I thought I had felt it with the various boyfriends of my teenage years, the ones who wouldn't call back or took out other girls the second they dropped me off. When I broke up with them, the pain was soul-crushing. Like Josh in a previous entry stated, it felt like I couldn't breathe. For days, weeks. Six months in the case of an especially deep pain. But the ending of my friendship? The pain of that? Not even close. Ten thousand times worse. Probably more.

We'd been friends throughout high school, going on retreats, getting dressed for the prom at my house, weekend sleepovers, ice cream sundaes, silly, inconsequential "girl moments" that were just a way to pass the time but were, I realize now, at least semi-irreplaceable.

We were opposites. She would laugh out loud, I was quiet and reserved. She chatted up boys on the bus, I read a book. It was just how we did things - opposite but in sync, our "usual rhythm," to quote Ms. Stewart's earlier work.

We ended because of a boy, or a few, or a jealous fight, or me going off to college and her staying behind, or a mixture of all of those and then some that just never turned out right. So we ended. Decided that we'd go out for a drink when I finally land the job I want, as a writer. Decided we'd go out for a drink when she'd...she'd done whatever it was she wanted to do, she hadn't really decided three years ago and I don't know what she's doing now.

We haven't spoken in three years.

This may not be the ending you were expecting, but despite the pain of losing that deep friendship, despite the fact that I know now what loss really feels like...

I will not reconnect.

  How sad that the last place I saw her was standing as a bridesmaid at my wedding.  It was that day I realized we had nothing in common anymore.  We were soul mates, but that faded away and I never would've admitted it until that day.  We were inseparable, as Cameron and Sonia were.  We were 13 and in love with each other.  In love with being in love.  In love with the idea of love.  Just wanting to be loved.  Isn't everybody?  Isn't that the core thing that connects us all?  I loved Amy so intensely.  I loved that she brought out the sense of adventure in me.  I was a stick skinny unattractive 13 year old who obeyed every word my parents said.  She helped me break out of that shell and take some risks.  She was everything that I wasn't.  She was confident and outgoing.  And she loved me as much as I loved her.  I still don't know why she cared for me so much.  Why our friendship was so intense.  What did she see in me that I couldn't see in myself?

When I was 14 I had to move away.  I couldn't imagine a life without her and didn't know how I was going to move on. Essentially I didn't.  I started a new school 1500 miles away and retreated back into my shell.  The day I left I saw the tears streaming down her face.  I remember thinking, "she is just as devastated as I am." We carved our names into my closet "Erin and Amy BFF 4-Ever."  Later my parents had to foot the bill for the new house owners to repair the damage.

We kept in touch via phone and letters and visited once a year.  We recorded tapes to each other talking about our daily lives. (How I wish I had one of those tapes now.) Our friendship continued, but we also grew in different directions.  I, type A personality, excelled in school, went to college, and became a teacher.  Amy, got into drugs and was in and out of treatment centers.  I still wonder if I could've saved her.  If my parents wouldn't have moved me away, I could've steered her in another direction.  I could've continued to be a positive influence in her life and maybe none of this would've happened.

I called Amy when I got engaged and asked her to be in my wedding.  Even though our lives had taken different directions, I couldn't imagine getting married without Amy there.  She hitched a ride with some friends and made it 1 hour before the ceremony began.  Her hair was a mess, her bridesmaid dress wrinkled, but she made it.  She was there for me just as she had always been.  I realized something that night - that Amy was still struggling.  Even after she said she was done with the drugs.  We all knew that couldn't be. But what still amazes me to this day, is that she was there.  She didn't let me down.

One of my biggest regrets is that we lost touch after that day.  I realized that our lives were just too different and neither one of us called after that.  I guess she realized it too.  But I never, EVER, thought I would never see her again.  I *knew* we would be in touch again someday.  I tried to call her several years later when I was returning to her hometown for a few days.  I never got a hold of her and now I wish I would've tried harder.

One day last summer, my sister called and told me Amy had passed away.  I sat there in stunned shock with the tears streaming down my face.  How could this be?  I didn't get to say goodbye.   I didn't get to tell her how much she meant to me all those years. I didn't get to tell her I was sorry for abandoning her.  The funeral was that day and I missed it.  I wouldn't get there in time.  I still haven't said goodbye.

