Jessica Taylor 10AB/ALC.
Blue.
As I drew one of my final shaky breaths, an angel's voice called out to me.
"Blue, honey, you better be healin' or I swear to God I'ma set fire to your CD collection," The smile reserved for the one person that had always been there for me ghosted across my lips. "Damn right it's me. Don't you go pretendin' you can't hear me, 'cause we both know that that smile right there is the one that you keep in your 'Smile Box' for Lil Ole' Me."
My grin widened and I opened my eyes.
There she was, sat in one of those dang uncomfortable chairs, peering at me from the side of my pristine, white hospital bed.
"Alice." Her name was a mere whisper and my voice was a weak echo of what it had once been.
"Hey there, cowboy." She did me the honour of flashing me her dimples, the dimples that had accompanied me throughout the last twenty two years of my life.
I closed my eyes as an onslaught of memories followed those dimples.
I remembered the first day Alice arrived on the old ranch, wearing nothing but a blue sundress, a straw hat and that infamous grin. Her tanned feet were bare and covered in the dust that coated the long road, with her perfectly cut toenails glittering with a silver nail polish that sparkled when the sweltering Texas sun caught them in one of its rays.
I thought she looked cute.
She bounced over to me and peered up at me.
"Hey there, you wanna help a girl with her bags or what, cowboy?" Looking down at my checked shirt, faded blue jeans and cowboy boots, I agreed completely with the word that she had just used to describe me. I tipped the edge of my cowboy hat and ducked my head, remembering the manners my mama had taught me. Being only fifteen, and her being thirteen, I wasn't used to being spoken to so boldly by girls. So, like the Southern gentleman I had been brought up to be, a smile formed just for her and I apologised. "Beggin' your pardon ma'am, I sure will help you with your bags."
Another memory floated in place of the first.
"Alice, why d'you call me Blue?" I asked, finally voicing the question that had been nagging me since the day we met. We were sat in the old barn at the ranch. I looked around, musing to myself. The walls needed painting, the faded red paint was peeling at every opportunity. I inhaled the familiar smell. Hay and cigarette smoke, what a fine combination. Alice and I were smoking a cigarette each that I had stolen from the kitchen cupboard. I was sixteen, and she was fourteen. She scooted over on the bale of straw we were perched on and pushed my wavy blonde hair out of my eyes.
"Cowboy, ain't it obvious?" I shook my head, causing my hair to fall back into my eyes again and Alice to sigh softly.
"Honey, your eyes are as blue as the sapphires I spied on for months through the window at the jewellers in town." And so the name stuck.
The next memory wasn't as pleasant. Alice was wearing a pair of the tiniest denim shorts I had ever laid eyes on, a pink vest and her black hair was pointing out in every direction as usual.
There was one difference though, Alice's freckled cheeks had tears running marathons down them and her little nose was as red as my papa's neck when he'd been out in the fields for too long. Her beautiful green eyes were filled with salty tears and they were pink and swollen too.
I wrapped my muscled arms around her tiny frame and let her cry into my shoulder one of my weathered hands wandered to her head and stroked her hair while the other rubbed her back soothingly as she soaked my checked shirt. I was eighteen and she was sixteen.
"Darlin', please tell me what in God's name is wrong!" I pleaded with her. She sniffed and looked up at me. Her voice was thick and wobbled as she explained.
"Well, you know I have been dating Jonny for a month of so now? W-w-well, I just saw him m-m-making out with Sandy behind Taco B-bell." On the last word, her voice broke and the tears started to spill again.
Needless to say, Jonny was sporting a fine black eye for the next week or so.
Yet another memory followed. As we packed the last cardboard box full of my junk, I surveyed my childhood bedroom. The faded blue walls sported many marks that also doubled up as memories: a hole in the plaster from when my papa made me so mad, I had to hit something and marks where the tack I'd used to stick up pictures had peeled off the paint. A fat tear rolled down my tanned cheek and I felt her warm hand in mine. As usual, she was the one comforting me, she was the one constant in my life, the one that I counted on desperately, and I knew that I would have gone insane many times if it hadn't been for that happy little girl that turned up on my dusty drive.
"Blue, you're a big boy o' nineteen now, you don't go cryin' just 'cause y'all off to college for a year or two!" The voice of reason penetrated through my sombre state. She was two years younger than me, but still knew how to make me see sense. I heard her crying too. We both just sank to the floor and held each other, crying out the loss that was sure to be bowling down the dusty roads our lives were heading in.
The 'Wedding March' started up as I linked her small arm through mine. Pride drenched my heart as I revelled in the fact that she had picked me to walk her down the aisle and give her away. She looked absolutely breathtaking in her white dress, with her raven hair tied in an intricate knot on the top of her head.
As we got to our third step down the aisle, fear suddenly stabbed through my body like a knife through meat.
Painfully, and difficultly.
After this, I would lose my Alice, she would be someone else's as soon as she said the words "I do".
Swallowing the sudden lump that had formed in my throat, I put on the bravest smile I could muster up and fought back the tears that were desperate to be released from my bright blue eyes.
As I regained some consciousness, I realised that I had been so wrong. Alice had always been in my life and here she was, at the end of it too.
"Goodbye darlin'" I struggled to speak as I felt myself being dragged unwillingly into the next phase of my existence.
"Don't you dare think this is over, Blue. I'll see you in heaven or wherever the hell it is you're riding off to. Knowing us, we'll end up right back where we started, in that godforsaken barn on the ranch. I love you Jasper, and I'll see you soon, I promise."
My best friend's final promise lifted my spirit and strengthened my soul as I plunged into the unknown.