Melanie

I'm sitting on the kitchen counter, with the heavy, floor-length velvet skirts of my rented Renaissance-era gown bunched up around me. It’s 4 a.m., or maybe 5, not that it mattered because back then the party went on all night. Jon's stripper girlfriend is talking a mile a minute, massaging my foot with her tiny, delicate hands, as if we're friends, which we are definitely not.

Hours earlier, we'd arrived at the hotel ballroom for a Victorian-themed wedding with nearly 300 lavishly costumed guests. My feet were already aching from my terrible choice of footwear, four-inch platform sandals, which slid off my feet with every step. I was contemplating how to secure them when Jon arrived with Melanie, a spectacle in her white wig and red satin gown, with skirts nearly as wide as she was tall.

She pulled me to my feet and whirled me around before heading for the dance floor. I stumbled after her in my ridiculous wooden clogs, protesting that if I tried to dance, I would break my neck. She looped her arm through mine and made a beeline for the lobby, launching into an apology for the way she had acted the last time we saw each other.

She and Jon had been fighting, again, and she wanted me to understand her side. I didn't care about her side. Ever since they started dating, she'd annoyed the shit out of me. She represented everything I hated about young women. A sex object, a gold digger, a cute little trophy too stupid to realize she was just the flavor of the month.

The previous weekend, after an nice dinner out with two other couples, they had started fighting, screaming at each other in the parking garage. She took his keys and threatened to drive away in his brand new Denali. I'd be surprised if she could even reach the pedals of the massive vehicle. Just let her go, I said. There's no way that's going to happen, Jon said, and started pounding on the hood.

Her attitude seemed volatile and self-destructive. He was doing his best Hulk impression. After a lengthy standoff, she finally opened the door and let him take the wheel. Neither of them should have been driving, but it seemed like the least worst scenario at the time. They drove off, leaving the rest of us stunned and speechless.

But right now, she badly needed a cigarette and it was a good thing I had a problem with my shoes because it gave her an excuse to run to the gift shop. She said she hated dragging everyone into their fights, but she wasn't good at hiding her feelings. She spotted a pair of red and white shoelaces with maple leaves on them by the cash register. Perfect.

I sat down in an ornate chair as she knelt in front of me, wrapping the long ribbons around my shoes, then tying them around my ankles. It was hard to stay mad at someone who would literally kneel at your feet, but that didn't stop me from trying.

Once my shoes were secured, she dragged me off with a bunch of other girls to take pictures in the women's restroom lounge. I rolled my eyes as I caught my boyfriend's amused grin. He had heard me rant about her so many times, like everyone else in our little group. She had ruined countless evenings, but somehow I was the one with the attitude problem.

We danced for hours in the hotel ballroom, then descended on a crowded night club in our full Victorian regalia. A dozen of us drifted into Jon's loft in the early morning hours, exhausted but determined to keep the party going. The men sprawled, decadent and disheveled, lace collars damp and unbuttoned, tangled wigs discarded on chairs and draped over lampshades. The women gathered their skirts in bright, bejewelled pools around them on the floor.

Melanie changed out of her dress and wig, shaking out her long dark hair and vigorously scratching her scalp. She suddenly reminded me of a little girl who wants to show you her room, grinning up at me in her sweatpants and Jon's big white t-shirt. Leading me to the kitchen to make us drinks, she asked if my feet hurt and, over my protestations, pulled them onto her lap to massage them, one by one.

Now that I was her captive audience, she told me about herself. She was several years younger than me, just 21, and she was still trying to figure things out. She had never known anyone like Jon — or the rest of our little group. She had a strict, religious upbringing before moving to Vancouver from a small town in Saskatchewan, and she started working as a dancer to pay the rent. I could feel my resistance crumbling.

A few months later, the phone rang early on a Friday morning. Melanie had been killed in a car accident in Ibiza. Jon held a reception a few days later at his sparsely furnished loft. The space was transformed into a glowing memorial; tall crystal vases with pink and white flowers filled every room, and huge white candles stood in the corners like Greek columns. On every wall, were pictures of Melanie.

I drifted through the evening in a daze, hugging people I barely knew. I wandered out onto the wraparound deck overlooking the water, a maze of massive floral arrangements and plants, lit from beneath with blue floodlights and candles.

I sat down with my boyfriend and two of our friends, glasses of wine in hand, and we fell into an involuntary kind of banter, trying to be clever and upbeat but failing miserably. After a few minutes, a large screen lit up with Melanie's beautiful, smiling face and a song by Sarah McLaughlin filled the air.

The slides faded in and out of the darkness, images of her laughing, radiantly alive. By the second photo, my eyes were stinging with tears and by the last, I could barely breathe. A sucker punch of loss and regret. I felt sick at how I'd treated her, rarely more than with grudging tolerance — often, with contempt.

The song ended and the last photo hovered in the stillness. I wanted to run — from these people, who had all known how I felt about her, from the images of her face, angelic and impassive — but mostly from myself.

People started talking in disjointed bursts — as if the silence was a sucking undertow and idle chatter was our lifeline. Through the blur of my raging emotions and the crushing weight on my chest, I heard someone say that, for all Melanie's faults, she never had a bad word to say about anyone. The words hit me like an accusation. My boyfriend said softly, "She always looked up to you." It was the final blow to my composure.

Tears streaming down my face, I stumbled past my friends and down the hall to the bathroom and sank to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. What the fuck? I didn't even like her. Why did I feel this way?

In the days since I heard the news, my self-preservation instinct had kicked in. I tried to convince myself that she hated me, too — or she would've, if she'd had any sense. I imagined her bitching about me when I wasn't around, sulking when she knew she would have to spend another evening with me. But my friends were quick to dispel that fantasy. She never delighted in tearing people apart in their absence the way I did the minute she left the room.

She had charmed me again and again, like that night in the kitchen, but I never let her win me over completely. I didn't want to get close, to befriend her, and watch her get hurt over and over. I hated her vulnerability and her misplaced trust in a man who was obviously bad for her, who disrespected her even more than I did.

But taking her side would have undermined my sense that I was "one of the guys." Besides, hers was clearly the losing side. I can't even say I regretted not getting to know her, because as bad as I felt after her death, I would have been devastated if I'd actually let myself care about her while she was alive.

That night at her memorial, there was a book for everyone to sign, that they were going to bury with her. I started writing and couldn't stop the flood of words. I filled page after page with everything I could never say to her, about how wrong I'd been, how I hoped she knew I didn't really hate her, that I was just protecting myself. That I too was young and stupid, but for what it was worth, I would be better for having known her.

I buried a part of myself with Melanie, and vowed I would never be that person again, the shitty, insecure, toxic cool girl who can't be friends with other women. I've lost loved ones since then, but none affected me the way Melanie did. It wasn't just a loss, it was an ego death, the kind without which transformation is impossible. I was crying as much for myself as I was for her.