I forgot to wear your necklace today.

I saw it on my dresser when I came up to bed, instinctively reached for the place on my chest where the pendant would hang. Bare skin. I ran my fingers lightly up to my neck, looked up into the mirror, saw where the silver chain should have been. It was on the dresser. A scrap of rock and metal. A scrap of you.

I put it on, stared at the mirror in the dark, barely able to make it out against my skin. Remembered how it looked next to your freckles in the summertime, when you wore that sundress, the one with the blue flowers. Remembered when you got it, your first diamond, and we pretended that a boy had given it to you instead of our parents. I was always jealous. So jealous that when you gave it to me, I refused at first, embarrassed. But you insisted.

I wore it every day, even under my smock, took it off only to sleep or shower. I wore it to my senior prom, Eric's graduation, your wedding. And I wore it at the service, running my fingers along the chain, looking at the sunlight through the stained glass.

For months afterwards, I never once took that necklace off. One day Mom noticed that the silver was tarnished and the stone was getting dull. We took it upstairs and cleaned it, and she showed me her own first diamond. And when the doorbell rang and I ran down to answer it with red eyes and flushed cheeks, I remembered racing you and Eric to the door and how I always lost. I lost when we raced or played tag or rummy, and I couldn't do the monkey bars or even a cartwheel. Sometimes you helped me and sometimes you laughed at me but you were always there. You wrote me cards when I was in the hospital. You gave me the crafts you made in school and brought me my homework when I was sick. You snooped in my diaries and added your own fake entries. You lectured me and laughed with me and cried to me. And you fought for everything you ever did or had or loved.

Sometimes you lost, too.

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