In Memoriam
Amanda Abramson
The year is 2008. We're college freshmen; young, talented, out to save the world through our love of music, writing, and our obviously brilliant minds. We're three best friends, stuck together at the hip like some sort of oddly conjoined set of triplets with different parentage and separate ethnicities. It's winter. We're all staying at the house of one friend's grandparents, visiting for the weekend so that we can have time together while we break from ridiculous avalanches of schoolwork, overly demanding professors, and roommates who tell you that you're not allowed to play Guitar Hero because it "disturbs the spirit of the home." I'm on the verge of sneaking into her room late at night to cook her makeup into jello while she sleeps, so the weekend away comes as a safe respite. We're staying in the basement, the three of us. There's a large couch and two squashy armchairs, but Grandfather insists on letting us use their air mattress. It's enormous, one that rises three feet off the ground and could support a bear. We get it set for the evening - it's wide enough for all three of us to lay comfortably - set our pillows at one end, lay a sheet and a blanket down and two of us snuggle up together on the bed while the third lays on the couch just next to us. We giggle and laugh and tell bad jokes ("What did the fish say when it ran into the stone wall? Dam!") and take forever to actually sleep, and when we finally do it's quick and easy. Sometime during the night, it becomes apparent that the air mattress is not quite as sturdy as we originally thought. An extremely light sleeper, somewhere around three AM, I roll out of the sagging mattress which is slowly leaking air and slip into one of the armchairs to sleep sideways. Surprisingly, it's very comfortable, and I soon fall back asleep. It's near morning when I wake again, but I don't move, drowsy and sleep hazed. From my position I can see my friend, still on the air mattress, only now she's right in the middle and down to the ground, while the two sides of the mattress rise up on either side of her. She looks like she's sleeping in a miniature plastic version of the grand canyon, and I stifle a laugh, trying not to show that I'm awake as she rolls around, trying to get comfortable. Finally she moves to one side of the air mattress, the side closest to the couch, but she sinks down nearly to the ground as the other side slopes steeply upwards. She sits up, disgruntled and sleepy. Glancing around, I hastily lower my eyelids, pretending to be asleep as I watch her look for something - what, exactly, I'm not certain, but it soon becomes apparent as she picks up the backpack that holds her clothes and such for the weekend trip. She gets up off of the mattress, smooths it out (I can almost hear the hiss of air now, and the mattress is looking rather pathetic, all lopsided and floppy like gray elephant skin that just hangs down in drapes) and sets the backpack on one side of the bed. Obviously satisfied, she moves around to the other side. I'm not the only one watching - the friend on the couch is also awake, and I catch her eye - we can both see how this is going to end, yet neither one of us says anything, watching and waiting with anticipation... The friend near the bed smiles to herself, gets into position, and lays herself quickly onto the bed. It's clear she expects the backpack to act as a sort of weight to balance out the rapidly depleting mattress so that she can sleep not on the floor - but that's not what happens. The bed, now with a heavier weight on one side, bucks the other side upwards, and the backpack rises into the air in a graceful arc. It's like watching something in slow motion - the friend rolls over, clearly pleased with herself for coming up with such an idea - but the expression quickly turns from happy to shocked as she watches the backpack soar upwards and promptly land with a little, innocent thud on top of her and in turn, cause her to roll sideways, off of the mattress, and onto the floor in a tangle of blankets, pillows, and the backpack amidst gales of laughter from her two slightly less mature counterparts. Later on, as we stuff a tampon into the hole we find in the air mattress in a pathetic attempt at keeping the air from leaking out (an attempt that doesn't work, but gets us some very odd looks and a raised eyebrow from Grandfather as he walks by), she insists she knew what she was doing all along. But we know better.