I was never told how Amy died, but I'm assuming it was a drug overdose.  There was no obituary, no contact from her family.  Just a generic note thanking me for the letter I sent to her mother.  I miss her and think of her every day.  I wish there was more I could do.  I wish I could gain some closure.  But how do you when someone was such an integral part of you life.  Someone who shaped who you are today.  I don't know how.  I do know that Amy was a beautiful person.  She had a good heart and just wanted to be loved.  Just like all of us.

Thank you for allowing me to share my story.

It was a friendship that lasted through our college years and beyond, until she got married and moved to another city about five hours away for a job. We lost contact because we were both really bad about calling--I worse than her. I did visit with her and her family a few times when I traveled to her city on business and later, on vacation with my own husband and kids. At those times it was like we had never been apart. But the in-between contacts were still sporadic and they stopped when I neglected to return one of her phone calls in 2001. For the next six years I thought about her a lot and had very frequent dreams (pleasant ones) about her, but I was too chicken to pick up the phone--this despite encouragement from my husband and another very close friend of mine from HS. Then earlier this year--in April--my mother told me that she had run into my friend's mother in a doctor's office and that they had chatted about the two of us. I decided it was a sign and that it was now or never. Still too chicken to call, I wrote her a snail mail letter. She called me, thrilled to hear from me, and we talked for two hours, then emailed constantly. This past weekend we took a jaunt to her area and got together with her and her family. Once again it was like old times. I don't know whether we will be able to completely recapture our old closeness, although I hope we do, and I refuse to lose touch with her again. My message to anyone who's deliberating a contact with a friend who's fallen out of touch: Just do it. I am very glad I did.

Beth and I had virtually the same class schedule and ended up sitting next to one another whenever our seats weren't assigned.  I helped her with her math homework (she hated geometry, I loved it) and she introduced me to her upperclassmen friends (boys!).  We were soon fast friends, sleeping over at each other's houses on a regular basis, spending hours on the phone talking about everything under the sun.  I still remember stretching the phone cord of my parent's bedroom phone so that I could get the handset into my bedroom and close the door, the phone cord unspiraling as it strained to connect the plug in their bedroom to the phone in the hallway to the handset in my room.

While we were definitely "best friends" throughout high school, Beth was insecure about our friendship, constantly provoking me into proving my loyalty.  Despite my frustration with these tiffs, our friendship was important to me and I always forgave her.  We struggled to stay close in college by writing regularly (too old to have had e-mail or cell phones in my college days).  When I found out that she had been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, I tried to be supportive but it was a challenge - she was home getting chemo and I was hours away at school studying and falling in love.  We were young, it never occurred to me to worry about her.  She went into remission and we celebrated when I came home on breaks.

One afternoon, we were sitting on my parent's front porch, swinging on the porch swing and she told me, "I'm afraid the cancer will come back and I will die."  We were 19 at the time, and the thought of someone our age dying was just inconceivable to me.  I told her, "Don't be silly.  You're young.  You beat this thing.  Be optimistic - you have your whole life ahead of you!" But she couldn't stop worrying and we started to grow apart as she floundered to find a major and a circle of friends at a new college while I flourished with my boyfriend and my friends and my future looking so bright.

She was right, though.  The cancer did come back just as I was graduating from college and getting engaged to my boyfriend.  I asked her to be my maid of honor, hoping it would give her something to be excited about in the future.  She was pretty certain her days were numbered.  I wouldn't hear of it.

Beth died just a few months after I graduated, at the age of 21.  I could hardly believe it when her mother called; I was so certain that things would work themselves out.  At the funeral, I refused to go up to her open casket with my friends, as I couldn't face seeing her life so clearly ending when mine felt like it was just beginning.  She never did get to be my maid of honor.

I had dreams for the next year that Beth was dying in my arms while I watched helplessly.  Those dreams morphed into ones where she was not dead after all, just mad at me for losing touch with her.  She would show up on my doorstep.  "Beth, you're alive!" I would declare.  "Of course I am!  Where the hell have you been?  Some friend you turned out to be," she would tell me.

I turn 40 this year, and while I don't have those dreams anymore, I still can't stop thinking about her and our friendship.  The Myth of You and Me brought me close to her again by reminding me of all the good times we had as we figured out the mysteries of adolescence together.

