Yanah

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Her name was Yanah.

I didn't know her last name or her age- just that it was around mine.

I had a dream about her the day before I met her. Nothing too special, just her face.

She smiled in my dream.

When I met her, she was the sun. She radiated with positivity. She made me feel welcome.

Coincidentally, she had also dreamed of me the night before.

We bonded quickly afterwards.

It's not like we ever became very close, but whenever we would come to our skating class, we were always excited to see each other.

She taught me all the cool spins and tricks I wanted to know and I would show her what I knew.

There was this really cool spin, one that she had invented, we called it the shooting duck.

It was a weird name, but it was all we could come up with.

We would spend almost all of class doing those. It was something we both enjoyed.

After awhile I continued on to a more advanced class, but she didn't. So after that, we didn't see each other for awhile. For some reason I didn't think much of it.

I mean we didn't know each other THAT well. We just talked inside of the class.

Hell I didn't even know what school she went to.

The next time I saw her was around five years later, or something like that.

A lot can change in five years.

Instead of the glowing positivity she once possessed, Yanah was now a moon.

She was sad and wore a bandana over her head.

Yanah had a brain tumour.

It broke my heart, as a nine year old , to see this girl that I had once called my best friend, not only be a stranger, but dying too.

It killed me that we never kept in touch, that we never exchanged phone numbers, or did anything of that kind.

Because god I wish I had.

It was the biggest wake up call of my life.

This girl that I let drift away in my life was now reduced to what looked like a walking corpse.

She was like a dead girl walking.

Maybe the worst part of all this was when I had seen her, with our skating teacher, attempting to do a shooting duck, but failing.

Imagine that.

The girl who used to be able to do anything couldn't even do her favourite trick.

Our favourite trick.

It killed me inside. I saw that and I wanted to cry.

Why hadn't I just kept in touch with her?

It wouldn't of been hard. Just a weekly call or check up or hang out.

But as kids we didn't think it was important.

Before she got sick we used to say that if we ever parted ways we would most certainly meet again in the future.

But she doesn't have a future anymore.

Hers ended six years ago when she was only nine.

She never made it to double digits.

She never made it to high school.

She never got to go to a school dance.

She never had the chance to fall in love.

She never had the chance to do anything at all.

Her life was ripped away from her and now I can only feel guilty that I didn't try.

And I can't even tell you what day she died.

I can't tell you how much her mother cried at the loss of her child.

I can't tell you how many people were affected by this girl who was a ray of sunshine.

Because all that I can tell you about this girl, all that I can say and be sure of is that

her name was Yanah.

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