The Same Girl [ON HOLD]

Three💔

Two years later

Stretched out on Sie's new purple comforter in a white singlet and shorts, I read Rolling Stone's interview from two weeks ago, and watching my best friend apply lipstick to her already bright lips.

"Brandywine." Sie caps her lipstick and admires her pout before the aptly named vanity mirror. "It might be a little too dark for you," she told me, handing me the tube, "but you can try it if you want." I don't need to try it. It will be too dark for me. My skin is so pale it's almost white- though I try- save for the 19 freckles that scatter my body, completely immune to peel-off pore strips and face scrubs.

"Sie, please." I flip to the beginning of the interview. We're supposed to be making our packing lists and mapping out all the things we want to do in Zanzibar next month, but so far all I've done is spent the last hour watching Sie preen, pimp and fluff. "I refuse to get all glammed up for this thing."

"Who's getting all glammed up?" Sie asked. "I'm just- oh, shut up, Kasey!"

Sie gets done-up for everything- movie nights, food shopping, the rare event of taking out the trash, and- trip planning. The earth could get knocked out of orbit, and as the North America careens towards Europe at half the speed of light, with houses and pink plastic lawn flamingoes and peoples dogs wizzing by, Sie would be like, "hold on, Kasey. Do I have anything in my teeth? Nothing in my hair?"

But she's always been the cute one. Even when our mums dressed us in matching pastel dresses or elastic-waist nappy jeans. She used to be shy and sweet and a little awkward about it, even.

Two years ago, when the shock of Mitch's death wore off and she stopped calling for him outside his bedroom door, Sie withdrew into a cocoon like a baby caterpillar, lonely and uncertain. She wouldn't talk to anyone- her parents, my parents, not even me. Not in a way that mattered. Sometimes I wondered if I was going to loose both best friends over the same broken heart. But by the time school started again next fall, she emerged, metamorphosis complete, a band new butterfly who stopped crying, loved boys, wore sparkly makeup, and smoked Marlboro Lights in secret out her bedroom window.

Now, wherever we go, Sie enters the room like a dazzling black hole and, in accordance with my Fitch Theorem on Quantum Physics and Beautiful Girls, sucks up all the attention around her.

"Kasey, do you want it or not?" She asked.

"Or not. It's definitely too dark for me."

"Suit yourself, Casper." She presses her lips together, blotting them with a tissue and dusting them with a layer of translucent powder on top. The Sie remix. Perfectly applied glitter eye shadow, French manicures, trendy brown hair with pink highlights flipping out around her, shiny and shimmering. "Kasey" and "shimmering" don't belong in the same sentence. My hair is dead straight, reddish-blond, and looks an awful lot like wool if I don't wash it daily. Other then the daily- light- amount of makeup, the basics of proper hygiene and moisturising, the last time I spent more then half an hour getting in touch with my inner self was the time I spent for Mitch. Now, my bright and fun makeup sits at the bottom of my bathroom draw under an ever-thickening layer of sparkly pink dust that I used to wear.

"You used to love this stuff," she says, rummaging through her bag for a lighter shade. "Here, try this one- Moonlight Madness. It's got ground up crystals or something." I shrug and try to focus on a picture of Helicopter Pilot posing for a concert that I found on Instagram, until she gets distracted mixing different shade of eye shadow on the back of her hand with a q-tip. I can't fault her for trying. She doesn't know about Mitch, the ghost that floats in and out of my heart, haunting and unresolved.

"Don't worry. It's our secret."

"Do you like this colour?" She bats her eyes at me and laughs. Something about her smile reminds me of him and I have to look away to block out the flood of memories. It's officially been more then two years now. I know I should let it go, but it never really leaves me. Every morning, I wake up and for just a second I forget that it happened. But once my eyes open, it buried me like a landslide of sharp, sad rocks. Once my eyes open, I'm heavy, like there's too much gravity pressing down on my heart.