A girl who sat next to me said, Gee, I have no where to go.  I said, "Sandy, come with us to the movies tonight".  That sentence began a friendship that lasted through graduation and our first jobs.  Sandy and I were like one  - she was at my house after school, we had both been chosen to be in a special program  after school and we shared most of our classes during the day.  The minute we were away from one another, we were on the phone.  She taught me how to share myself and love someone other than  my 4 siblings.  We did not have steady boyfriends at the time but hoped to double date once we did.  We laughed, cried and shared our life together.  I remember how we would bring the soda bottles to the store to get the change from them.  We gather up enough bottles to get money to buy a pack of cigerettes.  Oh what fun we had sneaking those smokes.  Once we saw a girl walking past my house smoking and Sandy ran out of the house and asked her for a few cigerettes for us.  I will never forget the afternoon my mom was at the beauty parlor and Sandy and I were alone.  We raided the liquour closet and had a heck of a good time.  We had a pool in our backyard and Sandy, my younger brother (who had a crush on her) and I would swim.  We were so happy with one another.  Once we graduated and began working, we drove into work  together and were still the best of friends.  Over the summer I had to have minor surgery but at that time Sandy went up north to a gathering to meet new friends and boys.  She  was Jewish and I was Catholic.  Our religion made no difference to us.  However, for the surgery I did want her with me for support.  I know it was a minor surgery but still I was to be in the hospital for 3 days.  I suppose I was hurt and lonely without her.  Our other friends came but I wanted her.  She had said, it is only   a minor procedure, if it were serious i would be there for you. Towards the end of the year a few of the other girls wanted me to go out to dinner with them but they did not want Sandy to go.  She was so pretty and I am sure they were jealous of her, but they used the excuse that her parents did not want her to hang with non-jewish friends.  I am ashamed to say that I never told her about the dinner and I went without her.  Did I do that because I knew her parents did want her to mingle with non-Jewish girls or was I hurt over the hospital incident?  I truly don't know.  Sandy was devasted when we drifted apart and as time went by, I became devasted w/o her.  When I would try and call her, she would not answer my calls.  Over the past 45 years I have spoken to her on several occasions but never once did she speak of our special friendship and what had happened.  I have called her recently to go out to dinner so I could tell her how sorry and foolish I was and yet am.  She has not called me back. To this day I miss the warmth and love in our friendship that we shared.

I saw her again at a birthday party for a friend of my second husband at least 50 miles away from our areas of knowing each other. She introduced me to her female significant other - who replied "So you're C..... of the C..... stories!"  And I finally understood the undercurrent that I couldn't name as my naive college self.  I had even dated her ex-husband after their break-up, but she was such a big presence that even a minor date produced only conversations about her.  Needless to say we gave that up.

We could finish each others sentences almost immediately. Through the years we helped eachother through breakups, makeups, school, GEDs, graduations, unplanned pregnancies, and everything in between. Five years later we had a falling out, a little bit my fault, a little bit hers. It was harder to get through than any break up with any boy. Three years later, after each of us had attempted to make contact unsuccessfully, we wound up in the same government class at night school. Neither one of us really wanted to be in the class. We think it was the universe's way of saying enough was enough, and we needed to be in each others lives again. That was three years ago, and we've been through weddings, a husband over seas, and a husband who cheated. It was like God knew that no one else would be able to help us through these things more than each other. But above all the bad stuff that we've been through together, we can   still finish each others sentences. There's no one I'd rather talk to about anything in the world.

We have moved here and there and whenever we get together it is like we haven't skipped a beat. There is a connection between us that I have never had with anyone else. We have fought and we have cried. We have laughed and we have lived. This book has only made me realize just how precious her friendship is. I would be lost without her.

We became best friends in 3rd grade and stayed best friends until I moved away. We were inseparable. After I moved, we tried to write. I visited when I was in town, but it just gradually fell apart. I hear from her once in a while, but we are no longer close. It makes me sad. I thought we would always be best friends. I have never had a friend like Darcy since. I don't think I ever will. I think those kinds of friends only come once in a lifetime. I'm really glad we did have each other.

