Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Please, take your seats. Get comfortable. Grab a refreshment from the table. Of course, now, where to start?

Love. What a weird word. What a strange idea, really. I looked it up after the night with the sprinklers. Merriam-Webster says that love is: A feeling of strong or constant affection for a person. Well, that’s a start. But I was thinking about it and all the things the definition does not include. Like the way her eyes actually changed colors when I saw her, or the butterflies in my stomach, or how my toes lost feeling when I thought of her, or even when I forgot to breathe when I was around her. So it’s a start, but how do you define love? What is ‘love’? Do you know? Because I sure don’t and if you do than I want to shake your hand. But it must be defined somewhere and if that somewhere is anywhere than we have to start at the beginning.
In the beginning there was nothing but a spark of heat and light and from that spark the universe erupted… Nah I’m just kidding. I mean this beginning, the beginning of my story. I still remember the date, it’s etched in my memory for a few reasons. First, because it was my very-first day of high school, and second because it was my very-first time actually living. I mean before that I’d drawn breath, moved muscles, even laughed a few times, but the first time my heart had ever actually beat was when I saw Lilly Apus. The day was August 24th, a Monday. She was carrying around that silly sunflower hippy bag, was wearing purposely mismatched knee-high socks on her calves, and was fighting her soon-to-be perpetual fight with the class dean.
“Now Mrs. Tillywood,” she’d said, “I will not put on a different skirt. This one clearly reaches the tips of my fingertips.” She demonstrated and her banana-yellow skirt did in fact, end two inches above the end of her fingers.
“Lilly! Please! It’s your first day of high school, you can at least try to follow the dress code!” Mrs. Tillywood blustered, her face slowly turning a shade of light pink as more students started staring at the two of them arguing in the hallway. Lilly pulled out some crackpot defense, stating some obscure section of the handbook that no one (including Mrs. Tillywood I don’t doubt) had read. Then she looked over at me, little-old inconspicuous nobody me, and rolled her beautiful blue eyes like we were sharing some secret inside joke between us. My heart went thump-thump, thump-thump, thimp-thump. And that was all it took. I fell in love in that exact instant and have been ever since.
Skip forward two months of me not-quite-as-subtly-as-I-imagined following Lilly around learning things about her. Skip the first time I heard her name and rolling it back and forth across my tongue like a sweet caramel, caressing every syllable. Fast-forward past the seven hundred or so times that I tried to build up the courage to talk to her… and didn’t. Right on past Halloween until we were basically knocking on the door of Thanksgiving. I was on my way to class, head down, skirting the crowds, doing my best to look as unimposing and non-threatening as possible when I ran into a literal tank. Well, not actually literal, but close enough. Ethan Snow, that monstrosity of a human, was blocking my side of a hallway with his enormous and rather blubberous girth. My books, of course, skid across the floor and my school papers bloomed into a cloud of equations and notes.
“How’s it going, freshman toad?” Ethan fumbled out his mouth. That was five words in a row. I wasn’t sure, but judging from the self-satisfied look on Ethan’s face, I was pretty sure it was a new record for him.
I felt my heart beat wildly in my chest, from fear this time, and it filled my veins with hot and useless adrenaline. “E-E-Ethan,” I st-st-tuttered. Talking to people was never really my strong suit before Lilly, and bullies were definitely not. I was more of a fly-under-the-radar kind of guy.
“W-W-What,” Ethan replied, his primitive mockery nonetheless embarrassing as the rest of the congregation, which is what the crowd of students in the hallway had become as they gratefully watched someone else being teased for once, laughed mercilessly. I wanted to become ‘one with the lockers’ and just disappear. That was when Lilly showed up. Her presence only intensified the need to disappear… and the need to become the only thing worth noticing in the whole world. You know how it is, young love and all.
“Ethan Stewart Snow! Stop that right now!” she commanded in her best authoritative voice, wagging a finger at him. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard Lilly Apus tell someone to do something but when she does, people usually listen.
Ethan, no longer so sure of himself, took a nice big step back away from me, his body rippling like a well formed slab of Jello. “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’!” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking at anything other than Lilly. I remember being extraordinarily amused by that. He was so big and imposing and Lilly so tiny next to his huge figure and yet it was he that cowered from her angry finger.
“Now apologize,” she said, straightening up and forcing him to look her in the eye.
“Do I have to?” Ethan whined, looking for all the world like a petulant child.
“Yes.” And somehow, miraculously, Ethan Snow, biggest bully this side of the Mississippi, did exactly that. “Sorry,” he mumbled, head down.
“Good,” Lilly said, straightening up, “now get to class.”
Everyone stared at her, about as shocked as I was. If I hadn’t been in love with Lilly before, I sure was then. It was like the sun had finally peaked through the clouds, the path through the trees, the light in the tunnel. My heart did its weird thumping trick again, and my breath hitched in my throat. This is my definition of love, right there, that feeling. The feeling like everything was going to be okay, only because that person was there.
Once everyone had gotten over their surprise and shuffled away, whispering conspiratorially between one another, Lilly tucked that lock of golden-blonde hair behind her ear. That same lock that would, for some reason, never stay put. It’s funny, the things you remember. She bent down and started picking up my books, shuffling the papers into neat stacks. I was thunderstruck, unable to move, and it wasn’t until she looked up at me mischievously and said, “What, are you going to make me do all this on my own?” that I started breathing again. Immediately I hunched over, nearly smacking my forehead into hers in my rush to pick up my things, blushing furiously.
