Here I am sitting on my bed with the sounds of Drake and Josh blasting through my pink gel ear buds. A million thoughts are racing through my mind as I sit here with her coveted purple notebook in front of me. Bethany came by a while ago and dropped off a box of Jazzy’s most prized possessions. She gave me the journal after her funeral and here I am, now three months later, just finding the strength to write on the pages that she left empty. Blank. Devoid of her gorgeous handwriting. Devoid of her thoughts. Devoid of her creative energy that I loved about her.
The box is still on my bed and I just can’t seem to find the inner strength that I know I’m gonna need to be able to open the box. I know that going through the contents in that hot pink Rubbermaid storage box on my bed is going to be like hell on earth.
Well, I guess there is just no such thing as the “right time” to go through something like this. So, here goes nothing. As I open the lid, I see her school uniform with the rainbow “Gay Pride” ribbon pinned to the hem of her skirt. As I run my fingers across the texture of the material of her skirt, the memories of the day we made the ribbons and pinned them on our skirts come flooding back.
I wipe the tears away and move on to the next things that were in the box. I took the skirt out and hung it on the back of my chair. The next thing I found in the box was her favorite make up bag that she kept her make-up, cell phone, and her favorite pens. I fight back some more tears and opened the bag.
In the bag there was:
1. Her favorite purple pens that she often wrote with. The pens that she used to write with in the journal that is now sitting on my desk.
2. Her favorite MAC lip stain. There was one stick that was up opened. I looked at the bottom: Mochaccino. I remembered the day we went to the mall together before she died. I bought a Cherry Vanilla stain because Jazzy got the last Mochaccino one.
3. Her Hello Kitty flash drive that she often used for creative writing homework.
4. Her Vera Wang lip gloss/perfume duo stick.
5. The last thing in the bag was her memory card from her digital camera. I know that it is going to be a long time before I’m emotionally going to be able to handle looking at the pictures that are on that little piece of plastic in my hand.
I put everything back in the bag and moved on to the next thing that was in the box. I found her cell phone. I took the cover off and checked to see if the SIM card was in the back. It wasn’t. I had already assumed Bethany was going to deactivate her phone. I hadn’t expected her to actually give me her phone. I took the phone and placed it on my desk. I looked to see what else was in the box.
I found her eight favorite books:
1. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
2. A Mercy by Toni Morrison
3. The Dive From Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer
4. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
5. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows By JK Rowling
7. Song of Solomon By Toni Morrison
8. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
As I flipped through the Toni Morrison books, I remembered how excited Jazzy was when she called me from Barnes and Noble and all but did back flips from excitement that she got to meet and take pictures with Toni Morrison. I remember being so jealous because I had a poetry slam to compete in. I put them on my bookshelf and grabbed the Maya Angelou book.
I remembered how excited Jazzy was when she went to New York to spend some time with her aunt and got the chance to meet Ms. Angelou at a coffee shop book signing. She brought the book back and she also got me a signed copy of the same book. My copy of it is sitting in a box under my bed, which is where I thought I would put Jazzy’s copy of the book.
The Harry Potter book was something that she and I shared. For some odd reason or another, it seemed like something Harry Potter related, whether a midnight book release or a midnight movie premiere always fell on or around my birthday. This was the last midnight book release we ever went to together.
I grabbed the Alice Walker and Elizabeth Gilbert books. I remembered that ever since Jazzy watched the movie version of The Color Purple, she had always wanted to read the book. She read it once and it quickly became her favorite. I remembered that she had carried it around with her for three months after she had read it the first time. I looked at Eat, Pray, Love and I could not remember for the life of me what she saw in that particular book. I knew that she loved it dearly but that was probably one of few books that we clashed on.
I moved on to the Anne Frank book and it didn’t take a lot of thinking or remembering why she loved that book so much. We had to read the book and watched the movie in our English class a few years ago. I read the book when I was still being home schooled and it got me interested in journaling. When I came to St. Lucas Prep, I had to do the same thing again with Jazzy. When I saw the book, I knew that if the journal that she wrote in all those years ago was somewhere in this pink box, I would be inconsolable. As for Jazzy, she had a similar reaction to the book. She really got into writing and never stopped until the end of her life.
When I moved on to the last book in the box, I knew that ever since Jazzy saw the Lifetime version of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, she was on a mad hunt for the book. She found it and read it cover to cover in a matter of five hours. She fought back the fresh tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks and continued looking through the box.
I put the books on my bed to be organized and put away later on and moved on to the few remaining items.
I found her stuffed gorilla that her dad had given her for Valentine’s Day before he and Bethany had gotten a divorce. She slept with it every night and even dressed it her old shirts that she didn’t wear but she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of. That monkey was like her stuffed animal best friend. As morbid, cold and as terrible as this may sound, I was actually surprised that Bethany chose not to bury Mr. Hot Pants with Jazzy.
The last remaining items in the box were two single subject spiral notebooks. I flipped open to the front cover of one and it was a journal that she had kept of her freshman year at St. Lucas. I put it on my desk to look at later on. I looked at the second one, my hands already shaking. In the back of my mind, I knew what it was but I couldn’t allow myself to comprehend if it really was the journal of our Anne Frank project. I flipped open the front cover and I couldn’t find a title or a description of what the journal entailed. I looked on the back cover and saw the “Anne Frank Project” heading written in lime green Sharpie. I threw the pink notebook on my bed and fell to the floor in a mix of tears and screaming.
When I was finally able to regain control of my emotions, I knew that she was gone.
She was gone and she was never coming back. This was all I had left of her. And I hated having notebooks and books to remember her by. My best friend was gone and she was never coming back. My best friend who really may as well have been my sister was gone.
She was gone.