I miss her every day.  I hope that we can someday put it all behind us.  I'd like nothing more than to talk to her again without anger.  Life is so short.  The hope of reconciliation is always there.

She was pretty, outgoing, athletic, etc. I was shy, quiet, nerdy, and boring. We hung out all the time and often liked the same guys. She would always get them to go out with her, and I had to move on to a new guy. nevertheless she was my best friend. After junior high, I moved an hour away from her. I talked to her once in a while freshman year, but by sophomore year I rarely heard from her. I sent her an email one day to see how she was and if she had found a new best friend. I received an email from her saying she had and that I was foolish to keep believing we would have remained friends. I am now getting ready to graduate high school and I have no idea how or where she is. I hope she is well and maybe one day I will track her down and see how she has been. She was my first true friend, the one I told everything to, and I miss her dearly.

Walking out of church a lanky twelve years old, she harried past me with some other girl, stopped and patted my head. "I love this girl" she said, and left with the same confidence she still strutted with last time I saw her this morning.

I got on my car, sat by the window and asked my mom, "Mommy, what's that girl's name?” She had a weird name, and I never really knew how to spell it until four years later when we formally met. That didn't keep me from writing her misspelled name on my notebooks while pretending to pay attention in class.

So four years later there was this thing, an event that marked my future until this very day in which she was a team leader. I was supposed to pick, out of about twelve other girls, more like young women really, who would be my guide for the next couple of years. I didn't even need to think, I wrote her name on the piece of paper they gave me and hoped beyond my wildest dreams that I would be able to be in her team. I was. And from that day on the story of our lives began to unfold.

I told her everything about me; she was a lot more reserved with what she shared with me. I didn't care, I had been handed the privilege to be friends with this amazing person. She left a year later, to study abroad; my heart was shattered against better understanding of what was really happening. I was thirteen, she was seventeen and in less than a year she had already become my sister.

Half a year seemed like forever but then she came back, a stupid knee injury she'll forever regret and I'll forever be (secretly) thankful to drew her back into town. I stuck to her like chocolate chips to vanilla icing. She was still reluctant to let me know what was in her heart, because she'd been hurt so deeply throughout her childhood. I didn't care; I remained by her side none the less. Soon, my habitual smiles and company gave her confidence, I guess, and she began telling me the deepest secrets written in her heart. The pain her father unknowingly inflicted, the rejection of others I never seemed to notice before. Suddenly the high walls she had so thoroughly fought to lift up were crashing down by my feet as she let me see she was really just another frail heart just wanting to be held dearly, knowing she wasn't being judged. So, I listened. And for days and hours we'd sit in her car, she'd tell me her thoughts and feelings, and I'd listen. And I'd be silent not knowing what to say, because really, what can a fourteen year old say to an afflicted nineteen year old? I felt like a child being handed a crystal ball to hold. Until this day, I still hold that crystal ball. I know she has let me see many things no one else knows about her, and I pride myself in it sometimes, because many have tried to reach her and failed. However I, by accident, just by sitting by her side listening to lame opera concerts got to know her amazing heart, and had my life changed at the same time. I know I'm a better person.

I'm nineteen now, and thought the years we've shifted a bit apart and back together again. I don't care much because deep down I'm assured that I know her best, and she knows me best, and that's as comforting as I'll ever need to feel. She still looks at me and scares me because I know she knows what I'm thinking. I still look at her and recognize the gaze that reminds me that I really do hold that crystal ball in my hands and I still have to be careful not to drop it.

She tells me she's learned so much from me but I don't really believe her. I tell her I love her more than I love my family and she doesn't really believe me either. But then again we're like that. We still sit in her car at night talking about where the future might lead. The past is always a sore subject, because we've lost so many things in the process of living, but we know it's made us stronger. Together and apart we'll always be best friends. At least that's what I tell myself.

I believe it most on days where she lets go an "I love you", words her lips reserve for sacred moments and very few people. I believe it because I also believe God set things certain ways for a reason. I'm there, she's there. I wouldn't have it any other way.

