333/365, Justin

The boy on the school bus with uneven eye sockets. He had a cleft palate and harelip that left him perpetually snotty, and someone had transplanted toes where his fingers should have been. He liked to hold hands.

334/365, Ismah Vassell

Everyone thought that Grandma’s stroke had left her mute. She wasn’t. “I don’t have anything to say to those people,” she said. “Don’t tell your mother.” And she never spoke to them again. But she spoke to me.

335/365, Mrs. Morrow

She had blonde Farrah Fawcett wings that threatened to go airborne at any given moment. She might have taught English, but I learned from her that each of my cursive letters had to have it’s very own tail.

336/365, Leslie Semonian

When they told her that she would die soon, she did what anyone would do. She went right out and learned how to snowboard. She lived without apology. It felt like the whole world went to her funeral.

337/365, Sammy

Sammy had Tourette’s Syndrome. He was prone to saying, “I want to fuck you. Eeek!” and “You’re a nigger.” Didn’t matter if you were black or white, male or female. He was a guest on the Oprah show.

338/365, Fiona Howe

She was naturally beautiful, first thing in the morning, but she hated the bump on her nose. One day, said nose met our dance teacher’s elbow, mid-pirouette. I can still feel the cracking sound the breaking bones made.

339/365, June

June was pregnant for two years after Uncle Trevor left her. Surprised? Don’t be. Here’s the recipe. Turn your childhood sweetheart into an alcoholic husband. Add three children, financial pressure, uterine fibroids, and shake until uniform with madness.

346/365, Ted Hennessy

What you noticed first were pretty blue eyes and the uncanny roundness of his forehead. You would have seen the whip-sharp wit and that laughter would follow him to the end of the world. Rest in peace.

349/365, Gloria

As a teenager, she wrote:

Lies
Damned lies
In people’s curious eyes
Leave their lips
And sink
Ships

And then she disappeared. Recently, I found her. Instead of a happy reunion, we had a few minutes of disinterest.

350/365, Mona Shah

Mona was from India and wore big round glasses and long black hair in two thick braids that reached her ankles and was scented by perfumed oils and a strong musky something whose flavor I could never name.

351/365, Dawn

The daughter of a Carolina politician. Once said, “I don’t want no faggots sittin’ on my bed!” and “My Gawd, there’s a niggra joggin’. I didn’t know that niggras jogged!” So, it was impossible to like her. Still.

352/365, Denise Hoff

She was from Medford and she laughed a lot and she talked a mile a minute and oh my god that’s so funny and she was the kind of person you wanted to tell to. Just. Slow. Down.

353/365, Felicia Heiliczer

My Jew-turned-born-again-Christian friend, used to badger me daily with Jesus. When I switched schools, I told her I was moving to the islands to do soft-core porn and deal drugs. She believed me, until this past June.

354/365, Georgina Garcia

We called her G-squared. She took writing seriously. A preposition is anything a bird can do to a cloud, she said. Life is difficult for the sensitive, she said. But be the preposition, she said. Feel the cloud.

355/365, Eddie Baugh

Uncle Eddie was a mailman and spent my childhood drunk. Everyone said he wasn’t sick a day. No self-respecting virus or bacteria could live in his blood. It was that pickled. But cancer respects no body, even Eddie’s.