Dear Elvis,

I know that you’re long gone, but I just wanted you to know that I’m very grateful. I thought that you might like to know what you have done for me. You see, my coworker Ruby told me about how people send you hundreds of birthday cards every year, and I was intrigued. Twenty years ago, I would never have considered such a thing. Twenty years ago, I would have called them crazy. I never would have seen this coming, because now it’s my birthday and I’m writing a letter to send in the express mail to you.

It all started in January of my senior year of high school. Way back when I was young and in love with the world, and not afraid to go outside. Before my world fell apart, I had only a moment to tack it back together, and then it went down in flames.

The year was 2007, and I lived in Iowa. When you live in the Midwest, you have two options for extracurriculars in high school, sports and show choir. Because the former was simply laughable, I chose show choir. Four months later, we got the “exciting” news that we would be performing your song “Blue Suede Shoes”. This was an odd choice, but our choir teacher was an odd man, so we begrudgingly learned the lyrics.

Four weeks later, we gave our first performance. Well, it was my first performance, seeing as I jumped in during second semester to get my father off of my case, but everyone else had been performing for a while.

I stood there on that stage and saw my name in shimmering lights. I sang second soprano, but in my seventeen-year-old mind, the only reason that anybody came was to see me perform. That’s when I fell in love with performing.

But it ended too soon. I came out of high school with a GPA of 3.2, a participation award of a diploma, a one-year scholarship to my local community college, and a burning desire, a craving, a deep longing for performing. I wanted nothing more than I wanted to see Sienna Cross on every billboard and magazine. Every day that summer, I regretted not having joined choir in freshman year. Maybe I would have gotten a full music scholarship.

Looking back, however, I don’t regret a single moment of it.

Yes, It was hard work getting enough money to keep going to college. I took two part time jobs on top of classes, but I eventually made it.

Let’s stop getting ahead of ourselves. Freshman year of college. I attended classes for about a month before I heard a classmate saying something about the “choir geeks” singing at “some pizza joint”. I ran over like a madwoman and practically screamed at the girl to repeat what she said. Clearly weirded out, he just walked away from me, but another person came up behind me.

She was about my age, with soft brown hair that fell in perfect ringlets onto her shoulders. Ruby always ridicules me for remembering what she was wearing, but her black and white striped shirt is seared onto my brain. She was sporting red leather pants, and thick square-rimmed glasses. Her lipstick was purple and her round brown eyes were bare, but the thing that I remember most, the thing that’s forever etched in the back of my mind, was her smile. Perfectly aligned, perfectly white teeth were set into a wide grin.

“Yeah, we’re singing at Crusty’s tonight." She chirped, her enthusiasm seeping into me and making me grin.

Why anyone would want to call their pizza place Crusty’s, I’m wasn’t sure, but I had just accidentally stumbled upon my favorite college hangout. Of course, awkward little me didn’t know that, she was just excited to learn that her school had a choir.

“Is it open. I mean, could I come watch?” I managed to stutter out.

She let out a heartwarming giggle, “Of course!”

And she bid me adieu and bounced away, her feet threatening to jump from her blue suede ballet flats.

That night, I attended their performance. There were only eight people there, which stunned me beyond belief. But what startled me most was when they started singing “Blue Suede Shoes”. When it was done, I stood on my chair and clapped louder than anyone else.

The next week I went back to my Econ class as per usual, but just before I left, I heard someone calling me from behind. It was the girl from the week before. Long story short, she introduced herself as Lacey Adams and invited me to join the choir. I gave her a resounding yes, hugged her, and ran out of the class grinning. Then I realized that I had left my things and shamefully walked back in to retrieve them.

I went to the designated meeting spot at the designated time, as the girl told me to. As I opened the door, a bucket of green slime fell on top of my head. The room had eleven people in it, five of them capturing the moment on their cameras.

I closed my eyes, took in three deep breaths, felt the goop drip down my calves, and then I turned and ran.

I ran for a while before I found this massive oak tree and collapsed into a green, squelching, breathless heap. I was trying to regain my breath when I heard the sound of footsteps pounding against pavement and heaving lungs. Someone plopped onto the grass next to me.

It was Lacey.

Her hair was tousled and her cheeks were stained red. She opened her mouth to say something, took in a gasp of air, and then closed it. I went to stand up, but she grabbed my wrist and pulled me back down. We laid in the grass for a minute before either of us was able to speak. She dared to go first.

“Sorry about that, it’s sort of an initiation ritual.”

Now I’m not quite sure why, but I forgave her. In that instant, I made a split-second decision to forgive this person who had just done a horrible thing to me (the dye never came out either). Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t, but I did, and I don’t regret it one bit.

That was the day that I joined my school’s choir, but more importantly, it was the beginning of the best friendship that I’ve ever had. Better than anything I could have imagined. It was the beginning of eating Crusty’s pizza cold from the fridge, blaring Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and annoying the neighbors, whispering wishes late into the night, and crying with each other. It was the beginning of jumping into lakes with our clothes on, rolling down grassy hills, dreaming on dandelion seeds, cloud counting, star gazing, and making cupcakes. Nothing before that mattered anymore. It was like nothing had ever mattered, nothing but me and her and then and there.

