She said, I'm Sharon, but please omit the second syllable of my name. I said, Like the pop diva? and she said, No, like the Kindergarten life lesson.

I said, My Name is Karen, and I don't have a nickname. She said, You and I belong together, like sharing and caring, and I said, I guess so.

She wore Very Berry lip chap and ate Smarties in alphabetical order. She played the cello and listened to Dvorak and wore hiking boots with purple laces.

At lunch one week after that introduction, she told me that I hide my feelings and bury my emotions too deeply within myself. I asked how she knew, and explained that it was just a sense she had. A lot of people are like me.

The next day, I found out that her bedroom was in the attic, and that her lip chap tasted more of strawberries than any of the other types of berries.

Later that month, I found out that she wore her days-of-the-week underwear on the wrong days. I asked her about it.

She said, I like mixing things up a little bit, it makes me feel more confident. I said, I never really mix things up. She said, Never? and I said, Well, not until I met you.

We fit together with an easy grace, comparing the sizes of our feet and twisting our legs around each other. At school, we took detours to kiss between classes and held hands under the desks of our English classroom.

In November, I stood beside a casket, nodding to adults with swollen eyes, trapped in a black dress that didn't breathe, my feet sweating inside three-inch heels glued to the carpet. My heart-broken mother was clutching one of my hands, and Sharon took my other in her own.

She said, It's okay to cry, you know. I said, If you say so.

I never thought I'd fall in love with a girl whose name rhymed with my own. It was something we laughed about on those too-short nights in her attic.

In the winter, our breath began to fog up the space between us so we put our lips together to try and keep it in. It worked every time, for a little while, and then we were left in a knot on the floor, trying to get it back.

Months without sun are hard months. She lit up my world, but the silences that fell between us were not always comfortable. Our first fight was the loudest thing I've ever heard, and it only ended when the lamp I bought her for Christmas shattered. She sobbed her apologies and I let my body provide mine.

Sometimes, one of us would storm out of the house, but the slam of the door wouldn't have time to stop echoing before we were in each other's arms again, rolling over the lawn, laughing and shivering.

When the snow melted, we would lay for hours in the fresh, new grass, making words out of clouds and inventing new constellations.

She said, Look at those flowers, aren't they beautiful? and I said, I can't tell, the only colour I see is your eyes. She said, That's the most romantic thing you've ever said to me. I couldn't say anything. I didn't know such remarks could come from within me.

Our English exam was two hours long. She finished early and gave me a secret smile as she walked to hand her paper in. When I walked out of the room, she was waiting. We went out for dinner. We had picked the same essay topic.

We paraded our love on the beach, proudly splashing each other in the shallow water and sharing a towel. At campfires, we made perfect s'mores and split them, laughing when our lips stuck together and our tongues tasted like chocolate. The world rotated around us; the tide changed only because we allowed it to.

On the fourth day of the second month of summer vacation, she went to the hospital. The double chocolate ice cream she had been eating spread all over the street, the cone crunching louder than her arm as the blue Chevrolet screeched away, broad daylight and all.

I asked where the room was, because I couldn't feel her presence through all of those tubes and wires. It was on the second floor, and she was all alone in her room.

She opened her eyes when I put my hand on her pillow. Hers sparkled gently with energy while mine glittered harshly with repressed emotion. We looked at each other for a long moment and put our hands together like a lock and a key, but I wasn't sure who needed to be opened.

She told me, You've grown, you know. I said, Stop talking like that. She said, It's true, you don't need me anymore.

That's when she died. Not really, but that's when we died. Something between us broke. We both knew she was right, and that the fact that we loved each other didn't mean anything anymore.

After I left, I sat in front of my piano, staring unseeingly at the Chopin in front of me. It was her favourite. By the middle of the fortieth bar, I knew that I would never see her again.

Tears touched my lips. I let myself cry.