'Seven' Song fiction

Please picture me in the trees

I hit my peak at seven

Feet in the swing over the creek

I was too scared to jump in

But I, I was high in the sky

With Pennsylvania under me

Are there still beautiful things?

My fiance and I are at my parents house looking through old pictures of me for the wedding. We wanted to make a mural of pictures of our lives for the reception and intertwine them to represent our separate lives becoming one. My parents have all my pictures from newborn all the way to my high school graduation all sorted into photo albums with ‘Beth’ on the cover documenting my life.

 

We’ve already pulled all of the photos that we want of Luke’s, now we just have to get mine over with. I’d been putting mine off. Whereas I loved the idea of intertwining our lives even with looking through the pictures, I didn’t want to bring up some of my earlier memories. My parents and siblings were great, but despite that I still had a very hard and sad childhood. It was something that I never talked about. I hadn’t even really talked to Luke about it. I’d told him that I’d gone through a hard time in elementary school, but that’s all I offered and he didn’t push for more. That is one of the things that I love about that man, he respects boundaries. 

We pulled pictures we liked as we flipped through the albums. It was when we hit kindergarten and pretty much every picture of me had another little girl in it. “Who is that?” Luke asked pointing to one of the pictures of me and the other girl when we were around five years old in my backyard, our hair in matching braids with barefoot dirty feet, sitting up in the old tree house with mason jars of sweet tea having the time of our lives. It was right next to the one of us on the swing set seeing which one of us could get higher. 

I took a deep breath as those crazy three years flooded back into my memory. We spent all of our time together, so much that there were a lot of people who thought we were sisters. In our minds we might as well have been, we wished we had been. That way she could have stayed at my house with me. “That is Julia, she was my best friend in the whole world.” I informed him in a quiet voice, emotions starting to flood over me. A little bit of happiness from all of the fun times that we spent together, but mostly overwhelming guilt and sadness over the tragedy that happened. I had so many great memories with her that almost outweighed the big bad one. Almost. I don’t think anything could ever outweigh that one terrible memory even twelve years later. 

Luke looked down at me, feeling the change in the air upon talking about Julia, he probably figured out by then

 that she had something to do with my dark times. “Whatever happened to her?” he questioned wanting to know more about the girl that I had never spoken about that brought out obvious emotions.

 

I laughed, how do I tell that story to someone who wasn’t there to experience it all? It was hard and crazy to live through, and I was so young. Where was I even supposed to start? How was I supposed to explain that I was the reason why my best friend died at the age of seven?

And I've been meaning to tell you

I think your house is haunted

Your dad is always mad and that must be why

And I think you should come live with me

And we can be pirates

Then you won't have to cry

Or hide in the closet

And just like a folk song

Our love will be passed on

It was the first day of school and I was seated next to a dark hair, freckled skin girl named Julia. You could tell that her dress wasn’t new like the other girls in the class. I could tell that she was shy and needed someone to be her friend, so I invited her to play at my house after school. It worked out pretty good because she just lived a block away and could walk home. 

Pretty soon she came to my house everyday after school. We made friendship bracelets to tie around each other's wrists and shared everything. So when her dad would get in one of his moods, she would spend the night at my house for a couple of days. In our child minds, we rationalized that her house was haunted, and that was the reason why her dad was angry all of the time. We would fantasize what it would be like to get her out of her house, away from her dad. We would run away together and be pirates. 

Things came to a climax when we were in the second grade. Seven years old. Not old enough to have done anything in life. It kills me how young we were when it happened, no pun intended. I was just trying to help, not to make things so much worse. I guess that’s what happens when a seven year old tries to take a hold of an adult situation. 

One night after she had gone home from playing after school, Julia called my house. I answered it. She was crying, she said that she was hiding in the hall closet, but I could hear chaos in the background. She explained that her mom had accidentally burned dinner and her dad decided to start beating on her and throwing things. 

Being the protective best friend that I was, I was going to implement our plans. I was going to help her run away, we could go anywhere and do anything. Or we could just go to my house. The point was it would be an adventure, one that was fun and happy. It was supposed to be an adventure that was void of sadness, fear, or heartbreak. Oh how wrong I was to think nothing could possibly go wrong. 

We waited until nightfall and packed as many of Julia’s things as we could fit in her suitcase, then snuck out the window into the chilly fall night. I didn’t want to risk someone seeing us walking down the road on our own and calling her dad, so I suggested taking the back way and taking the bridge over the creek. We weren’t allowed to go by the creek by ourselves, but we decided that this was a special situation so it would be okay. 

