Free I Love You to Death by Natalie Ward

everything.
    "Dad, can I get something for Grace?" I asked, wanting to let her know I was thinking of her even if she couldn’t be there with me.
    "No chocolate though ok?" he’d answered.
    "Some for me though?" I asked, hopeful.
    He smiled at me, rustling my hair like he always did. "Some for you kiddo, yes."
    We’d arrived back home late Sunday night and after school the following Monday, I asked Grace to come over. I hadn’t taken the bag I bought her with me to school, wanting to surprise her with it later on.
    She loved it and immediately tipped all the things from her old bag onto the floor so she could use her new one. Neither of us noticed where everything went and neither of us saw the problem that could possibly occur. I was too busy trying out her new lip gloss and Grace was too excited by the present I’d bought her. She packed all her stuff in it before standing up to put it on, admiring herself in my mirror. "Thanks Asha, I really like it."
    She always called me Asha, she was one of the few.
    Smiling back at her I said, "I’m glad, next time you can come with us."
    "Cool!"
    We hung out until dinner time. We should’ve been doing homework, but we didn’t, I spent the rest of the afternoon telling her all about New York and about all the cool things we’d do when we went there. Eventually Grace had to walk home. I waved goodbye to her from the front step.
    Unfortunately she never made it home. Almost, but not quite.
    Grace’s neighbour found her lying on her front lawn, right outside the front door. Grace was having an allergic reaction; she was really allergic to peanuts. Her mom was going through her bag, trying to find the epi-pen. God knows why she didn’t run inside and grab one of the others. Panic I guess. But it didn’t matter. She was never going to find it because no one knew it was lying under my bed at home. No one knew it had fallen out and rolled under there when Grace had emptied her old bag to throw everything into the new one I’d bought her. Neither of us saw it happen. I was too busy trying out her new lip gloss and she was too busy checking out her present from me. I never even found the epi-pen until years later when I was rearranging my bedroom.
    The big question was how Grace had ever come into contact with the nuts in the first place. She knew she couldn’t eat them, knew she couldn’t go near them. Even I knew she couldn’t. It’s why I hadn’t bought her the chocolate M&Ms in the first place. Even the plain ones were made in the same factory as the peanut ones. All chocolate was bad for her.
    I knew this.
    Of course, I didn’t stop to think about what I’d been eating when I tried on her lip gloss. Didn’t stop to think about the peanut M&Ms I’d snuck in after school when I was getting us something to drink in the kitchen. The peanuts that still would’ve been on my lips when I tried her lip gloss on. The same lip gloss she probably used when she was walking home from my place.
    But nobody ever knew, nobody ever worked it out. Grace’s mom, my Dad, they all asked me and I swore she didn’t eat any of the chocolate I brought home. I promised, I was certain, it wasn’t even in my room. I mean, I couldn’t work it out, didn’t work it out until years later. I was ten, remember. All I knew was that my best friend, the one person I could talk too, had died. Wasn’t going to be sitting beside me at school the next day or ever again. All because of what turned out to be a stupid, dumb decision on my part. A stupid, stupid decision that meant Grace, my best friend, my saviour, died.
    The teasing started up again not long after she died and this time I had no one to stick up for me.
     

The human heart, four chambers supplying life to the body in repeated rhythmic contractions
    ∞
    Playlist :
    1. Dakota – Stereophonics
    2. Talking to the moon – Bruno Mars
    3. Punching in a dream – The Naked & Famous
    ∞
    Music is an escape for me these days and sometimes I