In the
early 2000s, I was a child, but I liked to think of myself as an adult.
I spent most of my time in the familiar. There were the
comforts that came with being near my mother and my cat, Emily, my tufted
dark-green sofa. There was my favorite purple mug, my Royal Diaries books, and
my Highlights magazines. There was my Sarah, and her mother.
We spent our days at desks we were told to sit in, in
hallways we were told to walk through. Quietly, my Sarah and I would move when
told to, and not before. Forestdale, known amongst the students as the “lost
school,” was hidden behind a slim strip of trees.
I thought it was a forest back then.
It was the only elementary school in Malden that hardly
anyone knew how to get to. For a while, to me it was a prison full of people
who tried to keep me from my comforts. But eventually I learned that this was a
lie I'd made myself believe.
There was a lot of Skippy peanut butter, grape jelly, and
wheat bread. There were many boxes of Thin Mints, bought during what my mother
called "Girl Scout Cookie season." There were heart-shaped buttermilk
pancakes sprinkled with red sugar, "just because." Always, there was
the warm smell of chicken cooking in my yellow kitchen, and later there was the
chill that comes with the smell of chlorine. I was addicted to both of these
smells. I like to think that even now I still am addicted to them, but I know
I'm not.
My Sarah and I had a small group of
friends that we saw every day. In the early 2000s, it was essential to have at
least six bffs. We would spend Friday nights together, painting each other’s
nails with clear polish. The next year we’d graduated to sparkly pink.
I only see one of those friends now, and not often. I don't
really look at her anymore. I like to think that the reason for this is because
my Sarah is all the way in Northampton. It’s
just that she’s so far away, I tell myself. But deep down I know better.
In the early 2000s, she would talk to me about our future. While
she spoke, I sat and imagined our lives together: going to the same college; finding
husbands and having little girls of our own; building ourselves careers where
we could wear chic pencil skirts and sensible pumps, where we would sit and
work in our very own offices.
In the early 2000s, we would build mud pies in the sand
together, selling them to one another. My Sarah always was a good saleswoman --
everything she told me, I’d buy it like it was truth. On the beach, she would
take the invisible money from my open palm and drip-drop it into the invisible
pocket on the left side of her baby-blue bathing suit.
We used to spell out our names in the sand with our feet:
“Kaela” and “Sarah,” right next to each other. Then we would stand there and
watch as the water lapped up against our names, washing away the grainy
indents, pulling them out to sea while our tiny, sparkly-pink painted toes were
tickled by the wet salt.
We used to pretend we were gypsies after watching The Prince of Egypt. Sarah had a box
full of her mother's old clothes. We would dress up in scarves and floor-length
skirts and mauve tunics. We would slip over each other in her old heels on the hardwood
floor that was always freshly washed.
I turned thirteen before my brother, and before my Sarah.
Both of them asked me how it felt to be an “official teenager.” I thought I
should have felt different, and because I felt the same, I pretended to notice
a shift.
I thought about this - about all of our pretending - when I
told my Sarah that nothing would change. She was going to Northampton, and I
was coming to Framingham. She would be living not in an old dorm room, but in a
newly renovated Victorian house. She would be at an extremely politically
correct, tiny all-girls school, where most of the young women attending brought
their own horses with them and housed them in the campus stables.
And I would be here.
We would not be going to the same college. We may not find
husbands at the same time; we may not have little girls of our own together; we
may not shop for those chic pencil skirts together like we’d planned.
I knew this. She knew this.
But neither of us said this.
Before I left for here and she for there, I pretended one
more time with my Sarah. I told her nothing would change, because at the time
we both needed that to be true. For just this one time, I became the
saleswoman, and my Sarah was the buyer.
In the early 2000s, there was a lot of noise, but I never
made any of it. I never said anything.
In the early 2000s, there wasn't much, but I thought that
there was everything.