What we didn’t realize was that it had rained that day and since the sun had gone down we had hit freezing temperatures. The bridge had frozen over and was slick. I went first and was okay because it was just me and I could hold onto the rope railing to keep steady. Julia on the other hand was lugging her heavy suitcase with both of her hands. A few steps in she slipped, flew backwards and hit her head. One of the planks broke in half on impact. It probably gave her a nasty concussion, but I didn't know anything about stuff like that back then.

That’s where things get both extremely clear and fuzzy at the same time. I tried to pull Julia up, but she was disoriented from hitting her head and slipped again. This time it wasn’t just a fall with a bump on the head, she fell into the water. She went under and she didn’t come back up. 

I remember screaming. Screaming at the top of my lungs for her to come back up. Screaming for someone to come help us. I remember trying to reach from the bottom of the bridge into the water to try and grab for her and pull her back up, but she wasn’t there. 

After what seemed like an eternity of screaming and no one coming to our rescue, I ran as fast as my legs would carry me to my house. My legs and lungs burned, but I kept running. We needed help. Someone had to get Julia out of the water before it was too late. I would have jumped in to save her, but I still wasn’t a very strong swimmer and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get her back up to the surface on my own.

I got to my house and started yelling for my parents again to get to the creek. It took a long, frustrating minute to convince them to move, but they did and followed me to where Julia fell. When they finally figured out what happened, my dad told mom to go get one of the neighbors to call an ambulance while he slipped off his shoes and dove into the freezing water to try and rescue my best friend. 

Within a matter of minutes we were surrounded by lights that filled the darkness of the night. Police car lights, fire truck lights, ambulance lights, all flashing. Then there were the neighbors porch lights and house lights, some car lights, and lights being set up to see into the water. It was all very disorienting. 

The small clearing had quickly filled with people, both from the first responders and the people who lived in the area. Most of the faces were a blur, but I did note that Julia's parents weren't there. I wondered if anyone had thought to call them. 

All of the commotion made it impossible to focus on the multiple questions that were being thrown my way by just about everyone who was there. They all wanted to know what happened and how, why we were even out after dark, then why we were at the creek when we knew we weren't allowed. All.the questions made my head spin. It was like they were coming all at once, I couldn’t answer any of them. My brain was only processing static. My senses were overwhelmed and all I could really focus on was the water. 

Dad came back out of the water empty handed. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been in. Time was becoming jumbled. I wasn’t sure whether he’d been there a few seconds or a few hours. He must have been in for a little bit because the paramedics wrapped him in a heated blanket. The firemen immediately started working in the area for their plan to pull her out. She had been under for a long time, that I knew. Could she survive being under for that long? 

At one point I was led into the fire truck and wrapped into another heated blanket. I think it was because they found Julia. It wasn’t really Julia anymore though. She had been under water too long. It was just her body. She was dead. They moved me to the firetruck because they didn’t want me to see her like that. 

Sweet tea in the summer

Cross my heart, won’t tell no other

And though I can't recall your face

I still got love for you

Pack your dolls and a sweater

We'll move to India forever

Passed down like folk songs

Our love lasts so long

Luke set the photo album to the side and wrapped his arms around me. He wiped the tear that had escaped my eyes from me recounting the story of the worst thing I ever did. It’d been years since I’d even talked about Julia, let alone spoke about the night she died. “Thank you for telling me about her.” he whispered in my ear. 

I took a deep breath and leaned closer into him. “As hard as it was, I think it was good to talk about her. I still love her and mourn her like a sister. Before today, I don’t think I’d even pictured her face in years. We should leave a place for her at the wedding. Had that night not happened I know she would be there with us.” I finally allowed myself to think about her, and whereas there was a part of my heart that still ached, it was okay. I had someone to share the burden of life with me. 

He kissed the top of my head and smiled, “I think that would be a great idea.” He let go of me and picked up the photo album back up and went back to the picture of Julia and I with our sweet tea, matching braids, and dirty bare feet. “I think this would be a great picture to have to represent her.” he offered, holding the picture up in front of us.

I smiled, “I think that is a great picture. We can get it framed and she can have her own seat right in the family section.” I might be silly to have a seat dedicated to someone that died over a decade ago, but she did leave that kind of imprint on my heart. There is the romantic kind of soulmate, which I’ve found in Luke. Then there is the kind that you have in a friend, which I had in Julia.