10. Fair / Autumn

Don't even ask, because I haven't a clue how I ended up with this...

10. Fair / Autumn

Hannah Safi

Write a story using the narrator's voice to highlight the life of another character.

Her name was Jennifer Oakley, and she was seventeen.

She had these blue eyes that seemed brighter than was possible and light blonde hair, the fairest I'd seen that was natural. And it was natural, genuine, like her.

She was genuinely nice. She genuinely cared. And she was genuinely loved. By parents, by peers, by teachers, by strangers, by everyone. But especially by me.

She was an awe-inspiring person – always smiling, always happy, always willing to listen.

She had the biggest heart of anyone I had ever met, and she shared her love with the world – she did work for the after school programs as well as the national volunteer activities that went on in our area, she remembered everyone's birthday and made them cards (including the teachers!), she tutored children in her spare time too.
She handed all her work in on time; she got good grades; she got along with her parents and siblings and still somehow managed to maintain an active social life within different circles.

She was amazing. She was a one-woman miracle.

She was beautiful, inside and out. I know, it's been said before, but it actually applies to Jennifer.

Not Jenny, not Jaz, but Jennifer. When people pronounced it, there was always respect in that name.

She sounds perfect, doesn't she?

She really was. Maybe not to everyone, but to me, she was.

She was my best friend and I was hers, and I loved her.

When I was small, when I first met her, she took me under her wing and protected me, like a big sister. I hadn't had someone to look after me at school before. The other children didn't like playing with me because I was different. Their parents didn't like the way my skin reflected my origins. I heard them, telling their precious children to stay away, to leave the darker girl alone. “Terrorists' daughter,” they called me, because my parents were immigrants. Jennifer never saw any of that. She saw a little girl playing in the sandbox on her own and decided that she would be my best friend because she had a cookie to share and she wanted to share it with me.

Jennifer lived her life that way. Kindness was her cookie, honesty was her cookie, love was her cookie, and she shared it with every person who played on their own. And then the plate of cookies was passed around, and each of those kids who played by themselves suddenly realised that, actually, they were playing in the sandbox with other children that Jennifer had befriended.

I still don't know how she did it.

At first it hurt when she brought other children along, as though I was no longer her sole focus. But I later learnt that her heart had more than enough space to fit us all in, and she would never push us out to make space for anyone else. I know I'm getting soppy, but it's as though the more people she brought together, the bigger her heart became.

I'm boring you with all this talk about her love, aren't I? I'm sorry.

She had asthma. Lots of people didn't know that, because she never used her inhaler in public. But, like every other problem in life, she took it in her stride. She would run and play with children and dance until morning, like every teenager. And then, in private, she would use that inhaler.
I asked why she tempted fate like that, why she ran and played and danced. She told me that every deep breath that almost took her breath away made her feel alive.
She breathed to live and she lived to love.

Jennifer once told me that there was nothing in the world like love.

We shared a million crazy memories, from kindergarten onwards.
I was her date to the first school dance, because the boy she liked had asked someone else, and I thought, hell, who was going to ask the nerd girl? I was either the nerd girl or the terrorists' daughter to everyone except Jennifer. She didn't see people the same way other kids did.

I was the first person she told when she had her first kiss.

I was the person who consoled her when her first boyfriend broke her heart.
I was the person who told her to follow her dreams when it came to applying for university.

Why? Because she was my best friend. The only person who wasn't related to me who has shown me kindness. She was open minded about everything, so much more accepting that anyone else our age.

She started this crazy practice that became tradition to the two of us.
When the first autumn leaves would fall, we would try to catch them as they dropped. The first person to catch a leaf would be able to ask for whatever they wanted. She was generally faster at spotting them than I was.

That first year, it was an ice-cream at Joe's. She loved the white chocolate and coffee ice-cream.
The second year, it was white chocolate and coffee ice-cream and a hug.
Over the years we played, it was always an ice cream at Joe's and something else. A hug, a trip to the cinema, a book, a promise that had to be kept.

Last year, that was a kiss. Someone from school saw. I never did find out who.

And just like that, the bubble of her perfect life popped.

She said she didn't care, because love was better than popularity, but I knew that she cared.

People no longer smiled at her when she walked down the hall, some of the teachers were less friendly, and when her parents found out, she was given the choice to stop seeing me or be kicked out. Apparently it wasn't even the fact that I was a girl. It was because there is a line (that shouldn't be crossed) between having a Muslim best friend and having a Muslim girlfriend. Apparently she was getting too close to the religion. Did you know that homosexuality is punished in Islam? I'm not Muslim.
My parents told me at a young age that I was in a free land, and I didn't have to stick to the writings that other people were faithful to.
Still, I didn't want to be responsible for dividing Jennifer from her parents. I told her that we could pretend to stop being friends, if she wanted, but she said no, she wanted to be honest, that I was her best friend and she wasn't going to hide her love for me.

Once she explained how she felt, her parents apparently came around.

I don't know what she said, but it must have been convincing.

School was more difficult to navigate.

Some senior boys, Neanderthals, pushed her into the boy's changing room one afternoon, threatened to beat “the gay” out of her, and scared her so much that she came to me in tears.

My heart constricted at the sight of her crying. This wasn't the way my happy, loving Jennifer should be. She sobbed her way through the explanation and I didn't catch everything, but I heard enough. It took me all evening to calm her down enough to get her to sleep. When I think of that night, her sobs are still clear in my ears.

I denounced all those beasts for bullying. They were forced into disciplinary hearings, but as far as I'm concerned, they got off scot-free.

It made me wonder what else she had had to go through that she wasn't telling me. I was so used to being treated as an outcast that the random bullying hadn't really got to me, but Jennifer had come from a completely different world.

I promised her I would love her whatever happened.

She told me, once, that life was extraordinary. There were billions of people on this same planet, and despite that, people manage to come together as families even if they have no blood ties. She said I was part of her family.

I am glad to have been one of the ones to know her. I am honoured. I wish I had known her as well as I thought I did.

The last time I spoke to her was two days before the summer holidays, discussing summer plans.

She told me she might not be able to make the road trip we had planned. I told that I didn't mind, that we could get summer jobs here instead.

She said she didn't want to be the flaw in my perfect summer plan. Didn't want to be the flaw in what was going to be my perfect life. She broke up with me.
She wouldn't come to the door when I came to her house, she wouldn't answer my calls or my messages. She didn't want to speak to me, for the first time in thirteen years. And that hurt.
Perfect.

She was my best friend, and she was perfect, in every way imaginable.

Maybe she isn't as perfect any more, spread-eagled on the pavement, limbs at odd angles. Maybe her hair, matted with blood, isn't as fair as it used to be. Maybe her closed eyes take away from the bright of the blue behind them. Maybe the tear tracks that tell us the truth take away from her beauty. Maybe the red on the concrete and the bones sticking out of her skin make her ordinary. Maybe they do, but she was far from ordinary.

She will always be perfect to me.