gluten free chocolate cake
The last time I ate gluten free chocolate cake was my seventeenth birthday. I laughed as I baked and snapchatted a picture of the crumbly, wheat-less, rather flat looking product to my best friend.
Her name was Sam.
She couldn’t eat gluten and so became the target of the easiest inside joke of our friends. Every box of gluten free cookies, every labeled menu option, instantly found itself the subject of a blurry phone pic showcased in our group chat. She would laugh, roll her eyes, and reply with almond milk directed toward the lactose intolerant unfortunate few.
We had fun that year. Senior year, which despite college applications and AP classes, was also golden and bright and overflowing with love. It was a race against the clock, against graduation, against going off to new lives and inevitably chalking this up to a few old facebook posts and a fond remembrance of laughter.
Far too quickly, it was over. And then we were preparing to split, and she was the first to go, the most permanent as well, moving back to Michigan. And then there were only tearful goodbyes and desperate last hugs and trying to remember her eyes, her smile, her voice, and fingers clasping but slipping away, away, away, gone.
It wasn’t so bad, after the first few days. There was social media, after all, and FaceTime. And soon, we’d all scattered, found ourselves impossibly busy once again, and it wasn’t so bad, but I took it for granted, only wished over and over to talk to her in person.
That winter was cold. Colder for her, though, all the way up north. The ice must have been brutal on the roads, and blacker than the night they were driving in, practically invisible. It was a disaster waiting to happen. And no one’s fault. That’s what they said at least. No one’s fault, no drunk driver, just a cruel trick of fate and no one to blame but the gods. They just kept saying it; no one could have known, could have done much of anything, but that made it worse, not better. I wanted someone to scream at, to hurt, to punish for taking her away from me.
How do you punish a god?
There is no longer a reason for me to get gluten free cake, no reason for me to consider it as an option each year on my birthday, but I’m drawn to it as I walk by, a sharp pain in my chest intensifying with too many painful memories and a longing to be reminded that Sam couldn’t eat gluten at my party, a longing to have that reason to pick up that box with the image of a crumbly, wheat-less, rather flat looking, gluten free chocolate cake.
