The Phoenix That Flew

o

May 14, 2016

Dear Journal,

I visited Andy's grave today. Her parents were there. They invited me to dinner at their house. I accepted their offer. My mom's going to drive me to their house. She never really knew about Andy. As far as I know, no one did.

When I went to Andy's grave there was many flowers. I set down a bouquet of white gardenias. After her parents left I started to draw. I had her sketchbook in my backpack. When I first looked through it it looked like there was only pictures. But the second to last page had a note.

Q, can you please draw my grave here?

I was a horrible drawer, but I tried. It turned out okay. I put as much detail as possible in it. When I finished, I flipped through the book again. I started to talk to the grave, like Andy was sitting there just in front of me. I talked about a lot of our past conversations, I spoke about how I had become good friends with Maria. She was a nice girl, I could see why Andy had been friends with her. When she heard about Andy's suicide, she was heartbroken.

I kept staring at the grave. Taking in ever detail.

Andy Louise Myers
Born
June 20, 1999
Died
April 17, 2016

The phoenix that fell.

I saw her as she died. I didn't see her make the jump but I saw the moment all the life drained from her eyes. We were sitting on a park bench, the day before it happened. There was a homeless woman and her three year old son. The mother was begging for food on the corner of a street. A man came by and kicked her and called her a liar. Andy was furious. She tried to chase the man, but her foot was messed up so she couldn't. We went to a McDonalds and bought a large meal and took it to the woman and her child. The kid was terrified, we learned his name was Marco. The mother had a look in her eyes that made you know she was determined. If she was going down, she was going down fighting. We gave her the food and had a conversation with her. It turns out her name was Teresa.

She told us about how she and Marco ended up on the streets. Her story was sad. She told us how she was born into poverty, grew up being extremely poor, how her parents died when she was in high school, how she got a job as a stripper because it was the best paying job she could find, how she got injured and lost her job. She was never able to go to college. After she lost her job she didn't have much money and used what she did on hospital bills. Then she became homeless. The she was raped. Then Marco was born. And here she was, talking to two high schoolers and eating McDonalds. Andy and I left soon after.

"The world disgusts me." Andy said, looking at the sky.

And then she was silent.