The Last Time We Spoke
Ashley Sullivan and I were never the best of friends. We shared the same sixth grade class together and as I was the outcast any conversation we had ended in school yard teasing and sidelong glances.
This last year in highschool was my senior year-I am a freshman in college now. I had turned eighteen on the sixth of December and Ashley was now 18 as well, her birthday being in October.
It was a week before my birthday, I was on my way to class. And as luck would have it, Ashley was sitting in the lobby with her friend laughing and joking about something.
I tried to just walk past her without her noticing but she looked up and her friend said something hurtful and she jumped in. Soon they were both laughing it up at my expense and I wasn't too pleased with it. Needless to say my typical response was an insult.
Ashley was a little overweight so I took out a quarter and said, "Here's twenty-five cents towards lyposuction." And I moved away. I don't think she took my comment to heart as this was routine. And besides, at the time I really didn't care because she started with me, I was in the right.
So, the three weeks went by and on a Sunday morning, long before I was due to wake up, a trailer fire took the lives of Ashley, her parents and sister, and her youngest nephew who wasn't even a year old.
The consensus was that they died without pain. They were asleep and the carbon monoxide took them before the explosion, but...the one thing I keep remembering even now is that, the last time we had spoken Ashley and me...it was out of hatred.