Lacey and I stayed best friends throughout college and after. She became a music teacher at the elementary school, which was beyond fitting. I got into professional photography, which was unexpected but marvelous all the same. We did everything together, forever and for always.

One day, I went to pick her up after work and stumbled into a lovely man in the hallway. He was gorgeous and polite, and totally perfect in every way.

I was about to say something to him when his mobile rang, and by god I was beyond stunned to hear “Blue Suede Shoes” coming from his cell phone. I laughed and left him to answer it. When Lacey and I walked out of the building, he was already gone. I shrugged it off, thinking that some things just weren’t meant to be.

Until suddenly I couldn’t hold it in. I asked Lacey about him on the drive home and she told me that he was a fourth grade teacher, her favorite coworker.

His name was Henry Barber.

To my extreme delight, Lacey came home three days later with news that he had asked about me. We had a good squeal before getting back to our normal lives.

It was years later, I woke up one morning to Lacey’s irritated morning voice. I sat up abruptly and looked to the calendar across my hotel room. The date, March 7th, was circled in red. It was my twenty-seventh birthday.

I got dressed in a frilly white gown and walked down a few flights of stairs. The nerves were eating me up inside, but Lacey was there by my side the whole time.

My father couldn’t make it, he’d died years earlier from lung cancer, and I hadn’t spoken to my mother since she walked out when I was eight.

I walked down the aisle with a bouquet of lilies in one hand and my best friend in the other.

The first song that my husband and I danced to as a married couple was none other than “Blue Suede Shoes”

Five years later, I was at work, photographing snotty children in an elementary school forty minutes from my town. They had a radio on and wouldn’t you know it, “Blue Suede Shoes” came on. I hummed it happily, thinking about how lucky it was that my favorite song was when I got a phone call.

It was my fifth wedding anniversary and my thirty-second birthday.

The woman on the phone told me she was from the hospital, she spouted some pre-rehearsed crap about her condolences and told me that my husband was dead. I couldn’t have told you how he died in that moment, I was trying so hard to ignore it, but I’ll always remember exactly what it was that killed him. I ran from work, muttering something about a family emergency to my appalled coworkers. I was fired later, until they heard about my husband, but I refused to take the job, wanting more time to wallow in my own pity.

I drove back home as fast as I could, but the traffic made the half-hour trip last nearly an hour and a half. I made it to the hospital just in time to see my husband. They wrapped him up shortly after, what was left of him at least. It was the worst moment in my life up until that moment.

I went to leave the hospital, down the hall, I needed to get away from it all, but I saw something that stopped me in my tracks.

The hospital was full of grieving family members and children on gurneys. I remembered immediately my husband’s cause of death.

Someone had bombed the school he worked at.

Lacey worked there too.

I ran down the hall and to the elevator. Punching the button, I began praying when I heard the elevator music. They were playing Elvis Presley’s goddamned “Blue Suede Shoes”.

The doors opened and people spilled out of the elevator. I sprinted to the receptionist’s desk and voiced my concern for my best friend. She coolly and calmly told me that she would check her system, trying to keep me together in my moment of crisis.

And then she broke me to bits.

“Regretfully,” She told me, “It seems that there is a Lacey Adams on our list of the deceased.

All of the pain and hurt and worry that I wouldn’t let myself feel for my husband came rushing back. I know that I was supposed to grieve for my husband, but I was blinded by my longing for Lacey. And I don’t regret it one bit. In that moment, and all of the moments afterward, Lacey became the one thing I wanted most in the world.

In that moment, by worn and battered walls were torn apart. I reached out the palm of my hand to hold on to the last bit of my her, but ended up with only blisters and cuts.

That man was my husband, my one true love, and I’ve missed him dearly since.

Lacey was my one truer love. We weren’t romantically involved, neither of us had ever felt like that, but we never needed to. Lacey wasn’t my best friend, she wasn’t my sister.

Lacey Adams was my other half.

She was a part of me and her own magnificent person and anything and everything in between. She was all the things that she loved about herself, everything that she hated about herself that I loved the most, and everything I’ve always wished I could be.

And I’ve been only half a person ever since.

I can still remember the way she would bop and croon when “Blue Suede Shoes” came on in the car. I made them play it at her funeral.

Your song was there when my world collapsed, but it was also there when my world first seemed bright and happy.

I told you earlier that I can’t imagine what would have happened if I didn’t accept her apology, and I’m glad that I don’t need to. Maybe my life would have been easier if Lacey had never died, but it would have been harder to get to that point without her.

She was my everything, she still is, and I don’t mind that she’s gone so much anymore. Not after I realized that all good things must end eventually. Now I save my energy for remembering her, and all of the wonderful things that she did for and with me.

Because yes, my world may have crumbled when she died, but it wouldn’t have been built at all if not for her.

I wouldn’t have gotten into photography, I wouldn’t have met my husband, and I wouldn’t have moved into this odd little neon green house.

So thank you, Elvis, for your magnificent song, because without it, I may never have met Lacey Adams.

Sincerely,
Sienna Barber