Epilogue: APRIL

I'm kneeling by Liz's grave, waiting for the last stragglers to disperse. My skirt is now damp from the rainwater leftover from last night's downpour, but I am way past caring.

Liz's parents are long gone. Her mother, Tiff, was a wreck, her normally brisk persona giving way to pure emotion. When Liz's coffin was lowered into the ground, Tiff had screamed something unintelligible about "her baby" and had to be held back by her husband until her screams subsided into sobs.

Her father, whom Liz had so often complained about, gave a speech I would have thought him incapable of making. He's usually so... so quiet. So strict. But even he had tears in his eyes as his daughter was laid to rest in a hole in the ground.

Finally, all the mourners leave and I am alone. I don't move for a moment, but then I hesitantly place my hand on the freezing marble of the tombstone. I don't speak. I can't. Suddenly, all my memories with Liz, most of my life, flash through my mind at the speed of light: our meeting by the trunk of the Tree, birthday parties, giggly sleepovers. The good times, when we talked about everything, and she told me that she couldn't bear to be without me and that I was her best friend forever and ever.

Of course, where there's good, there must be bad. Childish fights over who was the Princess and who was the Stepmother. Liz having countless friends and sometimes neglecting me. The last few months of cold distance. And most painfully, the voicemail. The latter causes the lump in my throat to grow and tears to spring to my eyes, but I don't let them fall. Not yet.

"I finished it, Liz." I whisper, my voice cracking. "I finished the song." A week after Liz took her life, I picked up my guitar again. Fuelled by grief, I started afresh and pulled together everything leading to her suicide. I open the guitar case next to me and pull my guitar to my lap. "You can hear it now."

It takes everything in my power not to break down as I play my song for the first and last time. For Liz. As I play the last note, I finally give into my grief and let the guitar slide from my lap. My hands are planted in the dirt as my body shakes with sobs and I'm shouting now. Shouting at some unknown entity, at Liz, at her family, but most of all at myself.

It seemed like Liz had it all. I thought she was my best friend. But as I walk away from the cemetary and into Mum's waiting car, I realize that maybe, just maybe, she'd never had it all. I'd never be able to ask her what went wrong, where it came from, or say goodbye to my best friend, but I could be more understanding of people. No one knows what happens behind closed doors, not even best friends. We just have to hold on.

Hold on.