For Elizabeth.

The town that I know is one where everyone knows everyone and the only things to do are yardsale hop and go to church. Church runs through the very heart of our community. There’s a church every two blocks, but mine is in the very middle of town, right off main street. It was built by my relatives in the early thirties and my family has been an integral part ever since. There are ten stain-glass windows that line the sides of the sanctuary, each depicting a famous scene from the bible. Under them, a tarnished gold plaque gives all the names of the members who donated to have them installed. In some way or another, each of these names has a branch on my family tree. It is not a big church, none in town are, but it's enough for our one hundred and fifty members. It’s enough for thanksgiving dinner, our annual christmas pageant, trunk-or-treat, and the handful of newcomers who cycle in and out every two years.

Like the church, my family has occupied the town for centuries. Even those family members who chose to leave (which are few and far between) found their way back eventually. No one ever leaves for good, not really.

If you take a left off main street; past my church, over the railroad tracks, and at the corner of city hall and the abandoned Boy Scouts of America clubhouse, and keep driving until you hit the stop sign in front of the post office, you’ll find a quaint, white farmhouse. This is where my grandmother lives. Behind her, my uncles, her brothers, have houses one right after the other, and behind them, a distant cousin.

In the Summer, when the air is so hot and damp that even being inside becomes like wading through creek water, I walk up and down the path that runs through their yards, jumping to collect the soft, pink flowers of the Mimosa tree. The flowers had petals that resembled the bristles of a powder brush and were a deep shade of magenta that I had never seen in any other plant. Before I knew what they were actually called, I referred to them as ‘fairy flowers’ because of the way they floated through the air when a breeze would blow through. I would take my pickings inside, grab a plastic cup out of the cupboard, fill it with water, and delicately submerged each flower. Then, they would be placed in the freezer for two weeks (although typically for two months as I would forget I put them there) to see if they would be preserved, kept alive after being taken out of their environment.

Just as quickly as it had come, Summer simmered out into the slightly less humid Georgia Fall. The holiday had ended, the flowers that I had kept in the freezer were thawed and discarded to the front yard, and the church had just gotten its first set of visitors for the month. Elizabeth was the guest of a girl in my youth group. She wasn't a frequent visitor, but she came enough for us to know of one another's existence. I did not have a crush on her, but I couldn't help but look at her the first Sunday she came to church. She wore her shoulder length white-blonde hair down, and had an innocence in her face that only someone who knew trouble possessed.

Church is at the heart of our community. But outside the doors, the residents fought a war of the flesh rather than of the spirit. Substance abuse tore through households and Elizabeth’s family was no exception. I knew her home because of the way it never looked tidy. The yard was always littered with scrap metals and broken washers or remnants of burn piles. I would drive by and think how out of place she looked playing with her brother, surrounded by so much junk, and how she seemed to be the only thing kind and dainty that would ever come out of that house.

Her parents did drugs, her siblings, and eventually, I thought, she would too. She would trade the innocent look I always noticed and become like them, and I would never think twice about the girl who seemed to fit right in with the trashed front yard.

The last time I saw Elizabeth was November 6th. It was dusk outside, but even in November the temperature climbed well into the eighties. My grandmother had picked me up from play rehearsal at the middle school and we were on our way to her house. I saw two kids riding their bikes up and down mainstreet, right in front of my church. I noticed one of them right away. I’m not sure she recognized me as we drove past but I could pick her out of a crowd of thousands. When we came up beside them, she and I locked eyes. I felt like we stared at each other for hours but in seconds we were continuing down the road, and she rode in the opposite direction. A speck in the rear view.

“That little girl is gonna get hit if she don’t get out of the road,” my grandmother said disapprovingly.

“Don’t I know it.” I looked back behind my seat and watched the kids circle around my church parking lot and continue their ride. I turned around and stared out the window, my mind moving on to something else.

Minutes after we had gotten to my grandmothers, my mom pulled into the driveway, talking about how she had been redirected to pull off mainstreet and come in the backway to get there. I was about to ask why when a siren slashed through my thoughts. My heart sank. I knew why my mother was rerouted. I reminded my grandma about the kids we had passed on the way in and how poorly timed her statement had been.

On the way out of town, traffic moved slowly down the back street, filled with people annoyed they couldn't drive down main. When we pulled to the stop sign that opened back up into the main road, my mom rolled down her window and called over the man controlling traffic. He was Sonny, the husband of a second cousin, and a volunteer fire-fighter.

“Sonny, what happened?” My mom peeked her head past him and motioned to the gaggle of firetrucks and police cars that had gathered in front of my church.

"Ahh, some girl got hit by a car.”

“Is she gonna be alright?”

“Naw, she died I believe.”

We kept driving, turning onto the highway as mom turned the radio up. She had moved on. But I was standing in the middle of mainstreet, my eyes glued to Elizabeth’s gray ones, taking in every detail of her face. Her freckles, her hairline, the way her nose curved slightly to the right. I should have told my grandmother to stop the car, to scold those kids for being in the road like she used to do to me and my brother. I should have spoken to her at church, told her that I’d seen her in the halls at school, that I thought she was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. From the moment I saw her, I knew I wanted to be her friend.

