After what felt like hours of gazing into the sky, watching the pale spiral of the Milky Way and its arc of stars as the moon traced its pathway across the night, Charles and I finally put down the telescope. The air was chilly, and we were both shivering, despite bringing heavy layers. I can still remember all the sights: the dusty orange of Mars, the earthy tan layers on Jupiter, the bright yellow of Venus and the blurry rings of Saturn.

I turned towards him. "We never got to your last favorite memory ever."

"Today," he said, with a soft smile. "It was the best day of my life."

"Me too."

We both sat up, knowing that it was close to the end. Even though it was close to three in the morning and my stomach was rumbling after not eating all day, I didn't feel tired. I wanted to stay with him until it was tomorrow morning. But even though he didn't say anything, I knew that he had to get home before then to prepare to leave.

So then we wordlessly hopped off the roof, him going first and me following him reluctantly, and prepared to walk back home, guided by the moonlight. It was a quiet walk back home. I should've talked more because it was possibly the last time that I'd talk to him forever, but I didn't. There was this silence, punctuated with dry grass and ash scraping against our shoes and the soft crashing of waves in the background, and sadness that smothered any possible conversation.

When we reached the crossroads, his house a couple of blocks in one direction and mine a couple in another one, we turned towards each other.

"I guess this is it," he said.

"Yeah, it is," I said, too numb to really process this, before blurting out, "I'm going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you too," he said and gave me a hug. "Just pretend that I'm going off to college."

I was paralyzed for a moment before I was able to embrace him back. "I can't. I'm scared of losing you. Forever."

"It's okay. I'm terrified of dying too," he whispered in my ear before pausing and adding, "I love you."

Those last three words shocked me because I hadn't heard those words a long time in my life, and I certainly didn't expect them to come from Charles' mouth. But the way that he said it, like he actually meant it, not like a short quip or a throwaway line, made me feel like I was truly and deeply loved for the first time in a long while.

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"I love you too," I said and tightened the hug before letting go.

We looked at each other for a couple of moments before Charles said, "Farewell my sire. May we meet in better places, preferably not heaven."

"I'll see you down the road," I said with a soft laugh before we started stepping away from each other and walking our own separate ways.

When I had walked a few feet, I turned back to give him one last wave. But by then, he had disappeared into the darkness, the pale moonlight not illuminating enough of the street, so I continued walking back home. As I walked away from the ocean and Charles, true silence descended upon me, the loneliness of this new world finally setting in. Whatever remains here is desolate and dead.

I thought that I would start crying or at least begin tearing up. I wanted to feel this emotional devastation and loss. But I couldn't even force myself to shed a single tear, and at that moment, I was terrified about how easily it was to let someone go forever. It's like I just couldn't comprehend someone who has been there for my whole life just to disappear one day and never return. Even now, after he's gone, I still can't wrap my mind around it.

When I got home, like I expected, Mom and Dad were angry, then fake apologetic, then angry again. I was pretty much grounded forever, but it didn't matter. Mira tried defending me, but that didn't help, and May just stared at me, knowing that Charles and I planned this day during that conversation she allowed me to have. Once my public beatdown was done, I retreated into my room, pulled out this diary, and began writing everything down.

The only time that I took a break was when Mira knocked on the door and handed me a letter. She told me that Charles must've dropped it off by our door just before he had left. There was a note on there telling me not to open it until a week after he was gone, and that he had things to get off of his chest that he couldn't tell me in person.

I wasn't even tempted to open the letter, so I just placed it on the shelf and went back to writing. Looking out of the window and at the sky, I could see dark clouds creeping towards our house, bringing ash storms and frost, the sun soon to be silenced. Despite the looming threat of death, the strange thing is that while I was writing the memories, the graphite and ink felt alive, the words spiraling themselves off of the page, the sentences swirling into memories that felt like life.

That's when I figured out the true meaning of story writing.

I said that I wanted to write a story so that there would be something to remember me by. But remembrance feels too much like a memorialization, like the lines of names carved into granite Vietnam War memorials. Stories are so alive that as I'm reading through these childhood memories, I'm not just remembering them. I'm living and feeling through them.

As long as I'm alive, he won't ever be dead, even if the worst happens to him. These pieces of paper that I'm holding close to me will always have his spark of humor and life within them. He'll be alive on these diary pages, and he'll be alive in my head.

He'll be alive no matter what comes after.