“Okay, my turn! I dare you to steal one of those exotic flowers from Old Mary’s shop. They can’t be roses, so no cheating either,” I whispered quickly in Leslie’s ear.  

She turned her dark eyes towards me, a lazy smile decorating her lips. “Fine, but what will you give me if I do it?” she asked.  

“Nothing,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders. 

She got up slowly and untied her hair from her bun. For the millionth time, I found myself admiring that hair. It was wonderful, with specks of brown, black, and red all mixed unevenly together.  

She paused for a moment to think about my dare. “Fine,” she eventually replied with a serious expression. I burst out laughing just thinking about Leslie standing in front of Old Mary, who seemed to hate all the teens in our neighborhood. 

I leaned against a nearby pole, watching Leslie walk away from me. I stood in my spot for over twenty minutes before deciding that Leslie had been gone for too long. Maybe the silly girl had been caught. A picture of her, handcuffed and standing by a police officer, popped in my brain. I tried to shake the image off.  

I started to count to one hundred in an attempt to distract myself. I was up to eighty-five when Leslie’s hair came into sight again. She walked casually, holding a potted plant in her right hand. When she was about ten feet away from me, she began to run, excitement bright on her face. 

She stood in front of me and handed me the plant. I eyed it silently, picked up one of its leaves, and rubbed it between my fingers. It was strong and thick and felt like paper.  

“Camellia,” Leslie’s voice interrupted my thoughts.  

“What?” I asked her.  

“That’s the name of the plant,” she replied.  

“Camellia, huh? How come it doesn’t have any flowers? I told you to steal a flower, so technically you didn’t do the dare!” I screamed happily.  

“What? No way! That’s not fair. I’m sure the flowers will come out some time!” she yelled back at me. “Anyway,” she continued, “I think you should keep it just so that it can be a reminder to you. To show that no matter what you throw my way, I can and will do it.” She turned to face me again and gave me a quick wink. 

Guilt eats me up when I think about that scene. I think of Leslie’s face, shining with sweat as she tells me about it. How she bribed a fourth-grade boy into distracting Old Mary while she stood aside and stole the flowers. 

I think about her pretty hair full of autumn colors, shining under the sun as she laughed at me, pretending to be Old Mary. I think about how happy I was at that moment with my best friend. I think about afterwards when I took the plant home and put it on my windowsill where I could see it every morning. I think about how stealing those flowers might have triggered the bad things that happened to Leslie and me. 

I think I deserved those bad things since I had always known stealing was wrong, but I still told Leslie to do it. Maybe Leslie had deserved it too for listening to someone as reckless as me.  

I think about this scene everyday while I sit by my bedroom window and think about the camellias I planted on her grave. 

Leslie was diagnosed with cancer the year we started tenth grade. It was late August. Leslie and I were trying to figure out the easiest way to write our essays on the Great Depression without actually reading our textbook.  

“Why do you think they make you study history?” I asked Leslie as I stared hard at my blank paper. She didn’t reply. I looked up at her just in time to see her cover her mouth with her hands and run to the bathroom. I ran after her. 

She was leaning over my toilet, throwing up violently. I held back her hair and tried to comfort her. When she was done, I helped her wash her face and led her back to my bed.  

“Was it something you ate?” I asked her, trying to hide the concern in my voice.  

“No,” she whispered. “This has been happening to me a lot lately.”  

Why hadn’t she bothered telling me this before? Wasn’t this the kind of thing you shared with your best friend?  

“I’m better now,” she said as she took a deep breath and leaned back against my pillow.  

I took her hand in mine. “Tomorrow,” I said, “promise me you’ll go to the doctor.” She kept her eyes closed but then nodded slowly, not saying anything else to me. 

Leslie wasn’t at school the next day. I dragged myself through my classes, barely understanding a word anyone said to me all day. When the final bell rang for dismissal, I ran through the doors, running to catch the first bus home. I texted Leslie but got no response from her. 

The bus was just pulling up to my block when I noticed a hunched figure sitting on my doorstep. I saw it was Leslie as I walked closer. She looked up at me. Her eyes were red and swollen like she had spent hours crying, and her face was pale white. When she looked up at me, she immediately burst into tears. I felt my heart stop for a moment.  

Her voice shook uncontrollably as she started to speak. “My nausea and vomiting convinced them to do some blood work, and before I knew it, the conversation became about ‘possible diagnostics,’ and then I heard them say cancer. Cancer? I don’t get it. . . . What did I do to ever deserve cancer?”  

“But, you don’t even know if it is cancer! It could just be the flu or something,” I said, trying to make her feel better.  

“I guess we’ll have to wait these few days to see what my blood tests show,” she replied sullenly.