Jesse.

It was an unlikely friendship. He was a punk/skater/slacker and I was a straight-A good-girl. He made fun of me, I rolled my eyes and ignored him. As I met more people outside of my field hockey girls, however, our paths seemed to cross more. By senior year we were actually friends (although the teasing continued, with some strange, underlying affection). We had theater and creative writing together and would find multiple reasons to conduct "projects" to take up class time. And we actually wrote some okay stuff, too.

Jesse and I both went on the bi-annual trip to England that the theatre department sponsored. Not really his type of thing, but his parents are both educators and involved in the theatre dept. I didn't think that, when signing up for the trip with my then-best-friend, I would end up spending most of the time with Jesse.

I hate flying. Haaate. And as the flight took off, Jesse, who had, for unknown circumstances, chosen to sit next to me, grabbed my hand. I realized he wasn't a fan of flying, either, and was comforted by this tough-acting boy gripping my hand for the first twenty minutes of the flight. When I got up later, I returned to find a lovely napkin-drawn picture of our plane. Crashing. That was just the way he was--so sweet one minute, and such a little bastard the next.

We had graduated from high school a week before the trip, but the group of us managed to get into trouble (usually led by Jesse) for multiple things. (There was even a "formal" inquest that our chaperones ran.) We drank Bacardi Breezers! We stayed out past curfew! We yelled at people from our balcony! We snuck Collin into the hotel! We were 18-years-old and could legally drink and had our own hotel rooms. All things that seem like such small infractions, given what life has held.

Last year, Jesse was killed by his friend after a fight over a girl. Even though I hadn't seen him since our return from England, I was devestated. It's just...he was so smart, and had so much promise, and it was such a stupid, stupid thing to happen. I recently found pictures from when our creative writing class took a field trip to the maple sugar place (random project #485). We had brought our cameras for inspiration, but all my pictures consisted of Jesse and Collin doing stupid things among piles of leaves. And a picture of Jesse taking a picture of me. I love that picture--it really conveys our complete disinterest in our assignment, yet our desire to catalog each other. I wonder where his picture of me laughing back at him is. I wonder if Jesse valued that simple, innocent day we had eating maple sugar and playing in the woods like children, traipsing around the maple sugar farm, pretending to be thoughtful and poetic and really knowing we were just happy to be not at school.

I wonder how I can so deeply feel the loss of a person that hasn't even been part of my life for years. Then I think back to the plane, and how he held my hand and made me giggle as the plane ascended. And how I think of that moment every time I've gotten on a plane since. And I smile, because really? That's what Jesse would have wanted....

Now if I could just find someone to draw me pictures of the plane crashing.

Because that's really what he would have wanted...me smacking his arm and calling him a douchebag, then laying my head on his shoulder for a snooze.