We did everything together, spent all our free time together, we lived in the same neighborhood 3 blocks down a back alley from each other. Reading "The Myth of You and Me" seemed so surreal. Janna and I broke up after years of friendship because she went out with my husband during the divorce. Nevermind that I forgave him and continued to see him off and on for 5 more years and I never spoke to her for the next 8 years. Janna contacted me via email a month or so ago after all that time. Out of the blue. The ex-husband is long gone, life has went in directions I never imagined as a 16 y/o spending afternoons doing nothing with Janna. So she emails me and it brings up all these unresolved feelings I've carried around all these years, because even though I haven't spoken to Janna in all these years I have so often thought about her. Asked her mother how she was doing, taken her phone number and carried it with me until the urge to get back in touch with her finally passed. I've spoken with her a couple of times, half heartedly trying to carve out a little piece of time we could get together and chat. We've emailed a few more and gotten a little more into what made her contact me now. Can you do it? Can you go back and reconcile who you were with who you are now? Can you mesh the then and the now? I look back on our friendship and realize that we had our issues even then. What I perceived as a betrayal was really just her trying to find happiness out of what I was walking away from. I was just so hurt because I didn't think best friends did that to one another, but I had done it to her long before she did it to me. I sit her and wonder where do we go from here?

The first time I saw her, she was wearing a red shirt and had on a pair of glasses that I thought made her look so young. I will always remember her in that shirt, a nervous confidence on her face when she showed up to school for the first time that day. Little did I know when I wondered what that girl's name was that she would turn out to be my first love. We didn't grow close until about two years later, when we ended up in the same photography class. It was in the darkroom we started to have intimate, revealing conversations. It was in the darkness and the glow of the red that I finally started to realize just how powerful THIS could be. But I did not act on it, of course not. Me and my so-called courage. But she was not me. She did have courage, thank god for that. One night at a party, after a few drinks, after we had laughed about some joke, I found her lips on mine. After that, everything is a blur. We grew closer than I thought could be possible between two people, a boy and a girl, two different souls. But we had hell to go through. As close as we were when we had been just "friends", we were in unknown territory as lovers. So we started all over again from square one. We had our good days, we had our bad days (okay, more like weeks) but through it all, I thought I could see a future with her, looming beneath the horizon, waiting. Then I graduated from high school, leaving her behind. She was one year younger than me. So I went off to college, never feeling as empty when I saw her for the last time one hazy night in August. I will always remember how I was smiling when I drove away, still high from the euphoria of being with her, even though we had been saying goodbye. It was always like that with her, anyway. The euphoria never went away. So anyway, throughout my freshman year of college and her senior year of high school, we still talked. Every time I came home--for the weekend, for thanksgiving, I would always see her. The euphoria would always be there. I finally got a New Year's Kiss at eighteen--and it was with her. I remember thinking to myself how a kiss would never be the same, and then taking it back when I kissed her again a few seconds later. I came home from freshman year and watched her graduate from high school. I was thrilled because she was going to go to the same college as I was--we were finally going to be on the same page once again. We broke up the first week of my sophomore year. Why? I do not really know. All I can really say is it happened for me when we were lying on the couch, engaged in one of our playful banters. I realized then that I would never really have her, just as she would never really have me. We would never be on the same page, no matter what. This is the seventh day I have been without my best friend. The first two days I couldn't breathe. On the third day I finally could breathe, but the pain didn't stop. It hasn't, yet. This is me, learning to live without my best friend. I'll get back to you in a few years and let you know whether I've made it--life, without my best friend.

I don't know if this friendship is going to last another 15 days. We've been fighting off and on for the last 5 months and I don't want us to break apart, but I'm notorious for holding on for dear life when it's clear things need to end. I don't think this is the kind of story they are looking for on here, but I needed to get that out, and this seemed like the best forum for that fear. I don't think I really know who I am without her.

In my early twenties, I moved from the little town I grew up in to a large western city. I found a room at the YWCA (the only affordable housing for a young single woman) and within days hit it off with another young woman there. Even though I moved to another city a few months later, we stayed in touch with letters and I visited her on vacations. Four years later, she ended up moving to the city I was living in and we found a nice apartment to share.

Over the next quarter century, we remained best friends and roomed together off and on when economic times were tough. We went on several vacations together, including a month-long overseas trip and a week-long cruise. But as the years went by, she got more and more impatient with everyday things in life. She got a "my way or the highway" attitude and became just plain crotchety!

