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I put on my heavy winter coat and slipped out the back door onto the deck.  The sky was clear and I could see the stars.  Snow dusted the frozen ground.  I looked at the time on my phone.

Only two hours and eleven minutes to go. 

I sat in a patio chair without a cushion.  Everyone else on the planet, at well… in the time zone… would be shouting and cheering in just fifty-seven minutes.  They were counting down to the first second of 2013.

Not me.  I was counting down the last minutes of one full year without my best friend.

I had been to the teen grief group.  I had sat through their explanation of the stages.  I had eventually moved past the first one… denial.  For weeks after the crash, I still texted her.  I called and left messages begging her to call me back.  We had a journal where we used to write to each other, and I still wrote in it as if she would answer.

One day I sat staring at the journal, and I saw Molly in every blank space, every unfilled line.  I cried that night so hard that I thought I’d never be able to cry again. 

Then I flipped back to the first page, and I saw her in all the words she wrote, in her curly cursive with hearts for dots over the i’s and j’s.  She was there in the doodles of unicorns, which she swore she still believed in.  I read until my tears turned to laughter.  Then I put the journal away in my dresser drawer.  My laughter stayed locked inside.

I thought about the journal now, with less than two hours until one year without Molly.  I thought about burning that book.  I was angry with her for leaving me and angry with myself for letting her go home that night.

She should have stayed.  She could have stayed.

I glanced back at the windows of my house.  All the people celebrating inside were like actors putting on a show.  I saw my mom gesturing wildly while she talked to our neighbor, Tracy.  Then they laughed, and I wanted to slap them both.

How could she forget what day it was?

The door slid open behind me, and I jumped.  I guess it was really quiet outside, but I hadn’t noticed because my thoughts were so loud.

“Hey,” Jason said.  He was carrying a box.

I looked away as he set the box on the table. “What’s that?”

“Chinese lanterns.”

“What for?”

Jason sat next to me. He wasn’t wearing a coat or anything, so he crossed his arms over his chest.  He was a year older than me, close to sixteen.  He was my mom’s friend’s son, but he didn’t go to my school, so I didn’t know him that well.

Jason said, “My dad thought it would be a good idea to let thirteen of these things go at the crack of midnight.”

“Sounds like a fire hazard.”

“I know, right?  But you are supposed to watch the lights disappear or something, and think about the year as they float up.”

It sounded nice, except I didn’t want to think about the past year.

“Then when the last one goes up,” he said, “you are supposed to think about next year.  Until it disappears.”

I certainly didn’t want to think about next year, either.  Next year would be just as empty as this one.

I looked at Jason, who was staring at the stars.  He smelled like dryer sheets and cedar chips and rain.  I could smell him through the cold.  Why hadn’t I noticed him at these parties before?

The door slid open behind us.

“Jay!  Hey, Maddy!  Come in.  We’re going to open the prediction jar!”  My kid sister was full of enthusiasm for everything. She was like my happy-shadow. 

Sometimes I hated her, too, because if she hadn’t made herself sick on chocolate last New Year’s Eve, Molly might have stayed.  She wouldn’t have gotten in that car with her mom and dad.  We would be standing in my living room in our cute new Christmas clothes, drinking punch and eating popcorn and making our 2013 predictions.

But Molly is dead.

Jason put his hand on my shoulder as he stood to go inside.

I stayed in my seat.  I didn’t want to hear my prediction.  But mostly I didn’t want to hear Molly’s.

Ten minutes until 2013.  Eighty-four minutes until one year after.

I turned to check the windows. 

The box of lanterns just sat on the table, waiting.  There were twenty-five in the box.

I needed twelve.

I cracked open the tape on the box.  I worked fast.

The lanterns were bigger than I had expected.  I counted out thirteen into a pile.  I stuck the lighter that Jason had left on the table into my pocket, grabbed the box, and took off around the side of my house.

I walked past Mrs. Jenkins house.  It was dark.  She was probably asleep.  I walked past the Dean’s and the O’Rourke’s.  They were all at my house making predictions and laughing and ooohing and not remembering the most important thing.  I walked past the foreclosed house that has been empty for years.

I finally made it to the park in the middle of my subdivision.  I put the box on the picnic table where Molly and I spent countless hours hanging out, writing in our journal, talking about the future and boys and the apartment we would rent together when we graduated high school and went to college.

I unwrapped all the lanterns and laid them out on the table.  My fingers were numb, but my mind was already ablaze.

