my best friend’s deathday

On what would’ve been Tamara’s 19th birthday, Dilly wrote her name on the mirror in lip balm, the greasy smear of letters tinted pink, indistinctly berry scented.

Next to it, she taped a clipping of Tamara’s obituary.

The thin paper was crumpled, the newsprint smudged from being crushed under Dilly’s pillow and cried on for a year. She hadn’t thought to laminate it until it was nearly ruined. It looked pitiful in its casing, not much more than a used-up tissue.

Around it, she pasted photos, movie stubs, drawings, notebook pages, playbills, postcards, bus passes—remnants of a life that Dilly had collected during their time at St Lucy’s College.

It was amazing how much of it looked like garbage.

She filled the glass edge to edge, overlapping detritus until there was only a sliver left for her to look into. Hunched over the sink, sloshing full of water with tea lights bobbing in it, she stared at herself as she palmed the wall and turned off the light.

In the gloom, her eyes looked even more irritated. Warm candlelight exacerbated the effects of hours of crying. Her under eyes and cheeks were streaked and puffy. She looked awful, felt worse, and considered just taking her pill and going to bed.

No, not yet. That had to wait, though she would take it. It was the only way she’d been able to eke out a few hours of sleep a night since last March. It’d been an exhausting, miserable year; one that she, her therapist, and beleaguered academic advisor hoped this exercise would bring to a close.

It was supposed to be simple, this exercise: typical, school-salaried therapist bullshit. Just close your eyes, he’d said, and imagine her with you. What would you say? They’d tried it a handful of times in his office. It hadn’t helped yet, but maybe, just maybe, this time, here, like this, it would make a difference.

She took unsteady breaths, glaring at the fragment of her reflection. What little of the bathroom peeked around her was black. The shower stall at her back was a chasmous hole, a grave—

Best not to think about that.

Dilly swallowed sour spit. Several minutes later, when her eyes were starting to ache from the low-light strain, she found her voice.

“Hey Tammy,” she said. The once-familiar greeting parted taut, grieving muscles like forceps. Dilly’s chest shuddered, a new familiarity that’d come to fill the void left in Tamara’s wake.

If she didn’t hurry, she knew she’d start crying and wouldn’t stop. The night would pass as uselessly as the ones before—a blur of hours indistinguishable from one another through fatigue, skipped classes, missed deadlines—and she’d waste her chance to get out from under this.

“It’s your birthday.” She looked away from her rumpled reflection. “But I guess you know that.”

Her therapist, when suggesting this exercise, had also suggested that Dilly write a letter. He said it’d be easier to read from a page than ad lib. Dilly told him it’d be hard, regardless. Now, she wished that she’d listened. She had no idea what to say.

“I didn’t get you anything. Wasn’t sure what I’d do with it after.” She coughed, clearing phlegm. “But I thought, you know, with the candles, it’s kind of like a cake, and I—Jesus, I know it’s weird, but I wanted to say…”

Dilly hesitated. There was a lot she wanted to say, and equally as much that she didn’t. If she could blot out that night, somehow wipe her memory clean… 

She’d give anything to forget.

Dilly’s tongue blocked her throat. She bit it viciously and smacked her palms against the sink. This was stupid; it wasn’t helping, but she’d started already. She might as well finish it.

Giving up on saying anything important, she started to sing, ignoring the twinge of embarrassment in her cheeks. “Happy birthday to you. Happy…birthday to you.”

Her voice warbled, kissing the edge of a break as she recalled other nights she’d done this in nicer Marches. She and Tammy on a blanket in the quad; in their pajamas, crammed into one tiny dorm bed; at a private table in the refectory, sharing coffee and a fat slice of cake.

Her throat cinched, the tightness making it difficult to breathe. Dilly gasped and her song slipped into bitter weeping. Her vision bleared, obscuring the pasted shrine. She almost gave up then, blew out the candles, and slumped to bed. She toyed with the idea of taking an extra half a pill for good measure, not caring that she’d oversleep and miss her eight o’clock lecture. 

No, she decided, refusing even as her shoulders quaked. Tamara deserved more than that. Tamara deserved a lot of things that Dilly couldn’t give now, but this?

She could do this. She had to.

