Chapter Three

"Happiness was just outside my window. I thought it'd crash, blowing 80 miles an hour. But happiness is a little more like knocking on your door; you just let it in. Happiness feels a lot like sorrow. Let it be and you can't make it come or go. You are gone, not for good, but for now; but gone for now feels a lot like gone for good. Happiness is a firecracker sitting on my headboard . Happiness was never mine to hold. Careful, child. Light the fuse and get away because happiness throws a shower of sparks. Happiness damn near destroys you; breaks your faith to pieces on the floor. So you tell yourself, that's enough for now. But happiness has a violent roar." -The Fray

Individual #1, That freshman year, I will never forget. All thanks to you. That summer, I don't remember a lot of exact events. I know that we did vacation bible school together and that was a blast and that we definitely hung out and texted all the time. Sophomore year came all too fast. We compared schedules and found that we had 5th hour Spanish together as well as Theoretical Chemistry the next hour with different teachers. Do I even need to go into how much we hated chemistry that year? We must have complained about it so much. I remember at the start of sophomore year we were so afraid to break a single rule or get beat up. Then by the end of the year, we decided to be purposefully tardy to chemistry because we hated it so much. We felt like such bad asses, I know that for sure. Spanish was a complete party. Honestly, all we did was make memories there. You first got me hooked on Kingsley videos in that class. Remember how hard we laughed during SSR when we watched his "THINGS I HATE" video? It's ironic, now that you're gone, that the memories that were once the funniest, cause the most pain.

Individual #2, We kind of faded in and out as friends once middle school started. Towards the end of 7th grade we became closer. I started liking you again either that summer or towards the beginning of 8th grade. But, now, you had a girlfriend. You were crazy about her, too. However, being the loud mouth that I am, I told you I liked you anyways. I was pretty pathetic about it, if I remember correctly. I just short of professed my love for you late one night, via text message. So cute, right?! Well, it almost was. You reminded me of your girlfriend and claimed that I was more of a sister to you than girlfriend material, in the nicest way possible. I have to give you credit for being nice about it, you really were. I don't remember being that hurt by it, honestly. I might have been. I think I was mainly accepting of it, though. I took that "sister" role and played it like a professional. We continued to get closer as the years went on and we got older. I'd like to think that no matter what happens, I'll always be your sister.

Individual #3, I used to be so envious of you. You knew the right things to wear and say. I didn't ever feel like we were really good friends until one completely random night. I don't remember why we were running from our friend, but we were. You were driving and he was chasing us around the Target/Kohls parking lot. I remember that a shake was thrown at some point? I don't even remember what the shake was for or was from. Eventually, we tricked him enough that we were able to park at Kohls and sprint inside while he was only seconds behind. We ran to the dressing room by all the men's clothes, trying to trick him more. We locked ourselves in the biggest dressing room and fell over each other laughing. He found us anyway.

Individual #4, One of my favorite adventures was the first time we went tagging. We tagged a couple people here and there and then went and found where my boyfriend at the time was paying ultimate frisbee with all his friends. Now, make no mistake, we were professional taggers. We dressed in all black, put war paint on our faces and crept up behind their cars on the ground like ninjas. I was the look out while you and our friends went and wrote on each car. No one noticed a thing. They still don't know it was us. Well, unless they read this now, I guess. Oops..

Individual #5, The first month or so that we were dating were weird. We hung out a lot because it was summer but we never really did anything. We didn't act like we were dating. People had to beg us just to hug; we were shy. I remember once, we sat in my garage for almost two hours hiding from the people that were so happy to see us finally going out. Back then, we were actually allowed in your room. I would come over and we would just sit in your room and talk. You always had so much stuff in there, I couldn't stop asking questions about it. Then, once a couple months had passed, your cousin came to town. I'm always really awkward around new people so I didn't know how this would go. The first day I met her, she presented me with a bracelet and we all decided to walk to Target. By the walk back, she and I were already friends. In fact, she became quite helpful. As we were walking, she suddenly blurted, "Something is wrong here!" and grabbed our hands and put them together. First time we held hands, all thanks to her. It was clumsy and unexpected but a memory, still. After that, things began moving faster.