I Still Remember When...

            It was before either of us were freshmen, back when the only thing separating us from the people we once were was a few short months, the hot days of summer. I leaned back on the cool wooden table in our old art room, the Friday we went before school started. Though for you it was probably just a visit to an old teacher we enjoyed conversing with, for me it was a landmark. In my gut I knew instinctually that this would be one of the precious last times we would spend together as ourselves before the miles between our schools could divide us. I remember smiling and laughing, heedless to my sunburnt cheeks that hurt to move. I remember the faint smell of earthy clay and the yearning that ached through my fingers. I knew it would be a long time before I would be able to sculpt again. So many things that I held desperately on to slipped through my fingers that day. here were aybe ten times that I saw you after that, all the way up until the beginning of the next summer, when you did the unthinkable. You betrayed her, our other best friend; you knew her feelings and you knew they were in love. You saw the look on my face when I realized what had happened on that fateful last day of ninth grade, the day I spent laughing with you. You flirted, and then kissed. I found out before even she knew, and in my head I knew it wasn’t right for me to keep that from her.
              

 I didn’t want to, God; I didn’t want to be the one to hear her anger and sadness. I didn’t want to be asked if I had known for long, if I had been an accomplice by knowing your intentions and waiting until after the deed. I didn’t want her to sever the friendship between the two of us, like I had been forced to break the ties between you and me because of my damned conscious. Maybe you think I betrayed you by telling her, maybe you think I picked her over you. If she had done the same to you, I would have done the same to her, trust me one last time when I say I am telling the truth. I still remember the time over two years ago, during the first week of eighth grade. I walked you all the way home from the middle school, then you walked me back to the middle school, and I ended up walking back to your house before finally coming home. That night I was exhausted, seeing as I didn’t stay in, and turned right around and went back out again. That was my first sunburn of the school year, and it hurt so bad the next day, but it was worth it. The feeling of being part of an inseparable team, the Girls, just the two of us, was such an elating feeling, just to know that I was a seamless piece of a puzzle. 

             Barely a year later the formerly solid puzzle of glass would begin to spiderweb and crack. Suspended dozens of feet above the ground were our two interlocking glass pieces holding me in the air, and when the glass cracked for good on that first day of summer, I fell. Unlike before, when falling was simply another jump off your diving board, there was no cool water to catch me and save me, no reassuring bubbles sliding along my skin to tell me that I was alright. There was a simple fall, and a sickening thud followed by her screams; they raised me from the ground and I hovered centimeters off the ground, the cries buoying me for seconds before easing me to the ground. It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault. I know, I know, she consoles me as I look in horror at the shattered glass around me. Warm arms encased me; not your arms. Far off, watching from the diving board, you stand, wearing the same suit you used to wear when we would swim together. As I collapse into her slender tanned arms, you dive, slipping beneath the water where nothing can be seen or heard.