How the Candy Started.

I'm not as strong as everyone thinks I am. I'm one who notices, who sees pain, grief, guilt, breakups. I've been the one who sneaks in early, following the custodian in so that I can write encouraging messages on whiteboards, leave candy on desks and at office doors. Nobody noticed when that started, did they? It started when I saw your face.

"I'm fine," you said. That's what everyone said when they had nothing better to say, when saying more would only invite more questions - or worse, awkward silence and a change of topic. The school was sunk in a grey cloud of what I now realize was incipient depression, or maybe something worse. I was just starting to realize that what I'd been feeling for over a week - since the moment I broke down in the supermarket after speaking eloquently and tearlessly at the memorial service - was not entirely internal to myself. The dim gloom of the steep stairs down to the lockers reflected the rage bubbling in my soul. The expression on your face as you teetered at the top of those stairs mirrored the overpowering guilt that felt like it was chewing my heart.

You were always the top of the class ranking, your name on the framed list in the corridor. I was the only student who knew mine, and I intended to keep it that way. Top and bottom, like we were on the stairs - but the top was a precarious position, in this case at least. I knew, because yesterday I had stood there, my arms slack, my hands barely touching the bannisters, half of my feet over the edge of the top step. My backpack was heavy, and I could feel my weight shifting as I swayed. One push against the railings, and I would topple. There was nothing to break my fall - or yours, today.

"We failed her," I said, looking up at you. "Of course we did. The least we can do now is remember, even though it hurts. It's the only way she can live now - through us." Those were the words that had come into my head the day before, words that had made me take a deep breath and walk down those stairs rather than throwing myself down them.

You looked surprised - that was better than blank, at least. "I hate the thought that... She'll be forgotten someday. No matter how long we remember, she'll be forgotten, because she's just a normal person. The President got decades more than her to live for himself, and he'll have more, and then he'll have the immortality of his name. Nobody will remember hers. Nobody will speak it, and she'll be dead in all ways."

"At least we can speak it for now," I replied. In that dim stairwell, the contagiousness of death hung about us. You nodded, and turned away.

That was when the candy started. I couldn't let anyone else die and weaken the memory.