Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend Read Online Free PDF Page B

that he’s wrong, I know he is probably right.
    You can’t poop on the head of a kid like Tommy Swinden and expect to get away with it.

CHAPTER 8
     
    I saw Graham today. I passed her on the way to the cafeteria. She waved to me.
    She’s starting to fade away.
    I can’t believe it.
    I could see her spiky hair and toothy grin through her hand as she waved it back and forth in front of her face.
    Imaginary friends can take a long time to disappear or a short time to disappear, but I don’t think Graham has much time left.
    Her human friend is a girl named Meghan, and she is six years old. Graham has been alive for only two years, but she is my oldest imaginary friend and I don’t want her to go. She is the only real friend I have except for Max.
    I am afraid for her.
    I am afraid for me, too.
    Someday I will raise my hand in front of my face and see Max’s face on the other side of it, and then I’ll know that I am fading away, too. Someday I am going to die, if that’s what happens to imaginary friends.
    It must be. Right?
    I want to talk to Graham, but I don’t know what to say. I wonder if she knows that she is disappearing.
    If she doesn’t know, should I tell her?
    There are lots of imaginary friends in the world who I never get to meet because they do not leave their houses. Most imaginary friends aren’t lucky enough to be able to go to school or walk around on their own like me and Graham. Max’s mom brought us to one of her friends’ houses once and I met three imaginary friends. They were all sitting in tiny chairs in front of a chalkboard. Their arms were crossed and they were frozen like statues while this little girl named Jessica recited the alphabet to them and asked them to answer math problems. But the imaginary friends couldn’t walk or talk. When I walked into the playroom, they just blinked at me from their chairs. That was it.
    Just blinked.
    Those kinds of imaginary friends never last long. I once saw an imaginary friend pop up in Max’s kindergarten classroom for fifteen minutes and then just disappear. It was like someone inflated her in the middle of the room. She got bigger and bigger and bigger like one of those people-shaped balloons they sell at parades until she was almost as big as me. A big, pink girl with pigtails in her hair and yellow flowers for feet. But when story time was done, it was like someone popped her with a pin. She shrank and shrank until I couldn’t see her anymore.
    I was scared watching that pink girl disappear. Fifteen minutes is nothing.
    She never even heard the whole story.
    But Graham has been around for so long. She has been my friend for two years. I can’t believe that she is dying.
    I want to be mad at her human friend, Meghan, because it is Meghan’s fault that Graham is dying. She doesn’t believe in Graham anymore.
    When Graham dies, Meghan’s mother will ask Meghan where her friend has gone, and Meghan will say something like, ‘Graham doesn’t live here anymore,’ or ‘I don’t know where Graham is,’ or ‘Graham went on vacation.’ And her mother will turn and smile, thinking her little girl is growing up.
    But no. That is not what’s going to happen. Graham is not going on any vacation. Graham is not moving to another city or country.
    Graham is going to die.
    You stopped believing, little girl, and now my friend is going to die. Just because you are the only human person who can see and hear Graham doesn’t mean that she is not real. I can see and hear Graham, too. She is my friend.
    Sometimes when you and Max are in class, we meet at the swing set to talk.
    We used to play tag when you and Max had recess together.
    Graham called me a hero once when I stopped Max from running out in front of a moving car, and even though I don’t think I was a hero, it still felt good.
    And now she is going to die because you don’t believe in her anymore.
    We are sitting in the cafeteria. Max is in music class and Meghan is eating lunch. I can