By
Sydney McClain
Morehead, Kentucky

GOSSIP

How did we let it get this far? I ask my best friend, Lexi. She doesn’t answer back. It’s not because she is ignoring me, but because she can’t. For I’m sitting in a hospital room looking at her, only surviving by the tubes down her throat. Not we, I rephrase my question, how did I let this get this far?

It had been only two months before, that we were having sleepovers, doing our nails, and gossiping about the latest happenings. The last conversation we’d had was about the new boy, whom Lexi thought was the best looking guy she had ever seen. She’d also gone on to say if perhaps she took five more pounds off her already tiny body, he would notice her. She always obsessed about her weight.

The day Lexi collapsed was the worst day of my life. We were standing at our lockers, between fifth and sixth periods, when all of a sudden she was on the floor and unresponsive when I screamed her name. Her parents, along with the doctors, didn’t know what was wrong with her. I, however, did know the reason. I had always known Lexi had a problem; every time we ate, she had to run to the bathroom afterwards. I had even been at her house, and walked in on her gagging herself once, but I swore to her that I’d never tell. Now I wish I had.

Now being two months since that horrible day, the doctors say that her brain activity is decreasing at a rapid rate. If staying at this rate, she has two weeks at the most left. I knew this, and knew that she couldn’t hear me. However, I felt it my job as her best friend, if I couldn’t turn back time and save her, to keep her up to date on the gossip of school. Today’s news was about the new boy, Jake, who wasn’t so new anymore. He was dating Victoria, a girl Lexi had never liked. I knew she would want to know this, and the hope I had left, hoped this would make her so mad that she would wake up furious. Of course, it didn’t, and the machines continued to slowly put air inside of her small bulimic body,
Not knowing when her time would end, I visited with gossip every day. A few days later, while catching her up on the news, the zigzag line went flat, and just like that my best friend was gone. We had always been able to spread others’ secrets so easily, and the one that really meant something, I couldn’t tell. Why didn’t I gossip the secret that could have saved my best friend’s life?