I sit perched on the edge of my bed, faint smiles drifting   across my face, as I sift through all my old photographs. My   sleeves pushed up over my elbows, I dig down into all the old   memories.  I hold each memory briefly in my hands before dropping
it onto the pile in my lap and searching for the next happy   moment to remember.  Each picture evokes feelings long gone, but   deep within me.  I'm not exactly sure what has prompted this   sudden trip to my past, but I feel like I need to stop, and look  back.
       As I continue to relive the memories, I can’t help but  notice one photo in particular buried deep in the box.  I pluck   it from the sea of snapshots and hold it in my hands.  The
picture at first glance is lovely.  The sun was shining with not   a cloud to be seen in the bright blue canopy that hung high over   my head.  I was sitting with my arm around a happy looking girl,   her arm rested casually on my shoulders.  As I focus in on the
person's face, the warm smile that covers my face is replaced by   an agitated frown.  It is Amy Soule, my now ex-best friend.  A   terrible pang of regret flashes through me, and I feel the   familiar constriction in my throat.
       I'm not sure exactly how, or when our decline as friends   started, but it started small.  A simple crack that flourished in our awkward adolescence and shameful neglect.  It began with simple differences in interest.  She wanted to go to the mall and  scout for guys, while I wanted to spend the evening watching old  movies and talking about nonsense gossip.  Suddenly after school activities took up our usual time together and weekends were
spent doing other things.  Soon the only time I saw her was when  we exchanged a hurried hello in the busy school halls between  classes.  A far cry from the whispered conversations behind my half open locker at every spare moment.  No more notes were passed behind the teacher's back, and my parent's phone bill  became considerably cheaper. She found a new group of friends, and so did I.  Before I had a chance to patch the crack between us, she moved away from me, causing the crack to become an  uncrossable rift.
       I tried to make excuses for not keeping in touch.  I couldn't visit, it was too far and I couldn't ask Mom to drive me all that way.  I even tried to convince my nagging conscience
with the notion that people change, I matured, and that is why.
I knew that was not the answer, but I was too nervous to pick up the phone and call.  The rift grew too large to bridge, Amy had left, and with her she had taken a huge chunk of heart with her.
       I stand up and stretch my cramping limbs.  Pulling myself back into the now, I let the picture fall from my hand onto my cluttered desk.  I glance up at my calendar and remember that Amy's birthday is around the corner. In fact, we were born in the same room, two days apart.  It had always been a good-natured joke between us that she was two days older than I.  We started so close, and ended up so far.  This bitter sweet memory causes me to smile despite my feelings of regret.  I suddenly have an idea.  I hastily drop to my knees and begin to rummage through my desk drawers.  At last I lay my hands on an old picture frame I  have been kicking around forever.  I pick up the fallen photo of Amy and I snap it into the frame.  I quickly pen a note, and for lack of anything better to say, I simply write, "Happy Birthday Amy, Erica"
       I stick the piece of white paper under the edge of the frame   and search for Amy's address.  I hold the frame tightly in my  arms.  I am not going to let this golden chance slip through my  fingers.  It's not much, but it is a beginning and the space between us has already gotten smaller.  Maybe this time I will be strong enough to build a bridge.