Memories in Jars

Chapter 2

Author's Note: Hey all! So I wanted to make my update day be Fridays, rather than midweek like my last post.  So thus, y'all are lucky Wattpaders, and you're getting two updates from me this week.  Since last week's Author's Note was so long, I'm going to cut this one off here.  Enjoy!

Kay (dreamer44)

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----- Annabelle -----

            “Alright, so now that we’ve played truth or dare, goofed around online, painted our nails, swam, and baked cookies, what do we do now?” I asked.

            “You forgot playing four rounds of Hearts with Tim,” Maggie said.  She looked at the clock.  “It’s twelve forty-five.  Let’s go for a walk.”

            “I’m up for it,” I said, jumping up.  I needed something to give me back my energy if I was going to make it to the morning without sleeping.  On our way out of the house I grabbed a bag of mini marshmallows from Maggie’s pantry.

            “So,” I popped one in my mouth, enjoying the sugary sweetness that always gave me a late-night perk.

            “So,” she repeated, grabbing a handful from me.  The dark surrounded us in a blanket of blackness and stars and crickets.  It was these times that I always remembered as the best times with Maggie.  The night lent itself to secrets and confessions, the times when we could laugh at each other and ourselves and remember why we were best friends.

            “I’m leaving a week from Sunday,” she said.

            I groaned.  “Stop reminding me!” I said.  “It’s like a continuous countdown until the eight weeks during which I will have no friends and no life.”  Every year Maggie went to sleep-away camp in New Hampshire for eight weeks.  This year she was going to be a counselor like the last, and she absolutely loved it.  Some of her best friends went to that camp with her, I knew their names from the letters she wrote home to me: Becks, Nathan, and Ryder, and although I knew that I would always be her very best friend, as she proclaimed in her letters, that still didn’t stop me from being left by myself in Reid, Massachusetts with only babysitting and family dinners to look forward to. 

            “Stop it!” Maggie said, throwing a marshmallow at me.  “You’ll have a life… You just won’t have your very best friend to share it with.” 

I smiled and threw and arm around her shoulders, giving her a light hug.  “You’ve got that right.”

“Come on, you can just hang out with Rachel or Grace, or maybe even Tim if you get desperately lonely.”

I smiled, blushing in the dark as my thoughts were once again brought back to Tim.  My best friend’s brother of whom the very sight made my stomach flip over.  His dark brown eyes and closely cut brown hair, along with his six-foot two-inch stance were all my heart needed to be sent completely bonkers.  Out loud, I laughed weakly.

“You’ve just got to promise to write me letters,” I said.

“Of course I will!” Maggie said, grabbing another handful of marshmallows.  “No communication with Belle for eight weeks is like forcing myself into depression.”

We walked in silence for a few moments, as we sometimes did.  With Maggie, I didn’t always need to talk, because when we were together, neither of us felt alone or at all discomforted by the silence.  It was one of Maggie’s favorite sayings that “Silence with Annabelle was a time to hear the stars sing and each other’s thoughts on the wind”.  We almost knew what each other was thinking in the silence.