Marlena's body was found on November 19, and so I consider that the anniversary of her death, though she almost certainly died on the eighteenth. Because for me, that day, she was still fully, hugely, annoyingly alive--deliberately ignoring my phone calls, up to something she'd no doubt tell me all about soon.

Twelve days after November 19, I turned sixteen. Every year, it happens the same way: Marlena dies, I get older.

Julie Buntin