From the periphery of myself, I could see how it was helpful. I’d already faced constant scenarios where I had to talk about what happened to Marley. I didn’t just talk, I relived, climbing right back inside that hot July afternoon, the metallic smell of her fresh blood curdling up under my nostrils as I did. I was constantly swept away by the rushing tide that was the loss of her.

The activity reaffirmed that I didn’t have to make it so hard on myself. Life was a performance. Like Marley had always taught me. As long as I could read what the other person wanted, I truly had the power, even if I was going along with their idea. I learned to write myself the best role that way. To swiftly pivot and swirl and turn and climb until I hovered above the reality of my life, crafting myself into someone everyone liked better.

What I never took into account was how my kind of story ended. Living so high above everyone else meant I either floated away or they climbed up to meet me in the clouds. And there they were, a ladder leaning right onto the teetering edge I’d constructed above them, extending their arms, ready to help me back down. I could not catch my tears. The dirt in my hands started turning to mud.

“Marley’s mom and dad needed to be better people, and they weren’t,” Ruby continued. “Let that be a lesson to us. We can be better. We should think of her every time we hop a fence instead of opening the gate. Or peek under the bed at a new friend’s house to see what interesting things we might find. That’s what we owe her. So, we’re going to get up here and cry our eyes out. Tell the stories we thought we forgot. Put this box in the ground not to bury it, but to keep it as a secret monument. This is who we were. We owned this place. The kids of Albany Lane.” Ruby placed the wooden box into the hole. “Let’s make it so that we never again have to ask ourselves, How did this happen?”

It wasn’t exactly as I imagined, but the night was becoming everything I wanted. It took my best friend to make it happen. Even though I’d tried to hide, she saw me anyway.

One by one, the others got up and shared stories of us as we used to be.

Harrison told of the weeklong saga that was Marley attempting to build a tree house out of wood scraps we found near City Hall.

Teeny reminded us of all the times she and Marley hosted runway shows down Albany. We’d all go into our houses and wrap ourselves up in anything we could find, then parade down the yellow catwalk painted onto the center of our street.