Forgive Me, Sasha
By Veronica Zhang | Grade 9 | Scholastic 2024 | Short Story | Regional Gold Key and National Gold Medal
Green was the color of the pencil that I rubbed between my fingers the first day of freshman year. Staring into the splintering wood was better than looking at the giggling girls scattered around me, better than thinking about how few friends I had or people I knew.
Green was the color of your eyes — the first thing I noticed about you. The color of sunlight piercing a translucent pine needle, or seawater in a Windows default background.
Are you new here? you asked.
Lost in the overwhelming din of the lecture hall, I could only stutter back. But you never minded my awkwardness, maybe because you were the opposite. Your words flowed forth, freely, in winding rivers, while mine could only drip out like a leaky faucet.
Green was the color of the map you tossed aside at the trailhead. Let’s get lost, you said. It’s more fun that way.
So we spent hours wandering the granite mountains while you told me about how much you wanted to move up to Washington. The trails there were better; more mountains to summit, more boulders to scale, more lakes to splash through, more people to meet.
After several miles, we came across a cliff. Ahead of us stretched layers and layers of jagged peaks, each reaching higher and higher until finally disappearing into the belly of a cloud. Lichen clung to the crumbling rocks around our feet, pistachio-colored patches accenting the ashy white limestone.
A wooden sign nailed to an adjacent tree read: Cathedral Cliffs.
You crawled to the edge of the precipice and sat, swinging your legs out as you beckoned me to do the same. It’s safe, you promised. Peering over the edge, I realized we were sickeningly high up. Brain-paralyzingly, heart-palpitatingly high up.
I focused my eyes on my ragged hiking shoes, trying to blur out the miniscule trees in the sprawling forest below me. Green bile threatened to rise up and spill out from my stomach, vertigo tilted the horizon line up and down like a shaky camera shot, gusts of white wind rattled my head like it was a pinwheel and–
Your hand. On my shoulder. Are you okay? The haze cleared.
I took a deep breath, inhaling the saccharine scent of pine.
Yeah, I’m fine.
***
Green was the wad of bills you handed me when my debit card was declined at the gas station on the way home that night. A flush rose up into my face as I heard the low beeping, as the cashier shook his head, as you grasped my sweatshirt sleeve and told me not to worry, you would cover it.
I know you’re here on financial aid, don’t worry about it, you simpered as you handed me a stale hotdog. Smiling, I thanked you. But I didn’t feel grateful. Something about the way I depended on you was pathetic, like I was a homeless dog licking your fingertips, searching for nourishment.
Green was the color of your semester report card, stamped with a shining 4.0 at the top. You were so proud, and I wanted so badly to be proud of you too, but I couldn’t. Not when mine said 3.2. I never understood how we could be so different when we had the same major and took the same classes. In my mind, I deserved what you had. While your weekends were filled with football games, flashing lights, and flippant crowds, mine were flooded with chemical engineering textbooks, quiet single dorms, and closed black curtains.
Green were the empty beer cans strewn on the frat house lawn at the mixer we went to during sophomore spring. They crunched and crinkled as those two juniors staggered over to ask for your number. A jolt of confusion flashed through my tequila-hazed consciousness when you sweetly but firmly turned them down. They were cute; maybe I would’ve said yes if it had been me. But it wasn’t. They lurched away, shrugging. Neither of them took a second glance at me, like I was never there, like I was your shadow.
Green was the notification I got when you texted me, asking if I wanted to hike to Cathedral Cliffs again. I said yes. What else was I supposed to do?
So two days later, we were back there again. Just you and me, some birds, and the low hum of distant rain clouds…
You had gotten a new camera from your mom. Let’s try it out, you said, giggling. Look, there’s a selfie mode. Warm palms fluttered against my pearl-white skin as you grasped my hand and stuck out your tongue, laughing like a five-year-old on Christmas day as the blinding flash ignited over and over and over. Wait, can we retake? I wanna get more of the sky in.
I couldn’t stop you from skipping over to the teetering ledge. I couldn’t stop the horror film from playing out in front of me.
White was the cloud of dust that flew out beneath your feet when you slipped.
A shriek, whistling. A rock clattered off the side of the precipice, a moment before you did. It fell to the bottom, probably shattering to dust. But you didn’t, because I caught you, my fingernails tearing into your jacket sleeve– your expensive designer jacket sleeve, but it didn’t matter because you were okay, even if we were dangling two seconds away from freefall.
The fear evaporated from your face as you realized what happened; replaced by a frenzied, disbelieving grin as you scrambled to find a hold. Thank goodness, you squeaked. I almost thought I–
I let go.
I saw you double over, struck by the silent blow of sheer gravity. I saw your body fold in half like a sheet of paper, saw your legs twisted in a somersault over your head, saw your arms splay out like a plummeting bird waiting to be lifted by the wind. But you just kept falling farther, shrinking away. I saw my hands loosen and drop you off the precipice, but they didn’t feel like my hands. It was like watching a movie– until I heard the echo of your body thudding onto the forest floor several seconds later. I was too scared to look down. I couldn’t bear to see your beautiful figure marred by my ugly fingers, couldn’t bear to see the body that I had mangled, the limbs bent out of shape like a little kid playing with a pipe cleaner.
So instead, I threw up and called 9–1–1.
White was the glow of the LED numbers on the oxygen monitor in your hospital room. I watched them flicker. The heart rate graph undulated with every silent breath you took. The silicon mask fogged over with your exhale. I prayed to see some part of you, a finger or eyelid or anything, twitch through the anesthesia.
The sheets I wrapped myself in on the night you died were white, too. Your sister called hours earlier to break the news. She was devastated. And even though I envied you, even though it was my fault, I was devastated too. I rolled under the comforter, twisting the blankets tighter and tighter until I couldn’t breathe, until I was gasping for air, until a fuzziness started blooming in my vision. Is this how you felt in those last moments?
White was the dress you wore as you lay in that casket. It was a frilly thing, with ruffles on the shoulders and poofing out around the hem. Your eyelids were white too, shutting out those shamrock-colored irises with an iron veil. It felt like staring at a doll, an imitation. You never were that pale in real life.
Your sister came to hug me after she read the eulogy. Thank you for coming, she whispered. You were so close to her, it means a lot to our family. Her lip twitched, the way yours always did when you were nervous for an exam or thinking really hard. I nodded, staring at the ashy tile beneath my feet. I couldn’t face her. Not when the slope of her nose bridge, the jut of her chin, and her seawater eyes were almost identical to yours.
White was the snow that spewed forth from the sky the day after the funeral. You wouldn’t have liked it. You once told me that you hated the cold. Snow covers up the beautiful pines– those were your words. And they did, they blurred the forest with an artificial opaqueness, but the evergreen branches still poked out, like the way Wite-out never really hides a mistake, just makes it more obvious.
