12 days of heather, day 3 — Malia Boyd Writes

i wrote this series remembering my best friend who was making pastries at windows on the world when she was senselessly killed by strangers with hate in their hearts. it’s been 18 years since i’ve seen her face, put my arms around her, eaten a meal she’s made. i wrote this to feel connected to her. i share it so that you might too.

day three
at punahou, it's tradition for the graduating girls to wear white holoku. after baccalaureate, hedge and i assessed aesthetics and thought we definitely needed better tans in our white gowns for graduation night. we decided laying by the pool at waialae was in order. and wouldn't it be even more fun if we snuck a little booze in our iced teas while we lounged poolside? we were graduating that night after all! we were 18 (almost)! basically grown ups! we had one drink each and promptly fell into luscious sleep on the chaises. part of being around heather meant chronic sleep deprivation. she was too caught up in living life to let night time sleep requirements interrupt her. when you were with her, you were swept into that rhythm too. so, this much-needed nap lasted for about two hours. when we awoke...let's just say sunblock was not a thing back then and after two hours in the noonday sun the fronts of our bodies, particularly our faces, were the color of the very worst angry-red-tomato-tourists we used to mock. truly the reddest red. which of course looked even more vivid when we put on those blessed white holoku. on the plus side, in the sea of 400 graduating faces in the blaisdell that night, no one could miss us.

i'll always remember graduation as one of the happiest nights of my life. the world seemed wide open to us and we all, i think, felt the joy-tinged, i-can-do-anything recklessness that moment represents.