and excited we were. We swapped stories of our own personal hells and discovered they weren’t so personal after all. Is there any bonding agent like shared pain? We spent most Friday nights together after that.
I thought I had delicate sensibilities, but Jennifer was the most sensitive girl I’d ever met. We once passed a bird with a broken wing as we walked to NorthPark Mall. He was tipped over on the sidewalk near the highway, claws scrambling forpurchase, and she scooped him up in her hands and redirected us back to her house, where she nestled him in a shoe box padded with cotton balls. I just wanted to go to Limited Express.
“You can’t go around rescuing any dumb bird,” I said to her in a tone I’d borrowed from Kimberley. My babysitting money was heavy in my pocket, and I was itching to turn my bounty into a bubble skirt.
I was the dominant in our duo, but in the green-carpeted hallways of middle school, we were equals. Two artsy honors kids, stranded in the vast flyover territory between cheerleader and nerd, and drawn to both coasts. We wrote each other notes every day, which tracked the movements of boys we liked as though we were anthropologists in the bush. (“Claude was wearing a red shirt today. He sat in a seat close to the door.”) We folded the notes into simple origami shapes, and I kept every one she gave me in a Payless ShoeSource box in my closet. I liked to watch those notes pile up, a tangible measure of my value to another human. The notes were creamy with praise, as if self-esteem were a present you could give another person.
You are beautiful and sweet. I love you so much. You are the best friend I ever had.
So much clinging and drama. We sounded like parting lovers fleeing the Nazis, not two kids bored in American History.
We bought silver best friend rings from James Avery, the equivalent of engagement rings in our junior high. Flashing that ring meant you belonged to someone. And if we couldn’t belong to the boys we liked, then at least we could belong to each other. The ring was two hands entwined so you couldn’t tell where one hand ended and the other one began, a fitting symbol for our enmeshment. We were BFFs, almost sisters. But then high school came along—and our unraveling began.
I arrived in ninth grade eager to catch the eye of someupperclassman, but it was Jennifer they saw. They scooped her up only to drop her again, but at least they knew she was alive. The baby fat had melted off her round cheeks, and she wore tight miniskirts displaying her long, shapely legs. She developed a scary case of anorexia that year. If she chewed a stick of sugar-free gum, she would run around the block to burn calories. And I knew she was acting crazy, but I was so jealous of how much more successful her eating disorder was than mine.
It was also dawning on me, with horror, that I was short. To some girls, being short meant “petite” and “dainty.” To me, it meant being “squat” and “puny.” Height was authority. Height was glamour. I knew from magazines that supermodels were at least five nine but I flatlined at five two, while Jennifer rose to an attractive five seven, and I grew accustomed to tilting my head upward as I spoke. Jennifer once caught me climbing onto their kitchen countertop to reach a high shelf. “Aww, that’s cute,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” I snapped at her. What was so adorable about a person whose body had been cheated?
On Friday nights, in her bedroom, we didn’t discuss these frictions. We giggled and gossiped. Jennifer stole beer from her father’s stash of Schaefer Light for me. I would drink it while we talked, letting the alcohol work out the kinks in my system, the part of me that couldn’t stop staring at Jennifer’s thighs and hating her for them.
Jennifer didn’t like beer, but she had other vices. She liked to sneak out the back window of the house in the middle of the night and take out her parents’ Oldsmobile. We
I thought I had delicate sensibilities, but Jennifer was the most sensitive girl I’d ever met. We once passed a bird with a broken wing as we walked to NorthPark Mall. He was tipped over on the sidewalk near the highway, claws scrambling forpurchase, and she scooped him up in her hands and redirected us back to her house, where she nestled him in a shoe box padded with cotton balls. I just wanted to go to Limited Express.
“You can’t go around rescuing any dumb bird,” I said to her in a tone I’d borrowed from Kimberley. My babysitting money was heavy in my pocket, and I was itching to turn my bounty into a bubble skirt.
I was the dominant in our duo, but in the green-carpeted hallways of middle school, we were equals. Two artsy honors kids, stranded in the vast flyover territory between cheerleader and nerd, and drawn to both coasts. We wrote each other notes every day, which tracked the movements of boys we liked as though we were anthropologists in the bush. (“Claude was wearing a red shirt today. He sat in a seat close to the door.”) We folded the notes into simple origami shapes, and I kept every one she gave me in a Payless ShoeSource box in my closet. I liked to watch those notes pile up, a tangible measure of my value to another human. The notes were creamy with praise, as if self-esteem were a present you could give another person.
You are beautiful and sweet. I love you so much. You are the best friend I ever had.
So much clinging and drama. We sounded like parting lovers fleeing the Nazis, not two kids bored in American History.
We bought silver best friend rings from James Avery, the equivalent of engagement rings in our junior high. Flashing that ring meant you belonged to someone. And if we couldn’t belong to the boys we liked, then at least we could belong to each other. The ring was two hands entwined so you couldn’t tell where one hand ended and the other one began, a fitting symbol for our enmeshment. We were BFFs, almost sisters. But then high school came along—and our unraveling began.
I arrived in ninth grade eager to catch the eye of someupperclassman, but it was Jennifer they saw. They scooped her up only to drop her again, but at least they knew she was alive. The baby fat had melted off her round cheeks, and she wore tight miniskirts displaying her long, shapely legs. She developed a scary case of anorexia that year. If she chewed a stick of sugar-free gum, she would run around the block to burn calories. And I knew she was acting crazy, but I was so jealous of how much more successful her eating disorder was than mine.
It was also dawning on me, with horror, that I was short. To some girls, being short meant “petite” and “dainty.” To me, it meant being “squat” and “puny.” Height was authority. Height was glamour. I knew from magazines that supermodels were at least five nine but I flatlined at five two, while Jennifer rose to an attractive five seven, and I grew accustomed to tilting my head upward as I spoke. Jennifer once caught me climbing onto their kitchen countertop to reach a high shelf. “Aww, that’s cute,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” I snapped at her. What was so adorable about a person whose body had been cheated?
On Friday nights, in her bedroom, we didn’t discuss these frictions. We giggled and gossiped. Jennifer stole beer from her father’s stash of Schaefer Light for me. I would drink it while we talked, letting the alcohol work out the kinks in my system, the part of me that couldn’t stop staring at Jennifer’s thighs and hating her for them.
Jennifer didn’t like beer, but she had other vices. She liked to sneak out the back window of the house in the middle of the night and take out her parents’ Oldsmobile. We
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