Writing Wendy

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Like, it's actually really, really macabre, what's happening here. I know that. But now I'm telling you, dear reader. Here's my story. The story about how I, Elodie Stone, stumbled accidentally into fame, ripping the knees of my jeans in the process. The story about how it's all a hoax. I'm coming clean.

Let's back up for a minute. I come from a normal suburban home on the outskirts of Augusta, Georgia. My father is an accountant, and my mother is a stay-at-home mom. She's always been a PTA mom, a killer baker, and someone that you'd be crazy not to envy. Beautiful, but not intimidating, so it's like, the other PTA moms can't even hate her. And she's kind. I didn't take after her.

I didn't take after my dad, either, clearly. He's so smart and soft-spoken. My parents actually still love each other, after 30 years of marriage. It's like this perfect little white picket fence life that has always felt so alien to me. There's always been a small part of me that wanted to take a wrecking ball to that white picket fence, just to mix things up. And I finally did it. And it had the opposite effect of what I wanted, needed. I really messed everything up.

I'm getting ahead of myself again.

I'm 17 and I've got two older sisters - Nina, 24 and Charlotte, or Charli, 21. Nina is in medical school. She's engaged to a guy from a wealthy family, but they're all really down to earth. And nice. Everyone in my life is so nice. Nina gets her looks from my mom - they both have long, golden blonde hair and apple green eyes. Naturally tan. Small features, tall, slender. They remind me of gazelles. The only thing Nina got from my dad are his dimples, which make her look even more endearing.

Charli and I get our looks from our dad, sans dimples (of course, because why would the universe want me to look endearing?) Charli's prettier than me, but then, I think everyone is. My friends insist I'm wrong, but that's what friends are supposed to do, right? Charli has raven black hair, long and straight, and the palest big brown eyes I've ever seen. They're like, almost yellow. Think the Cullens from Twilight right after they've gone hunting. Honey. Her skin is alabaster and she's got freckles and a huge, infectious smile. She’s 21 and currently in culinary school. She works part-time at a local coffee shop/book shop, Books and Beans. I love spending time there to read on the squashy chairs by the dim, moody lighting, sipping a frothy cinnamon latte. 

I'm like a watered-down version of Charli. I know, you're probably thinking, why all the self hate? I couldn't tell you. You know how most girls want what they don't have? Like, curly-headed girls want stick-straight hair? Or if they've got mousy brown hair, they want it platinum blonde? Different color eyes, smaller noses, etc. I blame it on society grooming us to feel that way about ourselves our entire lives, but then, all the women in my life are pretty confident. And they grew up in the same world I did. So I guess I can't really blame it on that.

Anyway, my hair is black and wavy. It can't make up its mind whether to be curly or straight, and it's maddening. I've got pale skin, no freckles. I'm smaller than the rest of my family of statuesque models. Only 5'2. The only thing different from my immediate family are my eyes. I have my grandmother's eyes, ice blue. They're the only interesting thing about me.

Is that why I did it? To appear interesting? I mean, how pathetic is that? I used to make fun of people like that. Like, celebrities who would do stupid stuff to stay in the limelight. And now, I've become what I mocked. What I hated. I knocked myself right off my own high horse.

So, let's just get right into it, shall we? I volunteer at the University Medical Center after school, at my sister Nina's suggestion. She said that it would give me a leg up to go ahead and get volunteer work down on my resume before college.

I actually want to be a writer, but nobody in my family knows that. (Well, until now). They don't know about the shoe boxes in my closet full of journals upon journals, or all the jump drives with writing competition prompts that I’ve never submitted. It's not like I can make any money doing that, so I've never had the guts to truly explore it. Not that money is everything. And my family is so nice, they would want me to go after my dreams rather than just take a job for the security. But I’m a coward, so I chose the safest, most secure job I could think of. Nursing. 

Even though I do love writing, I’m actually really good at science. And it’s not like I totally hate it, either. Maybe nursing wouldn’t keep me totally satisfied, but you know what? I’m kind of past thinking of what would be best for me. I don’t really feel like I have the right to want anything for myself anymore. 

So, I volunteer after school two days a week at the medical center, specifically in the cancer ward. I didn’t choose it, it’s just where they needed someone at the time. That’s where I met Wendy. 

