May came around and prom fever was in the air. Everybody was buzzing. I decided to ask Emma to prom.
I walk up to Emma’s locker at the end of the day as usual and pulled a single daffodil out of my backpack and asked her to prom. She smiled and kindly accepted the flower and my invitation.
May seventh came rolling around sooner than the both of us could have imagined. I picked her up at her house. I watched her come down the stairs in a beautiful corn flower blue silk gown, we stood in front of the mantle in her living room for a quick photo, and then we were off to prom.
We danced. We talked to our friends. We ate and we had a good time.
The last song of the night was our song.
We looked at each other and I held her in my arms.
I whispered in her ear, like she did to me so many days ago, but the words were different.
“I love you,” I told her. She looked up at me with those sparkling eyes and said, “I love you too” and rested her head back onto my chest.
That summer her cancer took a turn for the worse. The doctors could not seem to get her into remission. She laid feebly in her hospital bed covered up to her neck in blankets. She was a weaker and more tired version of the Emma I met and came to know so many months ago.
It was August second.
I had just come back from eating in the cafeteria at the hospital.
I sat down on her bed and kissed her head. She looked up at me and smiled.
Her smile was beautiful.
It’s the kind of smile that makes you feel warmth from the deepest space of your heart—the space you make for only the deepest of love.
She whispered to me, “I love you.”
Then the monitors went dead.
The beeping stopped.
She was gone.
