The Real World

Threes.

My best friend struggled with severe OCD.
The first time I met her I was twelve
and she said hello times three.
We knew everything about each other.
I would always remember to step on every third line in the side walk on the way to her house after school because that way she wouldn't freak out when we were trying to talk.
She would always bring me three dandelions at 4:21 in the afternoon on Mondays because she knew that I hated Mondays and that they were my favorite flower
because despite everyone insisting they were weeds they were always beautiful to me.
I saw the better of things.
Like in her.
Kids called her a weed.
They called her sick.
But they never saw her in the right moments.
Not like I did.
Once when we were counting her marble collection over and over and over  like we did every Friday afternoon,
She stopped counting for the first time and she looked at me
and gave me the black one.
She said that everyone always looks at the black one as the bad one.
She told me people don't look deep enough to see that black is filled with all the colors.
That on the inside, they were just as bright.
But people don't want the inside.
They want what makes themselves look better.
Tears filled my eyes as I realized she knew that she was different.
Carrying around black, she said,
Doesn't get you looked at.
It gets you laughed at. 
She looked at me like a girl who had just swallowed enough courage to take on the world alone and said
I don't want you to be laughed at.
I don't know if she was waiting for me to leave or just waiting for my reply but I took the marble and kept my gaze, looking her straight in the eyes.
After that she went back to counting marbles again by threes.

I was 16 when I fell to my knees on the street.
I couldn't stop her.
I couldn't! I didn't see her I swear I didn't see her running.
One second I was stepping on every third line as usual while listening to her humming.
The next I was holding my best friends hand connected to her twisted arm connected to her curled up body.
She was was crying and I asked her if she was okay which of course she wasn't that was a dumb thing to say
But after I asked she lied anyway 

She was too busy mumbling about the blue car that drove by.
123
Red red blue
123
Red red red no blue no blue no blue. Had to stop blue.
Her voice slowly faded into silence as the ambulance came.

Today is her birthday that we celebrated last year.
I set down three dandelions on her stone and let out a tear but only one because she told me that when you cry you lose another part of yourself each time and honestly I don't have anything left in this heart of mine to loose because half of it is six feet below me. Where it will always be.
I don't want someone else.
I want my black marble back.
I want the weird girl that used threes to make the world a happier place to be.