One year ago this week, my life stopped for a while. I got the horrifying news that someone I loved, my YA blogger, Dakota Clay Blevins had been killed in a car accident. To this day, I haven’t been able to bring myself to post on Jamie Mayfield’s blog. That was Dakota’s space and for me to post there, even though I own the domain, feels like a sacrilege. So, it remains empty, like a space in the middle of my soul, waiting to be filled when I can see Dakota again.

I met Dakota by accident.

Three years ago, I met a boy named Cody Spradlin (another BSC student) at Atlanta Pride and loved this kid from day one. He’s a beautiful, sweet southern boy who I took under my wing and kept there. It just so happened that Dakota knew Cody too and he friended me on Facebook on impulse. We hit it off right away, talking and laughing. Eventually we started PM’ing and texting. We talked about everything and nothing—his school, my books, his dates, my friends, but a lot of the time, we talked about transgender issues.

Dakota was a beautiful boy when he wasn’t busy being an amazing woman.

We talked almost every day and met just once in person. Atlanta Pride 2013 he drove up with friends from Birmingham and I flew down—we met in Piedmont Park. He later told friends it was the highlight of his Pride – it was the highlight of mine too. His phone died, so we ran into each other by accident near the Broke Straight Boys booth where my friends and I were all hanging out.

I wish now that I’d hugged him a dozen more times that day though, even those wouldn’t have been enough. During the parade on Sunday, I watched for him, but had to get to a photo shoot after, so didn’t get to meet up with him again before he headed back to school. I hate that we didn’t get to spend more time together. I thought we’d have pride the next year, and the next.

While I mourn him with the rest of his friends, I also want to celebrate his life. So, to that end, I pledge a couple of things for him, right now:

1. I will write a true-to-life transgender character in one of my novels in the next year. Transgender people are so underrepresented, even in our genre and they deserve to have their voices heard. To do this, I plan to interview several of my friends who are trans and make sure that the voice I write is authentic to them. Dakota deserves to be memorialized.
2. In addition to the contributions I make at Lost-N-Found Youth, I will donate to Birmingham AIDS Outreach – a charity that Dakota and the rest of the BSC Allies work to support.
3. I will do everything I can to help LGBT teens like Dakota and Clayton and all the others who need to know they’re loved while they’re accepting themselves as people and members of our LGBT family—and I will teach them to be strong and advocate for others. Because together, we are stronger.

If you’re listening, Dakota, and keeping tabs on us as we believe you are then you know how much we love you, how much we miss you, and the hole your absence has left in our lives. We will always have the stars in our hearts, because you put them there with your light and your love.

With all my heart, baby –

Trish

Harmony Ink put together a collection of Dakota’s words from my blog and from the short story he wrote for Inklings. You can find them here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18662024/Stars_on_My_Heart_Blevins.zip