“Here,” Lilly said, handing me a stack of math problems.
“Th-Th-Thanks,” I managed, my voice barely even squeaking out of my throat. “You d-didn’t have to do that, you know.”
She laughed, her voice tinkling like the voice of the angels. “I know I didn’t, silly,” she punched me in the arm hard enough to nearly knock me over. “I did it because I wanted to.” Lilly smiled shyly, “I know you’ve been asking about me.”
I looked up, fear and embarrassment widening my eyes into full-moons. “Now don’t look at me like that,” she said, “It’s not my fault. Sarah Prince told on you. Though it’s not really her fault either, you should know she can’t keep a secret to save her life.” Lilly gave me a quizzical look that I would come to know very well as the ‘don’t be an idiot Thomas’ look.
“I-I-I thought she could keep a secret,” I mumbled.
“Oh really,” Lilly said, only mocking me a little, “And who said that?”
I blushed a shade of red that was basically purple and said, at the same time she did, “Sarah.”
And that was that, as they say. We were inseparable. Like two peas in a pod, two halves of the same circle that didn’t realize we weren’t whole until we found each other. She was the one who got me into acting to get over my speaking issues. It was like pretending to be another person finally let me be myself. I got over my stutter surprisingly quickly, as I’m sure you can see today. I remember the first play I did, it must have been around Christmastime by then, and I remember the way she stood up and applauded on opening night. It was a silly thing, a reproduction of A Midsummers’ Night Dream at the theater across from Town Hall, but she cheered like it was a Broadway performance. I’d never been happier than at that moment, not before and not since. We did a lot together, me and her, went bowling, to the movies, we even went put-putting sometimes.
Which brings me to the sprinkler incident, the infamous sprinkler incident I should say. I’m sure we can all remember that, but for those of you who don’t know, we started off with innocent enough intentions. We were out at Rutger’s, the put-put golf place near the soccer fields, and Lilly was having the dardnest time with the last hole. It was the one where if she was able to put the ball down the center of a huge pit the thing would flash and play a little song. Now most people, after missing the first two or three times, would just go up to the edge of the pit and put the ball right into the hole, but not Lilly. She was determined to hit the ball from the dedicated starting position. So she kept on pulling balls out of the little water hazard instead, getting soaked up to the elbow, to try and get it in. It was on the tenth or eleventh try and she was trying to get one of the golf balls from the center of the pond. I can even remember telling her, “Lilly,” I rolled my eyes as she stretched over the water, “You’re going to fall in and get all wet and then I’m the one who’s going to have to listen to you complain.”
“Shut up,” she replied snarkily, reaching out ever farther for one of the balls and, lo and behold, plunk she went into the water. I probably should have left her to flounder but I was infatuated. Whether or not anything had actually happened between us (and it hadn’t) I was in love and love makes you do stupid things. I probably should have seen her coming, but I never saw Lilly coming, so when I reached out to help pull her out of the water I was only marginally surprised that she pulled me in after her. So there we were, two idiots sitting in the middle of the golf course who were, for all intents and purposes, totally in love with one another, soaking wet, and shivering in the still mostly-winter air.
I’d told Lilly we should go ask the people who worked at the put-put place for towels (I’m sure we weren’t the only ones to fall in the water hazard) but she was stubborn. I probably could have convinced her given enough time, but that was when, of all times, the freaking sprinklers went off. It couldn’t have gotten any worse, really, because they were everywhere. It was like all the sudden someone had flipped on a thunderstorm. Now don’t ask me why a put-put place with mostly turf courses decided it needed to use its friggin sprinkler systems in the middle of the friggin winter, but it did. Someone screamed and I could probably tell you it was Lilly but it wasn’t. One of the sprinkler heads had popped up right next to us, spraying us with water that was basically ice, and without thinking I reached over and slammed my fist into it. I plugged the sprinkler head like I was playing wack-a-mole at the arcade, pushing my hand down against the water pressure. That only increased the stream from a sprinkler over to my left so I did the only logical thing, I plugged that one as well. Lilly picked up on my reasoning rather quickly and she slammed both her hands down on a sprinkler head near my knee.
“Thomas, get that one!” She yelled, gesturing to one next to my other knee which was spraying her right in the face, making her wet hair soaking. I ground my knee into the sprinkler, feeling like I was playing a strange game of Twister as I tried to catch all the sprinkler heads. There were maybe seven sprinkler heads in all and somehow we were able to suppress every one by using both hands, a knee, a foot, and Lilly’s forehead. And that was how we blew up Rutger’s Put-Put Palace’s sprinkler system.
Now I’m going to be honest, whoever called the police was probably overreacting. It wasn’t like we were trying to ruin the sprinkler system and it wasn’t our fault that the pipes were rusty and due for a change anyway. But the result was still the same. The pipes, put under increased pressure by our hands or, in Lilly’s case, forehead cracked and exploded. I don’t think I’ve ever seen tranquil old Mr. Rutger so mad in my whole life.
Lilly and I showed up, still dripping wet, at the county’s police station around ten o’clock that night. I met Officer Kentucky there that night, and although at first I didn’t really like him, recent events have cleared the water between us. He’s been a real help over the past couple of days. But you should have heard Lilly talk about him then. She made him out like he was the devil. It only took twelve hours, two hysterical breakdowns on my part, three Lilly-police force screaming matches and fourteen phone calls to get us out, but eventually our parents came to scold us and take us away. That was love too, in a way, a parent’s love for their child. Their affection even when we screw up, the way they always seem to swoop in and save the day. It really is. There’s nothing like love for a child, even when they aren’t around anymore.

