A Letter To The Children of My Dead Best Friend

You don’t know me.

I don’t know how to do this, because I never thought a day like this would come where I had to navigate this new territory. People who do know me would tell you that if given the chance I would write you a book, so I’ll try to be brief here.

I’m Phaylen. I’ve been your mom’s best friend since we were 11 years old. We were weird opposites; your Mom was the beautiful cheerleader with a loud, foul mouth and I was a transgender, traumatized goth kid in all black. Nothing about us made sense to the world, and people loved to point that out- the day we got our driver’s license, the clerk looked at us and shouted “What’s going on here!” She thrust her withered finger at me and said “YOU look like a girl!” Then shuttled her cursing fingertip to your Mom saying “AND you look you’re 12 years old!” However, we made sense to each other. We often experienced our most formative years together, or just a bike ride away.

It feels so hollow to be trying to paraphrase Holly Ann Keegan, (Or, what is it now. I’ve changed my name once- that girl was on her third or fourth.) because she was a force- and we have the police record to prove it. I wanna tell you about the time we found sidewalk chalk then went to the construction factory next door to my house and climbed to the top of the silos and wrote… I never said we were brilliant- our names in capital letters for the entire town to see- and trust me, everyone remembers Phaylen and Holly- well, Phaylen wasn’t my name then, I’m…