Tears brimmed in her eyes once more. Several minutes passed before she composed herself. “This is my last will and testament to you, Thomas. I want you to find love and happiness. I know I can’t guarantee it but I might be able to give you a push in the right direction. Kelly told me about that night so I know how it touched her. You two shared a beautiful moment and I have to admit I’m jealous. Promise me you’ll see her again, if only just to talk with her. She’ll be living at this address in the fall so she should be easy to find.” Kelly’s name and address appeared on the screen.
“Find her, talk to her and see where it goes from there. Maybe you’re right for each other. Maybe not. But you have to find out.
“I don’t know what lies ahead for me besides Death. Even though I’ve spent the past year mentally preparing I’m suddenly scared. Death is a chasm bigger than the Grand Canyon but instead of being filled with beauty it’s filled only with darkness. Death is a black void stretching out before me. I’m at the edge now and about to step off into the abyss. Will there be a bottom? Will there be another side?
“Is there a soul after Death? I hope certainly hope so because I want to keep watch over you. If I can I’ll come back and haunt you, but in a nice way. I’ll come to you in your dreams and fuck your brains out. I swear I will.” Her lower lip was trembling now. With a shaky voice she finished with, “Goodbye, Thomas. I love you.”
The video ended. I closed the lid of the laptop, pulled the USB stick out and hugged it to my chest. I curled up on my bed and wept for a very long time.
At the end of August I was back on campus sitting on a low brick wall outside a modest apartment building. It was only ten in the morning but the sun was already beating down and baking the pavement. I sat in the shade of a maple tree and waited. Eventually Kelly emerged from the building wearing a white t-shirt and bright orange shorts. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her summer tan gave her a healthy glow. She was as lovely as I remembered.
When she saw me she did a double take and a smile broke out on her face. “Hey, Thomas. Good to see you. What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you, actually.” Her smile grew. “Do you have a minute? I need to tell you something.” She sat next to me on the wall, her thigh lightly touching mine.
“I don’t know if you heard but Nico passed away this summer.”
Kelly’s face clouded and she nodded slowly. “Yeah, I know. Brain tumor.”
“How well did you know her?”
“I guess about as well as anybody did, outside of her family. We lived together the past two years. She was my best friend.”
I blinked in surprise and took a moment to digest that. “You were best friends and lived together at Mary Hall?”
“Our first year, yeah. That’s how we met. We rented an apartment last year. That’s where you and I met.”
I closed my eyes for a moment and thought about how much I didn’t know about Nico. Finally I said, “Nico told me she lived at Mother Mary.”
“Um, yeah, that was so that guys couldn’t find her after, you know.”