The boy itches at his brand-new black pinstriped suit, something he’ll only wear once, and steps away from the podium for a moment. The mass of people who had only offered nostalgic smiles and half-hearted laughter, finally break down to tears. Their courage, which had so long kept them stiff-necked and smiling, shatters like fragments of the stained glass-windows that line the church walls. He steps back, his own eyes red, a brave smile stamped on his face.

“It’s funny, how I remember what she looked like with her hair dripping wet and p----- like it was my fault. How even then I wanted to hold her in my arms…

He clears his throat.

I was a little surprised when I was asked to give her… her… her goodbye today. But we came her to grieve and to find closure, I guess. Some would say that closure is an ending, and if my beginning started with a tiny spark than this is nothing but the ashes, but I can’t believe that. Lilly wouldn’t want that and although Lilly isn’t here today, and although I’m sure she wanted to be, if only to kick my a-- and tell me to stop whining, I know that, wherever she is, she’s kicking somebody else’s a-- for me. So I don’t want to think of this as an ending, but rather as a beginning. Lilly began my life and I loved her for it. I really did. This is not an ending and it is not anyone’s fault that she’s gone. It’s not Mrs. Michaels fault that she didn’t see the patch of ice and it’s not Lilly’s fault she didn’t cross at the crosswalk. Everybody makes mistakes. I think that’s really what love is, what it really is, making mistakes and still loving someone despite and even because they screwed up. Love is about forgiveness. It’s about realizing that although one life has moved on, another began. I know I only knew Lilly for less than a year, barely even six months, but they were the best of my whole life. They were my whole life. It’s only just beginning.”

The boy itches at his suit, says goodbye, and walks off the stage.