"More than a stunning debut. It is the announcement of a bold new literary voice"
—Stephen Chbosky, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Sometimes, your life can change in a split second, sometimes minutes, hours, days. Change isn’t confined to a particular time frame. You know all about that. One minute, you were fine. The next, you were pinned to a tree, dying. Not to sound morbid, but that’s how it went down.
I feel like my change sneaks up on me. Crawling along until it suddenly grabs onto my legs, pulling my feet from under me. Because change is necessary after all. You can’t hide from it. But it’s not inevitable in the same way as death. We think of death as something that will happen a long time from now, something we can’t control. But for some reason, we think that change is something that can be controlled. The fact of the matter is that change is its own being. It’s random and clumsy, but it does to you what it wants, like some cruel twisted version of fate that the fairy godmother never warned you about.
Change isn’t always bad, of course. Change is the cause of the wonderful people you meet by chance. Change is the cause of the unexpected phenomenon of virtually anything. Change let me meet people I love. But in the end, I’m terrified of it and my life revolves around it. So what do I do? I shut people out. I’ve been doing that for a while. It’s easier to go about life if you don’t have anyone else to worry about. Look at the joker and Harley Quinn. Batman and robin. Dean and Sam Winchester. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. They would have been so much better off without each other, more successful, in less danger, but they can’t function without each other.
That’s sometimes how I feel about me and her. But most of the time, I feel like we’re in two different worlds, separated by a wormhole that could rip apart the earth. Like we’re walking a thin line and we’re on different sides, held together by a string tied around both of our wrists. Her world keeps on turning, and so does mine. At different paces, in different ways, yet still the same. Held together only by the string. Sometimes, we get pulled closer. We talk, we laugh, we love. But it’s not the same. Because she’s from her world and I’m from mine
The point is that change is like the wind. It has no reason, no meaning. It takes and gives. Sometimes in bad ways, like you leaving us, and sometimes in good ways, like me meeting her. So rest in peace, Chekov. I miss you like I miss her. In a way that’s more empty than anything you can imagine.