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“I’m doing a lot better” Noelle half-truths through her teeth. Diya doesn’t say anything, she just gives a slight smile. They both know about Noelle’s half truth. As they always have, they don’t say it, but they both know.
Diya has been a shut-in for almost 3 years now. Despite this, she is still passing all of her classes, mostly thanks to Noelle dropping off her work every day.
Now, they don’t talk every day, they haven’t since before the incident, but they started out strong, Noelle would message Diya everyday, and sometimes Diya would respond. Now, though, Diya prefers to only speak face-to-face, and it happens on a monthly basis.
Each month Noelle gets to finally see her best friend, each month it comes around like a wound she refuses to let heal. Her best friend who has grown her hair out, continuing to find grayer and grayer hairs, despite having just turned 17. Her best friend, whom she does not know.
“Where did you apply?” Diya asks, her first question of the day, though they’ve been sitting across from each other for nearly an hour now.
“A few different places, I don’t quite know which I’d rather get into,” She stumbles on her words, a topic she doesn’t like to bring up with Diya, despite it looming over her even more now than ever, “Of course, my mother wants me to get into an Ivy, which I will, so I will most likely end up doing that.”
Diya nods and bites her lip, a habit she’s picked up during her time in solitude, “Only a few more months,” her voice trails near the end. Of course, Noelle knew this would happen. It’s only natural.
Noelle is Diya’s only contact outside of her family, she is Diya’s excuse to leave her confinement once and awhile. Once Noelle moves away, which she will, Diya will become a complete shut-in, even more than she already has become. She will have nobody except her parents, and Noelle will have nobody except for Akarsha.
“Have you thought about it?” Noelle doesn’t want to continue the conversation of her leaving Diya, perhaps Diya will finally open up to the idea of leaving her house again. Something Noelle already knows the answer to. One of the only things surrounding Diya that she knows the answer to anymore.
“No. I’m not doing it,” She stumbles over her words, spitting them more than saying them, “I can’t,” She sinks into her sweater.
“I know,” But she still asks every time. Every time.
They both sit very still, Noelle contemplates what to say next. A part of her wants Diya to beg for her to stay, to beg for her to not go through with moving, potentially across the country, away from her best friend, away from her favorite stranger. She wants Diya to beg for her to stay, because it’s the only way she will be sure that Diya still wants her. But the rest of her knows she could never do it. She could never stay. Not for Diya, not for anything. She must continue with her life even if Diya can’t. Perhaps, because Diya can’t.
-
As soon as she gets home, Noelle begins to write:
Band: Owl City. Food: Blue flavour. Animal: Dogs. Colour: Light blue.
Noelle writes the several facts in order, as she does every time. To make sure she remembers. To make sure she will never forget. Diya’s favourite band, her favourite food, the songs on her ipod, everything she knows. She does not want to lose the little that she knows.
Lately, it has started to include a description:
Hair now down to her chest, many grey hairs, chewed fingernails, new sweater, dark under-eyes, blistering lip.
To track how Diya has progressed. She even uses her mediocre-at-best artistic skill to draw her out. Sometimes she wishes she had dedicated her life-time to portrait drawing instead of academics, perhaps then she would be able to have Diya wherever she went. Perhaps then, she would have a skill that is worth anything other than approval.
Each time she flips through all of the previous pages, the habit that has continued for over two years now, since the time Noelle had forgotten the name of Diya’s favourite band. She had to have Akarsha remind her. Akarsha. At that point, she knew she had to do something, or she would lose the rest of her.
The pages glide on Noelle’s fingertips the same way the keys on her piano do. Very slightly, smoothly, and if she isn’t careful, it will harm her, again.
-
On her computer, Noelle combs through her chat logs with a frozen memory of Diya, the most recent messages being completely unanswered. It is not much different for a majority of them. But once she scrolls back upwards to 2008, everything floods back. A form of Diya lost to time, preserved only within the confinements of quickly typed sentences and emoticons. It is a Diya not full of life, but at least capable of having one. It is the Diya that was Noelle’s best friend, the Diya that Noelle did not cherish while she still had the time. It is Diya, alive.
Her eyes flicker back and forth between the screen and the door as she fixates on the message she always does. The final and only “I love you.” Messages sacred to her being, messages that should not be known to anyone but her, not even Diya herself. It almost feels like sin to read it, over and over, as she always does. As if she feels the world looming over her as she reads. She wonders, quite often, if this is how Diya feels, when she does anything.
She wants to not know why she so often fixates on the specific message, but she does. Perhaps it is because it was the calm before the storm, perhaps because it was the most heartfelt thing she had ever written, perhaps because it was the most heartfelt thing she had ever received. No matter how many hypotheses she creates, it always leads back to one answer:
It is because she doesn't know how much longer the statement will be true.