My job is to convince people that Clover is still alive. This body changes, grows hair, gains and loses weight, bleeds and heals; inconceivably, undeniably alive, but Clover is gone. She didn’t go all at once, but slowly, in bits, leaving me in charge.
I am not sure where I came from. I have Clover’s memories, but they don’t feel like mine. I am a filler, meant to entertain the audience until the play can resume.
What I know is that it is my duty to keep this body moving, take it to class, make it run on the treadmill, assure her family they haven’t lost their daughter where they’ll never find her. That she didn’t die in her mind years ago.
They call me Clover, still. It sounds strange to me, the pronunciation foreign to my ears, but I’ve yet to find a name that feels like my own.
Little Clover. She was loved. And she loved, so much, so deeply.
She never had a boyfriend. She went on a date once. He was sweet to her until she rejected him.
She wanted to be a doctor.
She was brave. Even when she was sick and didn’t know it, even after she found out. She was brave every single day until the end.