopped calling her that when she left." she said monotonously.
I went over to her house three days ago. I saw her flowers were in the garbage, covered with toilet paper so no one would notice. I noticed, I always do. Her white walls were too bare and her desk had too many books in disarray. She saw me staring and gave me a sheepish grin. I only knew now that they were Lizzie's books.
She was deteriorating and crying all the time. I never left her when she cried, yet I could never answer her calls at two in the morning. I don't know why. I always thought that being friends with Ren would be venturesome in a pleasurable way. It was never that way with Karen. She was passionate, yet lonely. Spontaneous, but she was more sulky now. I knew this was just a phase.
Until one day, our doorbell rang. It was a day when the sun decided to hide throughout the day and the breeze was somehow searching. I went downstairs and opened the door. The cold air enveloped my body and I found myself freezing. I looked. No one was there, but an envelope was placed on our welcome mat. I didn't open it. I was scared. The envelope only had two words written in a sloppy, cursive writing. I took a sharp breath and finally saw the wind coming out of my mouth in the form of tired exhales.
"Love, Ren."
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