“It’s sad about that little girl. I remember her commin’ to church sometimes. Did you know her well?” My mom asked, pulling me from the street in my head and back into the front seat.

“No, I mean I saw her at school and church and… no, I don't know her.”

The headline read “Middle School student succumbs to injuries in bike accident, two arrested.” After the accident, the couple in the white Jeep Cherokee drove away. Some people figured they were evil, stupid even. I thought they were just scared. They left her there in the care of the other kid she was with, her boyfriend, in front of my church. He didn't know what to do, no kid his age would. But the couple kept driving. And they left her there.

At school, suddenly everyone was so heartbroken. They had lost a “best friend,” a “sister,” when in reality most people didn't even know who she was. She was quiet, polite, but they didn't care about that. Not until she was dead. They organized a balloon release with her favorite colors, dedicated a page in the yearbook just for her, and made cards and gifts for her family. I started to think they actually cared about her, that they truly felt the weight of her loss.

Two weeks later, people started to forget her name, and two years after, kids didn't even remember what had happened.

I remembered. I remembered the last time I saw her alive, I remembered my math teacher crying at the front of the class the day after it happened. I remembered being told crying was okay, that counselors were there to help us through it. Kids in my grade, people who didn't even know her, used her death as an excuse to get out of class, their class work an even greater burden than the loss of a child.

A few days after the accident, I was in English class when I felt water start to well up in the corner of my eyes. I hadn’t cried yet, but I was sure I would now. I raised my hand and asked to use the restroom, rushing into the hall to let anyone see my tears. I stopped when I saw someone else was in the hall, too. Realizing I was staring, I walked to the bathroom and turned the corner, stopping inside so I could hear what was being said. The bathroom smelled like a zoo pen and the air was saturated with enough Axe body spray to fill a small pond, but I stayed there around the corner, my back against the wall.

“If you want to talk, you can always come to me. We can walk up to a counselor together if you’d like.”

Elizabeth's boyfriend stood in the hallway talking to one of the seventh grade teachers. Salt water stained his cheeks and his eyes were puffy and irritated. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his black hoodie as she talked. It was the same one he was wearing the night it happened.

I couldn't hear his response, I didn't even know his name, but I decided I couldn't cry after that. It didn't seem right. I wasn't lying when I told my mom I didn't know her, the truth was I didn’t. Not like he did. He spoke to her, he laughed with her, he had been inside her home. He could cry. Not me.

After the hype of her death had fizzled out and became yesterday's news, I thought I had heard the last of Elizabeth Seacrest. Aside from the memorial shrine that had been put up at the end of the church driveway, no one seemed to care about the little girl who had died right outside the doors.

Her mother came to visit the church a month later. She came in alone, dressed in her best clothes, which weren't anything fancy: a black cardigan, calf-high black boots, and a pair of blue jeans. She carried a bright red purse which was the reason I noticed her in the first place. She didn't have the same look as her daughter. Her features were not innocent and kind, they were hard and beaten down by years of drug abuse and her jaw settled in a severe underbite. She was short like Elizabeth, her hair was blonde like Elizabeth’s, but aside from that she was a completely different human. She sat at the very back of the sanctuary. No one spoke to her at first, everyone knew who she was. They didn't know what to say, they could only convey their understanding of her heartache with a nod. The braver of the congregation even dared to show her a smile.

Once the service ended, I made my way to the back of the sanctuary, headed for the front doors and the car. I was stopped in line behind the woman who was visiting after her daughter's death and an elderly member of the church. The woman told the man that she had visited another church before ours, the Methodist church beside her house, but had not been welcomed there so she decided to give ours a go. She never came back.

I think about the day of the accident a lot. I think about the day Elizabeth's mom visited my church more. No one knew how to comfort her so no one tried to reach out, tried to make her feel like she was in a safe, understanding space. When I drive to my grandmother's home, when I pass the house with a yard full of junk, I imagine that I will look over and see the blonde girl I once watched in another life. I picture her running around the old washers and strung out copper cables, throwing her head back and laughing so loud that I can hear it in the car. I pretend that her memorial is still up in front of the church and that it hadn't been washed away by out-of-season thunderstorms just weeks after it was put up. I pretend that I had stopped that night, had told her to get out of the road, and that the couple who hit her had stopped and called the police, that doing this would somehow change what happened.

The town I know has seen its share of hurt, of tragedy. It has watched some of its sweetest members taken too soon, and some of its worst overstay their welcome. It doesn’t remember the memorials put out for the girl killed in a hit and run, or the family that was broken afterwards. But it remains still and strong, built on the backs of the still and strong. There is nothing to do but play a game of basketball at the rundown recreation center and go to church. Church is important to the community. It's at the center of the universe for some, and for others like me, it’s the only reminder of the girl with gray eyes, who I had never talked to, but have never been able to forget.