Wendy was striking, even with no hair. It’s like she was born to be bald. Before chemo, she had this beautiful fiery-red hair with natural blonde streaks. Some of that was growing back, along with her thin red eyebrows. She had deep green eyes that could pierce right through to your soul and pretty skin. She was my age, and she had Hodgkin lymphoma. She was diagnosed at 14 and battled like a rock star ever since. I’ve seen her good days and bad. She’s seen mine too, like when my ex, Greg, broke up with me and started dating a cheerleader named Brittany two weeks later. 

We became friends. I can’t even really say that, I don’t deserve to. But, honestly, before I did what I did, I considered us close friends. I don’t know why she picked me, this clumsy girl who says the most awkward crap at weird times, but her face would always light up when I would get to work. We shared the same taste in music, alternative rock from the early 2000s, mainly, and we constantly gave each other Netflix recommendations and shared good books we’d read lately. Murder mysteries or fantasy novels similar to Harry Potter. 

But it was more than just surface stuff. We told each other stuff. She told me exactly how it felt to go through chemo, and to be “the cancer girl.” I have literally cried in her arms over idiot Greg who, now that I think of it, never really treated me right anyway. We shared our wins and losses with one another, like the days that she dared have hope that she’d beat this thing, me agreeing, nodding, assuring her that she’s strong enough. She was the only person I ever told about my dream to become a writer. 

That’s what is kind of ironic: this feigned fame that has found me because of some harmless thing I thought I did, if it had nothing to do with Wendy, if I had just done this whole thing honestly - it would be the kind of thing that I would run to her excitedly to gush to her about. 

But I can’t, because, even if she hadn’t passed away two months ago, it does have to do with her. If she was still alive, I’d never be able to look her in those trusting eyes again. I don’t know why I did it. Grief? I lost the closest friend I’d ever had the day Wendy died. I watched her parents, Joe and Valerie Quentin, become different people at Wendy’s funeral. She was their only child; they’d had trouble getting pregnant and Wendy was their miracle. But now, they were empty shells of their former selves, totally broken and burned from the inside out. Grief like that makes you a stranger to the world you’re living in. It’s not natural to outlive your child. 

And the absolute worst part about all this is that I don’t even think Wendy would be angry with me for what I did. She was just good. She was the type of person to thank God every day, even while she was nearing death. Why are all the people in my life so good? It’s like I didn’t get the memo, I’m defected… Maybe it started the day I was born, because I was an “oops” baby. I mean, it’s not like that - my parents were overjoyed when they found out they were pregnant with me. But I wasn’t planned. Maybe that’s why I’ve always felt so chaotic, a little off, and always a little too anxious to ever truly relax. Like something big is about to happen all the time, and if it doesn’t, I have to force it to happen. 

I remember the day Wendy told me, in strict confidence, about Harley. 

Harley was a kid that Wendy fell in love with, right before they moved to Augusta from Senoia, GA. She was 13, and he was almost 16, and he was just tragic. Her word, not mine. Tragic because he was like this lost puppy. His mom had passed away when he was a kid, and his father was a drunk. He didn’t hit Harley, but he was never around, really. Tragic because Wendy thought he was so beautiful. She said, “You remind me of him, actually. He's pale and has dark hair and really light blue eyes.” Tragic because he felt emotions too strongly to want to stay in a world that looked down on men feeling something. Tragic because he almost never smiled, but when he did, Wendy felt like she could just cry. 

But she had to move away once she got diagnosed when she was 14. Augusta has better medical care than Senoia, a small town almost three hours away. 

Right before Wendy’s life was turned totally upside down by her diagnosis, she and Harley saw each other almost every day. They were fierce, fast friends. It’s like they fulfilled something in each other’s lives that they didn’t know they needed. But Harley, Harley was sad and his mother passed when he needed her the most. And with a dad like his, he was stuck raising himself. It got to be too much and one day, Harley texted Wendy: “I can’t do this anymore.” 

He’d said things similar before. But something about this time shook Wendy, maybe because it was the middle of the day instead of late at night when they usually texted or video called each other until one in the morning. Or maybe it was because she’d caught him Googling “does it hurt when you die,” and maybe it was because she knew Harley’s dad kept a Glock in his bedside table, because Harley had told her before. 

They lived in the same neighborhood, just a five minute walk. Wendy made it in half that time, bursting into his front door without knocking, saying nothing to his dad who was in the front room watching TV, drinking a midday beer. He was used to Wendy being around, and he hardly glanced up. Didn’t notice the urgency in her steps as she bounded down the dingy hall to the room at the end. She didn’t knock, and she found him, racked with silent sobs, curled up on his bedroom floor.

