cigarette daydreams

/25

"Sometimes people leave us. Sometimes, people just die. For no reason. And it doesn't make sense, but there's nothing we can do about it."

The crowd was silent. Yellow graduation caps donned everyone's heads.

"This year, I met a girl. None of you knew her. You thought she was weird, and that she didn't make any sense, but really, she made more sense than any of you. She lived. She should have lived longer."

Don't break down.

"This girl was Lydi Stern. She would have graduated with us. She would have been up here with you. But she died. Of brain cancer. And I was the only one who noticed for a long time. Eventually, you all looked around and wondered where that beautiful, dark-haired girl was. And you didn't know."

Too late.

"High school isn't about forgetting people. It's about meeting them. And remembering them. And I'm going to be the only person in this entire school who really remembers her."

The notebook, the bled notebook, was on the stand in front of him.

"But I guess that's okay. Because I'll never forget her. Never. Not when I leave this place and go to university. Not when I meet someone new. Not when I'm lying on my death bed. Because when she was on her death bed, I was sitting there with her."

Someone in the audience let out a sob.

"I'm going to read you a little something that Lydi made me think of. I think I wrote this after she died."

A folded page. The rustle of old paper.

" 'Life is a puzzle. We think it doesn't mean anything. Or maybe we don't even bother wondering. But if you did wonder, I think you'd come to the same conclusion. Life as we know it is meaningless. How could it be anything else, with the war and the disease and the death that happens every day? But maybe we haven't thought about it for long enough.

"Because if you sit in your room for a while, with the curtains closed, and...and with nothing but the silence in the air and the screams in your head, you come to a different conclusion. We are people. We think we know other people, but we really, really don't. And we're always trying to find that...whatever it is that defines someone else. We fall in love, we feel loss, and we dream. And all of that...all of that means something to me.

"And I don't know if it means anything to you, but if those things mean something, and if those things are my life, then I guess they're one in the same. And therefore, life has a meaning, albeit a twisted and empty one.' "

A few of the girls were crying now. Maybe that wasn't what they wanted out of a valedictorian speech, but they were going to listen. And Karden was going to keep on talking.

"Lydi died thinking that life was meaningless. I hope that wherever she is, she realizes that it really isn't. Every second means something. Because we let it."

On the stage, a broken boy stood with a notebook in his shaking hands. Tears streamed down his face. He used to leak. He didn't anymore. Maybe one day he'd fill himself back up again.

 I loved her.

I always will.

"And life goes on."