Eventually, she was transferred to another city about 50 miles away, so we didn't see as much of each other. When I bought my first house, she came to visit for a weekend. But the next morning, she got up early, told me she would never visit my house again and left with no explanation as to why.

A couple of years later, she called me on a Friday evening to say she'd be in my city the next day for a class and wanted to meet me when the class was over. I told her I had another obligation, but I'd drive to her city on Sunday to visit. She insisted that she had to see me on Saturday. So I said I'd try to get away early to meet her, but couldn't guarantee it. I arrived at the meeting place an hour after her class ended and as soon as I got out of my car, she drove out of the parking lot. I went home and called her and left an apology on her answering machine. I called again the next day and the next. No return calls. I wrote her a letter of apology, but no return letter.

About ten months later, she sent me a card saying she didn't want to be friends any more and needed to write a note to give herself closure. To this day, I have no idea why she threw the friendship away. Fortunately, I have other amazing friendships that continue.

I would have stopped telling it but the events that took place just three months ago yesterday were beyond anyones control. Whitney was my best friend. She was the cushion to my fall and the snort after my belly laugh. We made our own fun, paved our own path and became unique individuals but when we were together it was like we were one. Inseperable since birth high school broght on new paths for both of us. No fight or falling out caused us to lead different lives for a while, but we still smiled at each other in the hall and knew if called, the other would come running. She went to college in Virginia, I, in Rhode Island. We both made new friends and even though we made promise after promise I never visited her at school...she never visited at my school. We both found ourselves at a crossroads our senior year. Both travelers and suffering from wanderlust we planned to live and work in New Zealand for the year after college before we moved to Boston for the "real world." We kissed our families goodbye and were off to NZ!! 8 months in New Zealand proved to be among the best 8 months of my life. We celebrated our freedom, our renewed friendship and being young! My cheeks often throbed after a day with her because we never stopped laughing. May 15, 2006 in Queenstown, New Zealand, at 23 years old, Whitney suddenly went into cardiac arrest and never responded to my pleas, or the EMTs efforts. I watched as my best friend full of life moments before breathed her last breath. The wound is still fresh and my heart broken into pieces I am still looking for. She held all my secrets and helped shape who I am today. Sometimes I dream of her and although I know she is no longer next to me holding my hand I feel her, I hear her and I know she is with me because a friend is a world within us.

Eulogy

I don't know where to begin, because for all of my life, Whitney has been my best friend. When I was a child I wasn't sure where I would wake up at her house or my own. In many ways our childhoods were so intertwined I'm not sure where mine began and hers ended. She was my partner in crime, my back up, my ally. Deemed "Double Trouble" we tried to conquer the world, but I'm pretty sure as far as we got was conquering the North Hampton playground and God help you if you were heading down the slide because we would be waiting.

Double trouble was reunited in New Zealand for what became a legendary adventure. I watched her tackle challenges with ease and followed her lead…..mostly because my navigation skills are mediocre at best. Her sense of adventure saw no bounds, she was up for anything and could shower under ten minutes which made her the perfect travel companion. I will always think about the good times, the stories, the smiles. More than anyone I know she lived life like it was meant to be lived. Whitney never took a thing for granted. Travel never became routine for her…it never got old. Beauty and wonder weren't lost on her.

Before we left for New Zealand she had to send out her Passport in to get extra pages sewn in! She had seen the world and yet spoke of North Hampton and Maine with such love in her heart for the memories she kept there.

Whitney knew she was loved. She spoke of her family and her friends with warmth and admiration. She cherished the time she spent with everyone. How lucky we all are to have had time with her. I know that I am a better person for knowing her. She felt love from people and gave back everything she had.

I was looking through my things the other day and opened up a box with letters I've kept from years past. She made a card for my 17th birthday and in it wrote, I've learned that it's not what you have in life, but who you have in life that counts. She never seemed to leave anything left unsaid. She was so rich in mind, body and spirit and she gave all the credit to the people in this room and the people she'd met along the way.

I consider myself one of the luckiest people in the entire world. I spent eight months with a person who I admire, who cared for me so deeply I could FEEL it, and who made me laugh out loud everyday.

