A/N: this was an essay i wrote for a contest about the lovely bones a while ago- felt like sharing since i thought it came out good. it was gonna be submitted but my teacher had to email them and he comes to me the next day- "oh sorry, i got home at ten and around twelve fifteen i saw the clock and the essays had to be in by midnight"

QUOTE Topic#2
Imagine that, like the character Ruth in The Lovely Bones, you feel a deep connection to a peer, not a family member, who has died or been killed. Write an exchange between yourself and Ruth about the connection you feel to the friend or classmate who is now gone.

disclaimer: i dont own ruth, susie, ruana, or anything pertaining to the lovely bones

The plastic window slid over the board, both of us fully aware that we weren't causing the shift because our fingers barely grazed it. It selected the letters and spelled out words as we asked our questions. The scented candles, which Ruth insisted helped aid the process but I didn't believe it, were flickering as the wicks burned further down to the floor. Neither of us cared about the melting wax pooling on the carpet.

"K-A-T-H-E-R-Y-N-E," the window over the Ouija board spelled out.

"You know her?"

Ruth shook her head, her unkempt, tangled, faded black hair swatted at her forehead. "No. Do you?" She cocked her head to the side and I looked into her impassive eyes. She'd dyed her hair to match her permanent disposition- dark. She'd let it grow too long and her dull roots almost reached the tips of her ear.

I nodded. "I think. It's not spelled right, but it's close enough to be what I think it is."

"Who is she?"

I took advantage of the fact that I was in the corner of the room and hugged my knees to my chest. "My friend," I murmured.

She smoothed her hair down over her ears only to tuck it behind her ears again. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Letting out a taut sigh, I copied her same nervous movements with my hair. "She," I began only to trail off into silence. Ruth simply stared at me intently, awaiting my continuation. "She was my best friend."

"What happened to her?" Ruth asked softly. She spoke in a gentle tone, but that was her intention- if it was too sensitive a topic, it could have easily been ignored, but if I needed the opportunity to get it off my chest, the invitation was open.

"She had a brain tumor," I whispered. "Didn't live a year after she was diagnosed."

"How come you never told me?" Ruth asked.

I shrugged. "I never wanted to continue dwelling on it."

Ruth didn't say she was sorry, but I saw it in her expressionless eyes. It was then that I realized it- they weren't empty. They were full of sympathy.

"She was my best friend." I spoke even more quietly, trying not to let Ruth onto the fact that my voice was now choked from the tears welling up in my eyes. "She was the kind of person that you would call just to make you laugh if you were depressed, because no matter what she did, she was always laughing. She was like a sister- she had the kind of friendship with me that novels are written about. It was almost a spiritual bond that we shared. We could feel the other's emotions at any given time, apart or away. Part of me died when she left."

Ruth adamantly shook her head. "She didn't leave."

I rubbed furiously at my eyes, angry that I'd unconsciously let some tears fall. "What do you mean?"

"She's not gone. She's still around. She's still around like Susie's still around."

We'd had countless conversations about the missing girl. They began the night we'd met in the graveyard and temporarily ceased, not necessarily ended, five minutes before when Salmon- like the fish- had been spelled out across the Ouija board.

I'd been sitting alone around midnight in the graveyard when I first saw her, sitting beside my brother's grave and facing the mausoleum were Katie rested.

Ruth wasn't there for any particular reason. She had no grave to visit. She was there solely for the company she'd likely find in a cemetery- absolutely none. We spent the entire night just conversing about details of my brother and her poetry, which inevitably led to a discussion of Susie Salmon. The dead weren't the souls that had gone away that we missed and spoke about. The souls truly gone were our own.

"You really liked her, huh?" I sniffled, wiping my tears off on the sleeve of my oversized sweatshirt.

It was Ruth's turn to shrug. "Well I wasn't that close with her, but it was close enough to care when she died."

I always saw Ruth as a fair-weather fan in a sense. I didn't pay much attention to Yankee games unless they were in the running for the World Series, and she didn't pay much attention to many living until they were dead. This was just the way she'd become. She was an empty shell with little to admire but the dust inside and the outside pattern.

I pushed her heavy gold bangles- a gift from Ruana Singh- up her arm to reveal heavy knife scars on the underside of her wrist. "You wanted to die so you could be with the dead one you care for."

Ruth nodded now, choking back tears.

I rolled up my sleeve to show her the fresh scarring that my razor blade had made when it sliced through my skin. "Me too."