Gritting her teeth, she continued, brow pinched and determined.

“Happy birth—day, Ta…mara. Happy birthday—”

“I blame you.”

The song shriveled. Dilly’s eyes cut to the exposed sliver of the mirror and she squinted into it, not seeing much. The bathroom was even darker than before. Night had fully come, and with the window curtained, not even moonlight filtered through. 

Uneasiness wriggling up her spine, she flipped on the overhead. She turned, blinking as her eyes adjusted, seeking something out of place, something unusual; something that’d answer the question: had she really heard?

She cataloged the room. The window was shut and so was the linen closet. The armoire next to the sink was surrounded by crumpled, damp towels. The door leading to her suite was bolted, the shower curtain slightly parted.

She paused. Had she left it like that?

She must have. No one else had used the bathroom for weeks. Her other friends rarely visited her dorm. They preferred coaxing her out of it to the refectory, library, or study hall. The only time anyone stopped by was when Dilly needed to be forced out.

She stood in silence, straining her ears. When she didn’t hear anything else, she scoffed. Of course, there wasn't anything, and there hadn't been in the first place. She was exhausted, hearing things.

“Pull it together,” she scolded herself, turning back to the sink. “Finish this, text your therapist, then go to bed.”

It was early still, barely ten. If she made it quick, she could slip into a medicated sleep before midnight and wake up in time for her lecture. But as she reached for the light switch, a grating sound clawed the quiet: metal curtain rings sliding back and forth. 

She jolted to stillness. “Hello?”

The only answer was the screech of rusty jump rings. Dilly spun in time to catch the curtain fluttering to a stop.

“Are those candles for me?” the hissing voice returned. 

Dilly’s heart dropped into her socks. No, it couldn’t be. She must’ve taken her pill already and found herself in a dream. She clutched the counter behind her, fingers numbing from the tight grip, and shook her head.

“But it’s my birthday,” the voice—Tamara’s—pouted.

“No,” Dilly exhaled, “it’s not. Tammy’s…” Her breath hooked back into her lungs painfully. “She’s dead.”

A terse moment of silence lapsed. “I am. And whose fault is that?”

Dilly flinched, a surge of memories she’d spent the last twelve months running from gnawing at her heels. The two of them lounging in the quad after dinner, their breath stolen Bordeaux and buttercream scented; leaning together, laughing and slurring through ‘Happy Birthday’ as an early spring moon rose over the library; the crooked silhouette of the old south tower catching Tammy's eye, a spindly, bent needle; Tammy getting an idea, like she always did.

“No one’s,” Dilly said. “It was an accident.”

“Accident?” It echoed around her, sharp and acidic. The curtain rings rattled. Behind the fabric, something thumped. “You pushed me, Dilly.”

Dilly’s legs tingled as blood rushed, too quickly, to her feet. Rising nausea made her dizzy. She shut her eyes, seeking strength.

“It—no, it wasn’t like that.”

Another onslaught of memories: following Tammy up the tower’s escape ladder, trying her best to keep focused, eyes on rung after rung; finding herself suddenly on the roof with Tammy on the opposite ledge, sandwiched between two ugly grotesques; Tammy with her face upturned, inhaling the night, the toes of her Keds hanging over the edge as she belted another raucous round of ‘Happy Birthday’.

Dilly, for once,getting an idea.

“It was a joke,” she groaned, eyes squeezed so tightly that colors burst behind their lids. She tried not to watch the scene play out, but it flooded back, eager to finally be allowed back in.

She saw herself creep to Tammy’s back, a slack grin on her face, one hand outstretched and ready to nudge. It was meant to be a soft brush of the shoulder, just enough to make Tammy teeter. Nothing bad was supposed to happen. Dilly was right there, ready to grab her as she shrieked, to pull Tammy tight and safe to her chest. But she’d made a mistake somehow in those critical seconds, miscalculated.

Then her friend was tumbling out of reach.

“Was it funny?”

The question knifed between Dilly’s ribs. She could still see Tamara’s body on the sidewalk, pulped and twisted, hair dappled with brain matter.

“Christ, no.”

