Memory Sketches by Elizaveta Groza

Everything has started with Valerie`s death,
or rather with her suicide. At least my dad told me so when I asked. He has been investigating this tragedy for a very long time. Weeks and months were passing by and I began to understand my reluctance to be aware of her death`s genuine circumstances. The truth won`t make it any easier.
It hurt much at first. It seems to me now “at first” will never end. The third visit to my psychotherapist this week and another sleepless night. During the entire past week I have been crying my eyes out. I don`t care about make-up absence on my face and my disheveled dirty hair for I won`t leave this room ever again. I will be sitting here on my bed and staring at the wall.
Valerie has chosen these wallpapers.
Thoughts are dancing in my head, stomping feet on my nerves. She indeed had some troubles in her life, so what? Everybody gets a run of bad luck, it`s not a reason to die yet! She didn`t leave any note, said nothing to nobody. There wasn`t any calls or requests. She`s just gone... All of her numerous friends, likewise her parents, didn`t even guess and wasn`t able to suspect this would happen. All of them are really goofy. Everybody looked through her. It seems to me sometimes I was the only one who had seen her holistically.
We lived in the same block of flats. My apartment was closer to the earth, hers one – to the sky. She liked watching the city through the window, especially at night. She opened it and was standing opposite. It lasted a long while at times, so that I was able to draw her figure into my sketchbook. Her dark brown hair was curly because of her constant wearing a tight ballet topknot. It was so long that it touched upon her waist. Wind was swinging the locks of her hair making them dancing, while Valerie was immutable peering into the night. Watching her with her hair down is a lucky chance not everyone can have, for she loosed them only at home, in her room. I was looking at her curls and felt myself elected. I wandered what were they to the touch? What did they smell like? The pencil was silently moving on the paper drawing out another variation of evening Valerie. There was the color which ended more often than all the other ones, and I had to buy several pencils alike in reserve. This won`t be necessary now. I will never picture her again, for she will never be standing in front of the open window with her hair down.
I want to picture her again so much.
It was much harder to admit this truth chiefly to myself than to everyone else, however it isn`t currently meaningful. I had twenty four drawings and several hundred sketches also to tell her, but I didn`t dare to. So now she will never know. Nobody will know, except me.