She looks at you with gaping blue eyes. Her hand, warm and soft, rests on your shoulder, and you tilt your head to look at it, to make sure what you feel is indeed what you see.

Her name is Lily. How fitting, you think, because she is beautiful and pure like a flower. She's everything you're not—kind, soft, innocent and loving.

Just like he was. Just like he isn't anymore.

You wonder, fleetingly, if you'll kill her too. If you really did kill him, or if he killed himself. These thoughts are always wondering through your mind, without urgency or grief, but an accepted part of your life.

"Who was he?"

Her voice, like honey and fresh spring air, swirls around you. You look at her, considering, a thousand answers ready at your tongue but none are good enough, a million years of words could never encompass who he was.

"He was my friend." Oh, but he was so much more—he was innocence, he was corruption, he was pain, he was joy, beauty, love, he was jealousy, he was ignorance, he was wisdom, he was my past, my childhood, my soul-mate, and my enemy. He was beyond me, he was beyond us all; beyond humanity and into divinity. He was unconceivable and perfect and, as all good things must, he came to an untimely end.

Lily nods, squatting like a frog in the dusty attic. With delicate fingers, she takes the photograph from your hand and gazes at it, the two young faces—one shining and beautiful, the other dark and somber.

"His name—his name was Finny. Phineas." Your voice is low and soft, and she drags the pad of her thumb over his face, wiping away the dust and grime that had gathered there, so that his face was even more attractive and alluring.

A sudden, throbbing nostalgia pierces you and you long, urgently, to see him again, to hear his voice, to look into a his wide, wondering eyes. You feel old and withered, like some weak aging man who dreams of youth. If only she could have met him! Oh, Lily, you would have loved him, you think, he would have loved you.

Your fantasy is squashed by a brief panic—what if she loved him more than you? What if he out did you again, as he always has, always working for his prize and always, always getting it.

You feel silly and stupid, competing against something that you left behind fifteen years ago. He is dead but what he represented is not—purity, love, forgiveness. Goodness.

You settle down into the hard wood floor, and Lily sits beside you.

"Did you love him?"

How can you answer this question, this ultimate question that caused not only the death of your friend, but the death of all that was good and all that was bad?

"Sure. I think. But—but if he had lived, then I would have died. He and I…we were different sides of the same coin, so to speak. He was the good. I was the bad. As long as he lived, I would remain the bad. But once he died, then I could be my own person, and instead of just living my life looking up to him, envying him, trying to understand him, I could just be myself. In that way, he lives on through me—I'm the good parts of him and the bad parts of me, combined." Your voice is quiet and faltering, but Lily seems to hear every word.

"I understand." And, you can see by the look on her face, that she does. You smile.

Finny is dead. But what he stood for, what he lived for, who he was, remains.