When We Were Friends

In high school I came up with fifty-eight ways in which Sydney might die. I wrote them in a spiral notebook, numbered them, even illustrated the possibilities that pleased me most.

• Number 18: Stomach penetration by swallowed toothpick.
  
• Number 24: Curling iron electrocution.
  
• Number 37: Asphyxiation under sewage.
  

Etcetera, etcetera, all written in angry black Sharpie. But high school—even when it resembles the seventh circle of hell—is only temporary. Eventually I’d burned the notebook, and in the years after, I’d tried to see Sydney as just an unfortunate chapter in an otherwise not-so-bad life; something I could look back on coolly, thinking only how we’d both had a lot of growing up to do. Tried but apparently had not succeeded, seeing as I was now in the bathtub, digging my fingers into a bar of soap in an attempt to clean the paint embedded under my nails. Not wanting the dung-colored ridges to detract from the gleam of my fake engagement ring. Which, yeah. I know.

But today, for the first time in eighteen years, I was going to see Sydney again.

•   •   •

Sydney and I had been best friends since the second grade when she moved from Petaluma to Newport News, Virginia. We were best friends because we both needed glasses to see the board, which when we were seven was enough of a reason. Also because we both sucked at gym, and because neither of us had a father.

I remember her entering our classroom, escorted by Vice Principal Brooks, her reddish-blond hair lit from behind like the haloes in paintings of saints. Her Danskin pants were an inch too short and her T-shirt collar frayed, but still she beamed at us, turning her head loftily right and left as if expecting admiration.

I think the other kids sensed her desperation, because they mostly stayed away. But I felt bad for her and so that afternoon, seeing her standing alone at recess, I approached her. “My name’s Lainey,” I said. “I’m in your class.”

She eyed me warily, didn’t speak.

“I like your glasses,” I said. “They’re cool.”

In retrospect they weren’t cool, pink cat’s eye frames studded with rhinestones. But on Sydney they looked fierce somehow, gave her a tigress edge—a taste of what would, in later years, turn into sexiness.

“Want to try them?” she said, then plucked the plain, oversized tortoiseshell glasses off my nose and replaced them with hers.

I felt a sudden dizzy nausea—Sydney was farsighted and I was horribly nearsighted—followed by a wave of hilarity as I looked over the blurred playground. “I’m blind! I’m blind!”

She slipped on my glasses and snorted. “Your glasses suck.”

“Can you walk?” I said. “Pretend this, pretend this. Pretend we’re on a tightrope and there’s sharks under us, so if we don’t walk straight we’ll die.”

So that was how we spent the next half hour, arms splayed, drunkenly wobbling heel to toe across the macadam, howling whenever we stumbled to convey the agony of death-by-shark-attack. And when the bell rang to call us back inside, we exchanged glasses and I turned to her and smiled. “Want to be friends?”

She studied my face a moment, then gave a short nod. “Okay,” she said. And the rest, as they say, is history.

It wasn’t long before the other kids stopped trying to penetrate the wall we built around our friendship. We did everything together, got A’s in language arts and D’s in math, grew overbites and white-heads on our chins. The years went by without anybody especially liking us or hating us, or paying much attention to us at all, which was okay because we had each other, and having one best-best friend is all anyone needs.

But when we were fifteen, Sydney saw an optometrist, an orthodontist, and a dermatologist all in six months, the same six months that I stopped growing and didn’t stop eating. That was the beginning of the worst year of my life.

Maybe I should’ve realized the sort of person Sydney would become; in retrospect the signs were everywhere. But of course I’d only been seven, a reckless, cavalier age, and at the time everything about her had seemed mysterious, from her red hair to her fascination with
Fantasy Island
. That this mysterious creature would want to be my friend was, in itself, mysterious, and I hadn’t let myself look any further than my own gratitude.

What would it be like to be seven again? To feel the magic of nightly baths, of plastic cups and propeller boats and the honey-floral smell of Breck shampoo, hair that floated a halo at my shoulders,
Like a mermaid!
Star would say, and I’d picture myself as Esther Williams in her scaly bathing suit.

But I’d lost all sense of that seven-year-old body. Today my head swam in the heat, and even under the water I could feel a furry coat of sweat. You didn’t sweat at seven, or if you did you didn’t care. You could slide from one end of the tub to the other on your butt until the water drained to a slippery sheen. Seven was good and I should’ve appreciated it more. I should’ve learned how to cartwheel and climbed some trees, and chased boys around the playground while that was still socially acceptable. But it was too late now; I couldn’t go back again, not even in this little way.

Ironic, then, that my feelings about seeing Sydney today were the same at thirty-six as they had been at sixteen passing her in the hall, her glance like a physical force wringing my insides with nausea, terror and behind it all—pathetically—hope.

She was working in an occult shop of all places, Six of Swords. When I’d called the shop last month to order candles and root powders and amulets for my mother, I’d recognized her voice immediately. After a minute of stunned silence I’d slammed the phone down and never called again. But last week when the owner contacted me to see if I’d consider doing a mural, I’d decided to think of it as fate and … a learning experience. “Well what a surprise,” I’d say when I saw her. It would have to be spoken with the right mix of nonchalance and sarcasm, and then I’d shrug and turn away like I had better things to do.