Once, when I was very little, I remember trying to point him out to my friends at recess. “There he is! See him standing there in the trees?” My little voice called out excitedly. Gathering around me like frenzied birds, everyone strained and struggled to see what I was pointing at. “I don’t see anything.” “There’s nothing there!” “What are you talking about Grace?” I was shocked. Surely they must be joking. “He’s right there! See him in those trees?” Came my frantic reply, I was now desperate to prove that he was real. They all just shook their heads at me and stepped away, scared.
Confusion and fright was wild in their eyes. None of them could see him, so to them I was a freakish, insane little girl who was seeing things. I was shunned from them from that moment on, an outcast, set aside and ignored, left to find for myself. After that, I learned to keep him to myself. The others couldn’t see him because he was mine, my special, protective friend always on the outskirts of my field of vision, but always there. I was special, and that was why he had chosen me, and why the others could not see him.
As I grew older, I began to notice that he would advance more and more with each passing year. That day on the playground, he was a very long way off, hardly more than a long, tall shadow among the leafless trees. One morning over the summer, he startled me greatly as I sat on my swing seat. I nearly fell right off, seeing him only a few feet away, in my own yard. He had never been in my yard before; he was always standing in the forest right outside my house. Now that he was so close, I felt safe and calm. At the start of the new school year, He was so close to my house, that while I was up in my room, he would be standing right next to my swing seat. At Christmas time, I could look out my window and see him standing right at the back door. It felt good to know that he wanted to be closer to me.
Next summer, he would follow me around almost like a little dog, staying closer to my side than ever before. I started talking to him, and he would nod his head as I spoke. People gave me strange, funny looks; they must have thought that I was talking to myself. One night, I went out into the yard to play with him. The night air was deathly cold and chilled me to the bone. For the first time, he put his skeletal hand on my shoulder. My mother came out then to ask what I was doing. “Playing with my friend, Mama.” I answered in my innocent little voice. “But Grace, honey, there’s nobody out here but you.” She said the same fear and confusion apparent in her wide blue eyes that I had seen in my friends. “Mama, I know you can’t see him, but he really is here.” She dismissed it as simply a little girl letting her imagination run wild.
Near the end of that summer, Mama had to take me to the hospital. The doctors said I was very sick. I remember Mama leaning over my little hospital bed, stroking my hair and telling me that everything was going to be okay. And I knew that she was right, because my friend stood right by my bed too, and when Mama had gone, he stroked my hair just like she had. Morning came, and Mama and Papa were talking in hushed tones with the doctor. My friend sat on the side of my bed, watching me. It made me feel so happy that he was there with me. I could hear Mama Papa and the doctor talking, although they tried to sustain their voices to barely above a whisper. “This cancer has been growing inside her since birth. It’s slowly been killing her since then. I’m sorry to say this, but we didn’t get her to the hospital fast enough. There is nothing we can do. Grace only has a few days to live.”
Sobbing and choking, my distressed mother came to the side of my bed, talking to me quietly. Papa stood over me, tears running down his cheeks. “We’re going to take you home now; you can sleep for a few days there.” Mama gasped through her tears.
Laying in the warmth and comfort of my bed, I could see my friend standing over me. He stayed faithfully and loyally by my side all through the night, and all the next day. When the next night crept over everything like a slinking black cat, He got closer and closer. Mama and Papa couldn’t stop crying, holding my hands and telling me how much they loved me. I really didn’t see why they were so upset. My friend reached down and took my little hands in his bone thin one. Squeezing my hand tightly, he took me away into the black night. Silver-white mist and wind blew, stirring up the skeletal branches of the black trees, making them dance and sway in a strange, grotesque way. I closed my eyes…
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