And she just lay with him on the floor and held him, petting his hair and telling him he was worth more than this. That he deserved better than this pain, but that this was a permanent solution to something that could be fixed. She was so much wiser beyond her years, always. She told him something that finally struck a chord in his brain - she needed him. She wouldn’t be able to survive something like this, didn’t he know that? She needed him. 

So he stayed. And she stayed with him, hand in hand, as they told Harley’s father, finally, about how he’d been feeling for years. Harley’s dad had his own demons, but he did not hate his child. He was not a bad man. He just never dealt with the passing of his wife. Wendy told me, tears running freely, about that conversation. About how Harley’s father finally saw his son, for what seemed like the first time in his life. About how they set up a plan for Harley to get treatment for depression...and for his father to get treatment for alcoholism. I remember this day so clearly, and how she and Harley planned to be together one day. One day when she was well, well enough to move away on her own, closer to him. She had been so hopeful that it wakes me up at night, sobbing, when I dream about that day. 

It was just all so visceral. And she told me, only me, because she knew I’d never tell anyone. That I’d never betray this boy’s secret, this boy who I’d never met. Because, of course I wouldn’t. 

Except I did. And now, everyone knows his story. 

Harley and his father came to Wendy’s funeral. Wendy and Harley had stayed in touch, still talking almost every day, as Wendy was in and out of the hospital, and as Harley bravely stayed on his road to recovery. He and his father seemed very close at the funeral and it warmed my heart. Wendy lost her life, but she literally saved those two men. She saved their lives by running, as quickly as she could, to Harley’s home that day, and by telling him he was worth something. Telling him that she needed him here. Something he’d probably been waiting to hear. He didn’t want to die. He just wanted something to stop his pain.

He needed her too, which is why I think she held on so long. Even though she was in so much pain, she held on. Until she knew that he was far enough along in his recovery that her passing wouldn’t make him relapse. 

I approached Harley at the wake held after the funeral. He knew who I was instantly, because of Wendy, of course. He looked the same as his photos, with a lot more pain behind his eyes. That pain mirrored the heartbreak in my eyes. We hugged, we cried. We’d both lost our best friend. I accompanied him outside the stuffy house fraught with hurting people, to get fresh air and just talk about our favorite things about Wendy. Mine was her laugh. His was her relentless optimism. 

That night, when I had finally made the long drive back home, was when I did it. 

Remember me talking about all those writing prompts I never had the guts to send in? Well, I finally got the guts, as I wrote Wendy and Harley’s story. I changed little things, names, location, things like that. But Wendy and Harley were still at the very heart of the story, which I submitted as my own. Under “creative nonfiction.” Ha.

I still don’t know why I did it. The grief made me feel like a different person, sure. But I think it’s because I didn’t think there was any way in hell that my prompt would get chosen. 

But it did. I found out a week after the submission was due. I won the $10,000 scholarship. But “my” story also made headlines: Local Girl Shares Story of Saving a Lost Soul - The Elodie Stone Story. What a fraud. Disgusting. 

I endured the “Oh honey, I had no idea!” from my parents. The fiercely proud look in my sisters’ eyes. The looks of awe that my friends gave me. They said, “the writing was so good, we didn’t even know you were interested in that!” And, “you could use this scholarship to pursue your dream! Augusta University has a great arts program!” And the “how did we never know about this guy you’re in love with? Do you still talk to him? He must be so thankful, and his father too!” Such. A. Fraud. 

I passively accepted all the praise, each word chipping away at my sanity more and more. I questioned myself - what is wrong with me? Am I actually crazy? 

But Harley’s call is what sprung me into action. That hurt in his voice - of course he knew. I don’t know how he ran across it, which story he’d seen. But I knew from the moment his name flashed across my phone’s screen, he knew. 

“Elodie, seriously? How could you do that?” is what he said to my shaky hello. I ask myself the same thing every single day. His voice wasn’t angry, but very hurt. 

“I don’t even know,” I said, and began sobbing. I was such an idiot, and I was living a life that wasn’t mine at the moment. 

After I got off the phone with Harley, I began writing this. I’m setting the record straight and getting in touch with one of the reporters who wrote a version of the story. And I’m going to ask Wendy’s parents what they’d like me to do with this stupid money I won. It’s not mine. 

I’ll probably be banned from the writing world forever, and my family and friends will be insanely disappointed in me. But Wendy and Harley deserve better. So here’s my real story. I’m a total fraud, and I’m clicking “send.”