The early-afternoon temperature July 5 was more than 100 degrees and climbing, and Adrienne had been dead for less than 24 hours.

Katherine, Maryanne, Sammi, Caroline and I sat in Mr. Pope’s sweltering black Tahoe, drained from two hours of grieving with our classmates in the chill of the air-conditioned KHS library. When Mr. Pope stopped the car in front of Adrienne’s house, however, I felt like we had arrived too soon. He unlocked the doors as I wiped off my fogged glasses — my eyes had hurt too badly for me to put in my contact lenses that morning after — and rubbed the tears from my cheeks.

Sheets of rain tumbled down as Adrienne and I sprinted across the Dougherty Ferry parking lot after cross country practice. We yanked open the doors to Jetta, the name of her grey car, tossed our drenched backpacks into the trunk and plopped down in our seats. She apologized for the YoMyGoodness container sitting in the cup holder and the greasy Chick-Fil-A bag crumpled in my seat that reeked of the previous day’s spicy chicken sandwich. I laughed, although I loathe Chick-fil-A and she had obviously lied about beginning her diet. Jetta hummed to life as Adrienne jammed her key into the ignition and cranked up the volume of a Snoop Dogg song. Although our rapping skills were subpar and Adrienne, as usual, didn’t know any of the words, we drowned out the thunder with our singing until she parked Jetta in front of her house. Tears of laughter streamed down our cheeks as we stepped outside.

As the five of us approached Adrienne’s front door, I spotted Jetta sitting idly on the curb, baking in the sun. We pressed our hands up against the scalding metal and squinted into the windows. We thought about how many times she drove us around in that car, about how many places we’d been, and about how we would never fight for shotgun again. We turned away from the vacant car and walked to her front porch. We entered. I wanted to call out Adrienne’s name the second I walked through the door, as always. I wanted her to answer me from her bedroom, as always. Instead, I let the eerie upstairs silence consume me.

Adrienne and I burst through the front door, soaking wet. I yelled a greeting to Mr. and Mrs. Meckes and their voices welcomed me from the floor above. We made a beeline for the fridge in the kitchen, but Adrienne caught my extended hand and told me she wouldn’t let me have any food until I took my shoes off. She reminded me of how obnoxious it was that I never removed them before entering her house. I grumbled about the stinky Chick-fil-A bag, but reluctantly complied when she set the chips and hummus on the table. After our stomachs were filled and she calculated how many calories she just consumed, we put the dishes away and climbed up the stairs.

Our footsteps echoed through the house even though we tried to creep up the stairs as quietly as we could. We turned left and nudged open the door to Adrienne’s room. Someone flipped on the lights. The closet door was ajar and her bed was unmade, but other than that, her room was spotless, as always. We stood in the doorway for a second, numb, unsure of what to do.

Adrienne and I barged into her room. She strutted to her closet and tossed a new pair of shoes and some shirts onto the bed. She asked me what I thought of them, and without examining them too closely, I told her they all looked great. She must have detected a tone of envy in my voice because she promised I could wear them, with the exception of the shoes, of course. She explained how my size 10 feet would have difficulty wiggling into her size eight boots. She hung the clothes back up and asked me if I wanted to watch an episode of Avatar before I left. I smiled, asked her when she had morphed into an 8-year-old boy, and said no. She shrugged and professed that I shouldn’t judge things before I try them. In the midst of a heated debate regarding what is worth trying and what is not, my buzzing phone signalled my dad was parked in the driveway, waiting to pick me up. Adrienne giggled and told me to leave. I laughed, forced her to give me a hug, and said goodbye.

As I sat on her bed, images and memories fought for my attention as I attempted to grasp the new reality: Adrienne was dead. I glanced at her full-body mirror and expected to see her sitting cross-legged, waiting impatiently for Katherine to finish putting on her make-up and Caroline to fishtail her hair. I turned to her closet, waiting to see her burst into the room to model an outfit for us, beaming and busting a dance move. Just yesterday, Adrienne was probably tucked under the covers watching Avatar while tweeting about not being able to fall asleep. I stared across the room at her bookshelf, where the boxed set of The Hunger Games trilogy neatly sat. I expected to turn my head and spy her reading Catching Fire for the third time in a row.

I curled up on her bed, my head buried in my hands.

Then I looked up. Above the headboard was a poster she made out of cut-up magazine letters pasted on white paper. It said “True friends are never apart; maybe in distance, but never in heart.” I smiled through my tears. It was as if I heard her voice breaking through the silence. At that moment I knew: true friends are never apart.

Adrienne will forever live on in my memory, and she will always be my best friend.

She lives inside all of the hearts she touched. She lives on in her friends, the people she spent every other moment with, laughing, fighting, crying, loving. She lives on in her family, in those who raised her and helped her become a wonderful person. Her vitality lives through those she always smiled at in the hallway, through every person she waved to — everyone who heard her laugh, or saw her dougie at a party.

No, she is not gone.

As I sat on her bed, I knew although I would never see her again, I will see what she did in life everyday. She made people happy, and that happiness will always be inside us.

It’s what I’ve come to recognize as the “Adrienne Effect.”

I am sad. Adrienne is dead. But I know she lives inside me, and in this, I will ultimately find comfort.