When I was little I had a best friend. A great friend, an absolutely, positively amazing friend. But she died. Her name was Kayla. K-A-Y-L-A, she would always say to us, when I say us, I mean her friends. It was really funny the way she would spell it out. She was really funny. I only knew her for three short years. But those years changed my life. From kindergarten to second grade, she showed me how to be a better person, how to live each day like it was your last, because, for her it could be. She suffered from a disease called leukemia. It's a type of cancer most commonly found it children under 18. It's a killer. There isn't really a complete cure, but a way to hopefully banish it for a while, and if your really lucky, maybe keep it a away for forever. That way is called a bone marrow transplant. You take blood and bone marrow from another person, a person who has the same blood type as the patient and put that blood in them. The idea is to help them make more white blood cells. But, Kayla's transplant... It didn't work. She died on New Years eve many years ago. I learned the next day, and it has saddened me ever since. This is her story, our story. A story told through items and memories. So you can see her as I saw her. You can see her, the way she was. You can see her as a hero. This her true story, told from my tearful eyes.
~The First Memory-A Dog~
The first thing I can remember about Kayla was this game we used to play. It was a pet and owner game as we called it, we being her and I, but also D (The first letter of the name of a another friend). The way the game worked, in essence, was that one or two people would be the owner, while the others would be the pets, usually cats and dogs, though I think we had gone all the way to having unicorns one time. I was always the owner. Always. I guess I just really liked the idea of caring for animals. The rest of the people, Kayla, and D, would get down on their hands and knees and would be the animals. Sometimes there would be a bit of fighting, but I could always count on Kayla to be able to make it peaceful again. She had this honey like voice, and when she would open her mouth, she could calm you down so quickly, it could be like there was no problem at all. This game evolved over the years, when we added more people and played it outside, having run away dogs, and making beds out if the mowed up grass. But I'm getting ahead of myself in this story, so lets move on to the next memory.
~The Second Memory-A Banner~
I can remember the day Kittymetoo (The user name of a friend who was there) moved to our school as clearly as if it was yesterday. She had come in a week before, so she could meet her, but in the pale orange-ish light from the window, I didn't get to see exactly how she looked. Not that Kayla ever cared about looks. The moment Kittymetoo came in, terrified, and lonely, she just stood at the edge of the room as an outsider. D, Kayla and I were joking around and doing something or other when Kayla saw her standing under the welcome banner our teacher had made. She walked right over to her and gave her a hug. "I'm Kayla," she said, "K-A-Y-L-A. Don't worry, I don't bite." She laughed and grabbed Kittymetoo's hand and dragged her around the room to get her to look at everything. D and I followed, a bit unsure of what to do, but in the end, we were friends with Kittymetoo too. To this day, she is our best friend, and I wonder, if Kayla hadn't said those words, "I don't bite." And laughed, I wonder what would have been different. Kayla impacted all of our lives and without her, well I don't think I'd be the person I am today.
~The Third Memory-The Red Book, Titled: A Hen in a Fox's Den~
Kayla, D and I were in the kindergarten version of "advanced reading". While everyone else worked on learning their letters, we read these red books called A Hen in a Fox's Den. They were quite simple really, The cat is up to bat. The cat has a bat. Pop has a pig... You know, that kind of thing. We would sit at this little table, while our teacher helped us go over the words. It was fun, since we felt so special since we got to read the red books, instead of doing what every one else did. Not that I think we thought we were better, though. Kayla didn't think that way. We just thought we were cool like that. What ever we thought cool meant. But it's one of those little memories that just makes you smile when you think about it. I think we became closer because of those little reading seasons, because we were able to joke around a bit. But we still read, we were hard workers after all.
~The Forth Memory-Tiger Orange Markers~
OK, I will admit we were a bit naughty. Besides the fact that we thought that "You can't trade snacks in the classroom.", meant that you could go into the bathroom in the dark and trade snacks (We, as kindergartners, had our own logic and thought our teacher didn't know at all, but of course she actually did, and didn't have the heart to tell us when about four of us asked to all go to the "Bathroom", (which was connected to the classroom) together.), and get away with it all, since, technically it wasn't the "classroom". But there was also the tiger orange markers. They were about the awesomest color of marker in the entire class. Not that our favorite color was orange, no, it was because there was only five, when there was ten of every other color. So they were special and therefore, must be hidden so only Kayla, D, Kittymetoo and I could have them. And sometimes the other girls. We would hide them in the cracks between cubbies and the wall, behind books, under the carpet, you name it. We were a bit sneaky, I admit. We always had to go get them every time it was time to color. You would see us walking around the classroom until we got to the certain hiding spot, where we would grab the markers, stick them under our shirt and run back to our table. Yeah, Kayla was involved with all this. She was perfect in the sense of her personality, but we brought her down a bit.
~This is all for now, I know it doesn't get quite sentimental yet, but this is only kindergarten. Read with me further later, and you'll learn how devastated we all were at the end of her life. Than you for reading, please comment or critic, it helps me a lot with my writing. This is absolutely true, so I can only rephrase things, but I can also answer questions. Once again, thanks for reading.~
WIP
