Seven Years, To The Day
so many things I want to say.
Dear Caroline,
It’s been 7 years since you disappeared. That’s what it feels like sometimes, usually only for a split second, I’ll see something that reminds me of you or I’ll want text you something and, just for a moment, I’ll be like— where’d Caroline go? Then of course it all comes back. You didn’t disappear, your dad killed you and your mum and himself. That is literally the craziest thing that has ever happened. Sometimes I have to say it out loud, several times in a row, to remember it’s even true. Literally who gets murdered?
I visited your grave on your birthday. It’s not so much a grave but a plaque, all the ones around you are like thirty years older. It was my first time back in Greenwich in four years. I was so nervous to go back, you knew I always hated it there. Even though it’s where I spent most of my life, I feel so distant from it. I felt distant from it while I still lived there, always some divide between me and the town. I was scared to go back and visit alone because I was scared of that isolation stirring back up in me, but when I got to Grand Central that morning a flash of a different feeling came. I got that body memory of how good it felt to be a teenager and to come into the city, arriving from the Metro North and pumping the pavement as soon as we got to the platform. I remember running to catch the train home before peak hours started, knowing that I’d be back in the city soon enough. That feeling landed in my body’s memory and my anxiety settled down, I knew I’d be back in the city soon enough.
One of the last things I did before my mum moved was come visit your grave with Christina, we decorated the whole plaque with flowers. This time I brought a bunch of post it’s, I put up a big “25 Today!” next to your name. I talked to you for three hours. Thank god the Putnam Cemetery isn’t busy on a Thursday afternoon because I was posted up and verbal. The shit I said over there is just between us, and I know you heard it all. Only after I had cried myself dry, told you every secret anyone has ever told me, showed you pictures of how cute my boyfriend is and how old my baby brother is, I called an uber.
Can you guess where I went for lunch? Hint: it was the last place I saw you. Another hint: it’s where I had my 15th birthday lunch after 8th grade Prize Day. One last hint: Caroline Hughes had her 10th or 11th birthday here too, a psychic sat at the head of the table and we took turns sitting with her and hearing about where we’d go to college. That’s right: Meli Melo. Do you remember when we went there? It was two months before you died. You were in Greenwich for SAT tutoring and we met on The Ave after. We both got French Onion Soup even though it was a hot and humid summer day…the soup truly is just that good. This time, I sat alone at a table in the middle of the restaurant. I asked to move near a window and the waitress told me she wouldn’t recommend that if I was getting soup, because the sun bakes the tables on that side. I didn’t know how to tell her I remembered her from when I was here with my friend 7 years ago, and all the times before that, so instead I just told her I’d stay at my table.
I got the French Onion Soup and I sweat the whole time and stared at two girls sitting in the window seat we had shared all those years ago. They looked exactly the way we looked at their age, dressed in jean shorts and Brandy tanks. Long hair, smoothies and a crepe, gossiping about all the people they were gonna see when school started again. I thought about our last text conversation, you asking me for my opinion on your senior names and us talking about how fun Senior Spring Break in Atlantis was going to be. I felt your ghost in the room and asked for the other half of my sandwich to go. I stopped in Brandy Melville and felt even more haunted— it was time to go home. I caught the next train back to the city and took the subway to my apartment, feeling good about having spent the day with you, feeling relieved that I don’t have to call that town home anymore, but so so grateful that it gave me you.
Today, on your death anniversary, I had breakfast in Washington Square Park with Ellie Dailey, Caroline Miller, Ava Bloom, and Olivia Monohan. The five of us haven’t been in a room together (aside from your funeral) since 8th grade. It had been 11 years. We spent hours chatting, catching each other up on everything that had happened in the past couple of years. Everyone talked about their jobs, their boyfriends, their roommates, their friends, their lives at large. We started stories that unlocked memories and it was like I got to see new videos of you in my head, dances and sleepovers I had forgotten about until surrounded by the people who made up my world when I was 13. There’s so much of you in all of us.
There’s nothing I wouldn’t give to see you now. To see all the shit you’d be up to, to meet the friends you made in college and hear you complain about your job and how high your rent is. I hold onto so much of being 15 because it’s me holding onto you. We started making movies 10 years ago and I haven’t stopped, how could I? It’s always how you pictured me, so it’s the only way I know how to picture me. Every set I’m on, every editing room I’m in, I know you’re there, and you get it, because we did it together. I wonder if you’d still be doing it, or if you would have moved on to something else entirely. You had just turned 18 when you died, and at the time there was no way for me to understand how young that is, but it becomes more and more clear to me every year. You had so much time left to grow and change and learn, so many mistakes to make and phases to go through, so many hearts to break and lessons to learn and friends to meet. So much love left to give and receive. I don’t know where to put my love for you, but sometimes it bursts at the seams and sprays all over the wall. And the world looks a little better.
I miss you so much,
maya