Tired. So tired. That’s the overwhelming feeling of the moment. I’m not hungry anymore, that feeling has long since passed, and I don’t even think I could eat food at the moment. How long now? Maybe 36 hours?

Everything I’ve done so far, everything I’ve achieved. Vanessa, college, moving away from home, becoming a detective, what does it matter now? I’ve stopped being scared now.

What I wouldn’t give for a drink of water, just one. Hell, even warm water would do, it doesn’t even have to be that clean…

It’s so weird, at times like this I always think of Iola.

Whenever I’m at my lowest moments I automatically think back to some of our happy times.

At first I used to wonder why I always thought of Iola and not Vanessa. Vanessa is wonderful, you know, she’s an amazing girl and I can say with almost total certainty that I’m in love with her, but Iola……

I was about thirteen or fourteen when I realized that Chet Morton’s annoying kid sister was growing up and becoming, well…less annoying.

We were out in the Morton’s one hot summer’s day, playing football in the garden. Iola was playing with one of the dogs near us, and when she wasn’t looking I took the hose that Chet’s mom had been watering with and turned it on Iola, spraying her with a fine mist of water. I can still here her voice as she ran across the lawn trying to dodge the water, with me close behind.

But Iola wasn’t annoyed. I could see the laughter in her eyes as she looked at me, trying to keep a straight face.

Eventually she managed to grab the hose and turn it back on me, and the two of us ended up sitting on the lawn, soaking wet and almost crying with laughter.

Frank and Chet came over to see what the racket was, and I can still see the incredulous expression on Frank’s face as he looked at the two of us, me and Iola, wet and disheveled sitting on the lawn that summers day, laughing.

I guess I knew then that Iola Morton was no ordinary girl, she didn’t moan about getting her clothes wet or her hair being ruined. If it was a Hollywood movie I would have said that I knew then that I would love Iola Morton for the rest of my life.

But then it’s very easy to say that someone was the love of your life when they are gone.

What I do know is that Iola and I had fun, she was so bubbly and happy, and nothing ever seemed to dampen her spirit. She is the only person I know that could make me laugh with little or no provocation.

She had this funny face that she used to pull, where she raised her forehead and stuck out her chin so she looked like a pixie. She saved that funny face especially for me, and used to pull it when we were in church, or talking to teachers, standing where only I could see. I got into trouble with Mom so many times for suddenly laughing midway through church…..Even now, it still makes me smile.

We had our first kiss sitting on the back porch of the Morton’s. No-one else was around, we had been talking for what seemed like hours and all of a sudden I got the courage to lean in and kiss her. I was so embarrassed afterwards; I just sat there and said nothing.

Iola looked so pretty, sitting in an easy chair, holding my hand. She had a bright blue ribbon in her hair, and I remember thinking how it matched her eyes exactly. She wasn’t at all embarrassed; she just looked at me and smiled

You know I’ve often wondered though…did I love Iola?

I mean, I was only seventeen when she died, just a kid. Hell I was flirting with another girl five minutes before, before it all ended. Can you truly love someone at that age?

I was Joe Hardy, comedian, jock. Iola saw through all that, through my smart remarks and attempts at humor, through all my pathetic attempts to impress her. She saw me as Joe Hardy, and she accepted me, flaws and all.

The day before the explosion we had gone for a walk down along the river than ran through the Morton’s land. It was a balmy early summer evening, just cool enough to wade off the flies, but the spring chill was starting to leave the air.

We were talking, laughing about something that had happened in school that day, and Iola ran ahead of me and started climbing a tree that we used to play in as kids.

So we climbed as far as we could, and sat on a branch looking out over the river and the town in the distance, and I wanted to tell her how much I though of her, that maybe I loved her.

We sat there for an hour or more, and all I wanted to do was turn around and say "Iola Morton, you are the most wonderful girl I know, I think maybe I’m in love with you" That was all I had to do, all I had to say. I kept willing myself to say it, kept turning around as if to begin, but my courage would fail at the last moment.

I never said it, never told her that night how much she meant to me.

When someone dies, it’s easy just to say that you miss them, that you are sad because they died and you can’t see them, touch them and talk to them.

When Iola died all I could do was replay all our conversations and games, and all the times she made me laugh. I replayed them over and over again in my head, Iola standing across from me in church making faces at me, Iola sitting in the garden soaking wet and laughing, her face, our first kiss, the day of the bomb, and the anger in her eyes as she walked away from me.

Guilt can eat you up; guilt can take a hold of your heart and freeze it so that you end up allowing no other emotions in and eventually guilt gets replaces with bitterness.

What if……its easy to say what if…… what if we hadn’t gone to the mall, what if she hadn’t ran out of leaflets, what if I hadn’t talked to that girl, what if I’d told her I loved her the previous night like I’d meant to, what if I didn’t have to carry those stupid melted keys around my neck for the last 4 years because I can’t let go of the past.

I remember the day of the funeral. I was sitting inside the church, in the back seat to be exact. Frank and Callie were standing at the doorway. I could feel Frank’s eyes boring into the back of my head. Callie was there too, and whatever way the wind was blowing, or maybe because the church was so silent, I could hear her voice,

"Maybe he really did love Iola, in spite of his wandering eye"

At some stage you have to stop saying ‘What if’. We did go to the mall that day, Iola did run out of leaflets, I did flirt with that girl, Iola did walk off annoyed with me and she did die. I never got to tell her that I loved her and I never got to say sorry.

But you know what? I believe in heaven and I believe that she knows now how much she meant to me.

Just as she could see through the jock and the comedian she could see through me that day in the mall, and knew that I wasn’t really serious about talking to that girl

I have to believe it; I need her to know how much a miss her, and how I think about here every single day, even though I tell no-one.

I’ve stopped holding on so tightly to the past and let go of some of the guilt. I had to because now I have someone else, a girl that I love, and hopefully, will sped the rest of my life with, and she doesn’t need constant reminders of a girl she didn’t even know.

But there will always be a place in my heart and in my soul for those funny faces and that wonderfully infectious laugh

I wonder if Iola saw me graduate, and did she look closely and see the blue ribbon scrunched up tightly in my left hand as I walked up onto the stage?