Happy

It was a Saturday.  I was at her house while her parents were out for dinner.  Alexandra was her name—Ali for short.  She was fourteen at the time and so was I.  We were playing Chutes and Ladders for kicks and giggles.  We thought it was more fun to do something immature or random and make comical memories.  Memories we would share and cherish together.  Yes, that’s right.  It was all about memories—all about experiences.  Oh, the memories we made together.  I’ll never forget.
She looked at me with wide green eyes.  I avoided prolonged eye contact because of my infatuation.  I was a romantic back then—what a joke.  But I remember clearly how I saw her eyes.  They had this little glimmer in them, I thought—a thousand sprites of light, each wearing a different, complex smile.  I noticed how her irises became a gradually darker green as they approached her pupils.  Such depth they had!  There was a soft, kindly green of under-ripe fruit on her irises’ rims and just before the pupil there was this darker, forest green that hinted at a depth of mind that I could only envy and wish I could share and revel in.  Such perceptions pulsed through my mind, seemed to pulse through my very soul.  Such naiveté.  Such airy, youthful ignorance.  A pretty face and a slim figure and I filled my mind, trying to make her above a human—elevating her to divinity.  
When I glanced into her pupils I got pulled into a nebulous realm filled with her thoughts.  I could see my reflection in her pupils, too, reminding me of how I was on the outside.  How I was there, but I was only there.  I existed but I wasn’t anything more than a figure to spend time with.
No.
That’s how I thought.  But I know now that I did matter to her.  I was more than just a human to her.  A friend, sure.  And maybe—
Stop.
Even the whites of her eyes drew me in with their intensity.  They were so white, so pure, so enticing.  They were only broken by the occasional trace of a blood vessel as a reminder of the fragility of living things.  But also of their beauty.  She didn’t wear make-up.  She never saw the point in pretending to be something she wasn’t—something synthetic.  Her eyelashes seemed so clear to me.  Each individual lash bent so majestically and seemed to point to some aspect of her beauty.  They had such an intense clarity about them, they made her hardly seem real; hardly seem reachable.  Hardly touchable.  My composure faltered and my lips formed a small, shy smile, as opposed to the toothy grin of a few seconds ago.
She was a goddess, I thought.
“It’s your turn!” she said with this cute little exasperated expression covering her face.
That was another thing.  Her face radiated her feelings.  It wasn’t just her eyes, or her forehead.  Every minute detail changed form based on her emotions.  It made my knees go weak.  I blushed.  I lost myself for a moment there.  Was she suspicious?  I didn’t think so.  She picked up the small burgundy die—she lost the hand to the spinner—that we salvaged from a long-forgotten game of Yahtzee and threw it carelessly at my chest.  My puny, skin-and-bone chest.  She made me self-conscious just by being herself, but I still loved being around her.  I needed to be around her.  The die landed in the middle of my crossed legs, making me blush just a bit more.
I picked it up unsteadily and tossed it onto the board, causing our pieces to fall over onto each other.  As fourteen-year-olds, we found such a trivial thing to be rather droll.  Well, we had had it with that game and pushed it under the overused sofa behind us.  She bounced to her feet lightly and let herself down onto the couch.  I stiffly got up and sat next to her.  We started talking about inside jokes and reminiscing about past things we’d done.  We were laughing and crying because of it and our faces were red and my heart was pounding because I was there with her and she was giggling and it was almost too much to handle but she was happy and I was happy but there was the constant sense of my being separate from her when suddenly…
She touched my arm.
She touched it lightly with just the tips of her fingers, but the electric sensation that ran through my arm, up through my head, and then permeated throughout my entire existence seemed immense.  We made awkward eye contact briefly.  Her fingers transferred what she was feeling as well as her face did.  She seemed to glide a bit closer to me until our bodies pressed lightly against each other.  My heart beat was faster than ever and I could feel hers beating at an astounding pace as well.  Our hearts seemed so close physically and for the first time emotionally, too.  They beat in such a harmonic rhythm that they seemed to be making some sort of intimate song.
She leaned a little closer to me and I could smell her breath on my face—the provocative scent of cinnamon gum.  She was perfect.  I leaned a bit closer, too, to make sure we were on the same page.  We were.  She darted forward the last few inches and our lips met.  Her warmth radiated into my body and I kissed her back.  My body grew less tense and I shakily put my arms around her.  And she put hers around me.  I couldn’t believe what was happening.  It was what I’d always wanted!  And she wanted me, too.  We kissed passionately—as passionately as fourteen-year-olds can—on the couch, but in my mind I was everywhere else.  I was with her in Germany, in Spain—in Egypt and in Russia. The world was ours alone as we showed our feelings for each other for the first time.
Our lips parted long enough for her to say, “You make me happier than anything. Truly and honestly happy.”
Those words wafted around me warmly and suspended my psyche in a mist of otherworldly bliss.  Those words entered my body and entered my blood and warmed me to my core.  From the moment they graced my ears I could tell I would never forget them.
Those words burn.
Before I could respond her lips were on mine again.  It was incredible and it was perfect.  We were on the far left side of the couch, I recall, with an end table next to it.  My back was to the end table and she was in front of me.  As I held her, she held me.  It took me a second to notice that one of her arms wasn’t stroking my back as it had been.  It seemed occupied by something else.  I will admit that the possibilities excited and aroused me.
The intensity of our kiss heated up suddenly and that arm was no longer even touching me.  I didn’t know what it was doing, but it didn’t matter.  We were there we were together and we were in love.
What a joke.
As we kissed I opened my eyes for a second and caught sight of something black.  Something solid and shining.  It was like her eyes, beautiful and deep, with clear intention and purpose.
My mind didn’t register that it was a handgun until it fired a bullet through her skull. As the warmth of her flawless red lips left my own, the warmth of her spilt, crimson blood took their place.  

                                               She wasn’t divine.

                                                 She was weak.

                             She always said she wanted to die happy.