In the night sky around me, fireworks crackled and banged and boomed, speckling the sky with celebration.  A new year.  A blank slate.

I pulled out the lighter.  The guests were all probably looking for it back at home, asking around, “Who has a lighter? Where did it go?”

I actually laughed a little bit.  Then I felt ashamed, so I stopped.

I lit the first lantern.  The little basket underneath glowed hot, and the paper globe illuminated white.  It filled with warm air as I held my hands up and let go.  The lantern drifted lazily through the dark sky, and I imagined Molly up there with open arms, waiting to catch it.

My eyes filled with tears as I filled the lantern with memories.

We hugged goodbye, and kissed on the cheeks.

“See you tomorrow,” Molly said with a laugh.

“You mean today, right?  It’s one a.m.  Meet you at the mall?”

She nodded.  “Gotta love Christmas money!  Hope Sarah feels better.”

“What-ev.  She’ll be fine.  Drive safe.”

I closed the door… and never saw her again.

I lit another lantern.  This time I started filling it before it left my hands.

I stood alone in front of the Pretzel Shop at the mall.  She was ten minutes late and I was getting impatient.  I texted her a frownie face.

A frownie face…  I’m so stupid.  Why did I have to be angry with her?

Twenty minutes went by and then an hour.

I called my mom.

When she pulled up in front of the mall, her lips were puffy and her eyes were red.

“Mom?”

She started crying right there.

I lit a third lantern.  I just filled it with tears. 

I lit a fourth.

I screamed at my mom, “You’re lying!  She’s fine!  She’s just late!”

My mom cried more, harder.  She tried to put her arm around me, but I pushed her off.

“Don’t touch me.”

I stared out the window.  Everything went blurry.  Blurry cars.  Blurry signs.  Blurry road.  Blurry people.  Blurry words.  Blurry reality.

I lit another lantern, and filled it with the silence of a casket lowered into the ground.

The sixth lantern I filled with rage.

After my first grief group session, I looked in the mirror and hated my reflection.  I should have made her stay over.  Everyone knows there are a million drunks on the road on New Year’s Eve.

I had no sympathy for her parents.  They should have been driving better.  It should have been them and not her.  It should have been the stupid man that was drunk off his gourd.  Why did he get to live, and Molly had to die? 

I hated me without her.

I lit a seventh lantern.  My lucky number.  I filled it with candle light.

It would have been Molly’s fifteenth birthday.  I bought a cupcake at the bakery a couple of blocks from my house.  Sometime we would walk down there on Saturday mornings when she’d slept over.

I sat alone in my bedroom with that cupcake.  I lit one candle.

But instead of singing Happy Birthday, I sang This Little Light of Mine.

When I came to the part that went, “Don’t you try to blow it out, I’m gonna let it shine,” I blew it out. 

I blew out the seventh lantern and lit the eighth.

I threw away the cupcake.

The ninth lantern went up about fifteen feet before a breeze picked up.  The lantern floated sideways, headed toward a huge old maple tree on the edge of the park near the river.

My heart jumped.  The lantern bobbled up and down, tipped sideways and blew straight into the crooked bare branches of the tree!

I climbed down from the table in a hurry.

I wiped the tears from my face with the back of my coat sleeve as I ran.

No one was watching.  No one saw the paper catching fire.

I stood below the tree.  The paper was filled with nothing… nothing but panic and fear.  I was frozen with it, terrified of what would happen if I looked away.

The paper burned until the very last bit fell to the ground and extinguished in the snowy grass.

I stepped away from the tree, away from the charred strings swaying in the branches.  Away from what might have just happened.  I breathed.

I waited for a still sky, and then I lit the tenth lantern.

I rode the bus alone.  I walked the halls alone.  I stood in the cafeteria, alone in a room full of kids.  Alone next to the space where Molly used to stand.  

The lantern floated up, so far away from the one before it.  So much closer to me.  I imagined Molly’s arms up in heaven, waiting to catch my loneliness.

I picked up another lantern.

The tears welled up again.  I didn’t think I could get past this stage. 

“Hey.” 

Jason’s voice startled me.  His hand was on my shoulder again.  It felt safe.

“Hey.” I held up the eleventh lantern.  

Jason took the last and twelfth lantern, the twelfth month without Molly, the twelfth empty vessel.  He held it next to mine.

“You guys were really good friends,” he said.

I smiled sadly, nodded, and lit them both.  Our faces washed with warm light.  Our eyes met for just a moment, and we released.

The two lanterns drifted up into the night sky, growing smaller and smaller until they disappeared into the darkness.