Fleshy, uncoordinated smacks echoed from the tub. Through the curtain, Dilly saw something move. As its owner clamored to their feet, the voice drawled, “I didn’t think so.”

A shadow smeared up the fabric of a body broken by a long fall, silhouette disrupted by bones jagged out of place. Dilly remembered that, too: the sight of femur, ulna, and clavicle torn through flesh already bruising blue.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, doubling over. Her stomach heaved. “I didn’t want—fuck.” She blubbered, tears and snot flowing free. She swallowed it and gagged. “Tammy, please—”

“Hush,” Tammy cooed. “It’s ok, Dilly-bear. I can tell you want to make it up to me.”

Dilly sniffled. “You… you can?”

“Of course. You remembered my birthday, and guess what? I know exactly what I want this year.”

The curtain rings shinked, parting to reveal a soiled dress, drabby flesh, and lank mats of hair; a body smeared with offal, its skull crushed, and one eye dangling by its nerve from a shattered socket.

It rolled against Tammy’s cheek as it tried to focus. The gel was discolored and goopy, flecked with gnats. The pressure dropped out of the room and Dilly sucked, desperate for air. Breath clawed down her throat and back up again as a scream.

Tammy made soft, dovey sounds beneath it. When she spoke, her dislocated jaw wagged. 

“Don’t be mean. Haven’t you missed me? I’ve missed you. I’ve been so lonely.” One broken hand braced the wall and the other clutched the curtain as Tammy stumbled out of the tub. Clotted veins bulged through her skin, lacing from her knees to her battered, bare feet. “I don’t want to be alone anymore, and I don’t think you do, either.”

Dilly jammed her back against the sink. Blood roared through her ears so loudly that they rang. “Stay away!”

“Why?” Tamara asked, lumbering closer. “Don’t you want a hug, Dilly-bear?”

The thought of touching Tammy crushed her guts. She wanted to vomit, wanted to wake up if she was sleeping. She wanted the nightmare to end.

But she didn’t want to die. Not here, not now. 

For the first time since Tammy’s funeral, Dilly found herself desperately wanting to live. The desire welled within her, lapping her nerves, lubricating her muscles. She pried her fingers from the counter and made fists.

“Don’t touch me!” 

She swung wildly, connecting with the body that fell, more than lunged, at her. Tammy’s flesh was as giving as a waterbed, tender from rot. Stinking liquid gushed through a tear in the skin and sluiced over Dilly’s knuckles, gelatinous and cold.

Tammy screamed, her mouth falling open crookedly. Her throat was fetid and black, her dangling eye gone wild. She swiped her broken hands and caught Dilly’s hair, tearing out hunks of it as Dilly twisted for the door.

The pain was prickly sharp, and she felt blood, the wet loss of skin, but Dilly didn’t care. All that mattered was reaching the door. If she could get out of the bathroom, the dormitory, everything would be ok. Tammy was stiff and slow. All she had to do was get out of range.

Once she did, she could leave St Lucy’s and never come back. Damn her classes and degree, damn therapy. None of it mattered. She could start over somewhere else. Her parents—they’d understand, had been begging her to come home for months, anyway.

Her hand closed on the doorknob. She flicked the lock, twisted it. 

It didn’t budge.

“What?” she wailed. She tugged harder, slicking the knob with her sweat. The door rattled in its frame, but though it shuddered, it wouldn’t open. “No, no, come on!”

Dilly pounded it with her fists, rammed it with her shoulder, kicked and kicked, all the time her heart threatening to crack the shell of her breast. Tammy laughed behind her and slumped toward the door, steps in time with Dilly’s beating.

“You didn’t really think that’d work.” It wasn’t a question; it was mockery. Dilly felt the slime in it, as thick and dank as Tammy’s breath. “I’ve been waiting all year for this day, and we’re going to spend it together. Just like last year, and the one before. Together, always.”

“Please,” Dilly bleated, sinking to her knees, “Somebody, anyone—fucking help me!”

She kept pounding on her way down, but the assault weakened as the hideous thought settled in: no one was coming. She was alone in the suite, like always, alone in a hall deserted in favor of parties or the cherry-blossomed quad.

Alone but for Tammy, who sang off-tune, her mangled bones breaking as she crouched, “Happy birthday to me.”