trish
The thunder woke me last night and even before I opened my eyes, I knew Shiloh was there. She looked at me with her sad eyes and for the millionth time I felt so tiny. "It's not your fault," her voice always says. But every single time I think she's wrong.
On rainy days, Shiloh and I used to love to sit on the porch swing at my house, where we'd listen to the rain and watch for lightning. We'd wrap up in the yellow quilt my grandma made, our heads touching so our hair would mix together. I miss that. I miss her.
"You look like a skeleton," Shiloh said. "A stick. It's not pretty, Ava. It's not." I think she was jealous. I was always the bigger girl. Not fat, but bigger. After working on Dade's farm all summer, mucking out stalls and rounding up goats, I slimmed down. Shiloh hated that.
I still have my ticket to the fair. Shiloh and I were going to go together and ride the spinning cups until we threw up, eat an obscene amount of cotton candy, and try to win goldfish. Then Tucker asked me and I said yes. I think everything is my fault.
"Take a bow, Ava," Shiloh said to me, after Tucker had gone. "You finally got what you wanted. You knew I liked Tucker." But I didn't know. How could I have known when she hadn't told me? She said I should have been able to see it in her face and hear it in her voice. But we never talked about him. Not once. I hate that it was over a boy.
Shiloh's grandma had a thick book on etiquette written by Emily Post. It was where she hid spare cash because she figured no one would actually read that book. Shiloh and I found the money. One day we took it and used it to buy Red Vines and Coke down at Nelson's Variety. When she found out, she told us we were going to hell.
It's a cliche, so I don't even want to write it, but they avoided me like the plague after Shiloh drowned. Like being around me would make them want to do it, too. The only person who didn't leave--aside from my mom, I mean--was Tucker. They tried to turn him against me, though. They tried.
Tucker and I were coming up from the meadow, laughing about something and he was picking bits of straw from my hair, our lips all red from kissing. We got to the house and my mom was standing there, looking serious and sad. I was drunk on happy and made some smart ass comment about someone pissing her her Cheerios. She told me about Shiloh and the river.
We had a fight not long before Shiloh drowned. I didn't mean what I said. Not any of it. When she visits me now, she tells me she knows, but I still feel guilty.
No one was expecting Shiloh to walk into the river and never come out. Me, maybe, but never her. They never found a body, so for a long time everyone thought she ran away. And even after she started coming around my room in the middle of the night I thought she was still alive. I never believed in ghosts.
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shilohtuckerroommeandrownedkissedmommissavahonestgirlhairshiloh'slikedrivernight