Everyone who knows me…knows Whitney too. My children will know Whitney and I will always hope for them to have a friend like I had. A unique friendship that no distance or time will ever let fade. I miss my friend dearly, but I know she'll travel with me in my heart and make me stronger and continue to make me better. She will forever be my best friend and I know that her spirit will dance forever.

Well i did wish her a happy birthday quietly to my self on june 24, but i hadnt thought of us together as the best friends we were some 20 years ago in high school. While my mind can understand why our friendship ended i still cant shake the way it changed me to lose her; to lose her love. It was like she died except she didnt. She was never that far away. I loved her and i think i let her down. I havent had a friend i was 'attached at the hip' with since then. No one seemed to be able to take her place. Other friends would say that i would see her someday, but i havent.

Best friends do help to shape our lives in so many ways. They are like water for our soul. I look forward to having one in my slow years (retired, old age) when i have time to do all the fun little things that only a girl friend can make so special.

Nikki was one of my best friends through grade school and into the first part of high school. We became particularly close between the ages of 12 and 15 when we were in a lot of activities and classes together in middle school and our freshman year at Troy High. We spent as much time as we could together during school because we knew that when summer came around, we'd see each other much less because we live out in different parts of the sticks. I considered myself to be more cosmopolitan because my road was paved and hers dirt, but she had a pool, so that eventually trumped the pavement. Summers at Nikki's house were so much fun. We'd go for walks and swim and sometimes we could get more of our friends out there in the middle of nowhere. I remember always envying Nikki's body because she was blonde, thin and a smidge taller and had the longest legs in the world...she was the only girl I've ever known who was 5'5" and needed long length levis and they fit her perfectly. I always thought her nose was a little funky-looking, but I still thought she was beautiful (and popular and boys always veered in her direction). Jealousy and hurt eventually ended our friendship.

Our freshman year in high school, we were both in the show choir and I was completely enamored with Jeremiah, a junior tenor who had an amazing voice and equally amazing face, body, and presence. He broke my heart a few times that year, always giving me just a little bit of hope and ripping it away along with a little bit of my soul each time. The first time was when he flirted with me shamelessly in choir rehearsal and talked about the homecoming dance and ended up taking someone else. The next time, he kept leading me on, knowing that I really liked him, playing on my naive and vulnerable nature. He hooked up with another close friend of mine (though she was never really my best friend at the time, and especially not after she went to the prom with him knowing how much I wanted to go with him).

(A little aside here: That happened a lot, me liking boys who knew it and proceeded to go out with my friends instead of me. I think that's where much of my inferiority complex comes from.)

The last time I allowed Jeremiah to dick me around was when the show choir went on their annual post-graduation trip to Rehoboth Beach. He wanted Nikki, Nikki was oblivious for a bit and finally noticed it about halfway through the week we were there. She knew how much I pined for him, yet she was considering his pursuit as a possibility for romance in her life. We'd gotten back from a walk on the beach and I told Nikki that I needed to talk to her, so we climbed up on this medium-sized sand embankment that the hotel next door made so people couldn't drive through the lot to the beach. We talked and I cried and she just sat there looking kind of shocked and confused. I said awful things to her, asking her how she could do that to me when she knew my feelings just as much as I knew them. And then I stormed off. I know there was more, but my memory has been merciful and let me forget a lot of it. I didn't think I'd been talking to her very loudly, but I was made aware later (when Jeremiah decided it was appropriate to chastise me like I was a 5 year old in a parochial school) that I'd been yelling at her. This explains why I seem to remember people kind of gathering around to watch what was going on. I'd berated her as a friend and embarrassed the hell out of her all because of a boy. After that, we still talked to each other, but it was never like it had been before that trip. Eventually, we drifted apart completely and by our senior year, our conversations pretty much consisted of idle chit-chat and pleasantries. There was never a false or hostile feeling during these exchanges, just a lack of closeness. Every once in awhile, I'll see her at the mall and we'll always exchange numbers and vow to keep in touch, but we never do. I think it's more because we have forgetful minds than anything else. I don't know if she ever forgave me for that trip, or if she ever felt that there was something that needed to be forgiven.

My freshman year of college, I met Chrissy. She was from the Philadelphia area and lived down the hall from me in the dorms. When we finally met, we became fast friends, always going to parties together, sharing each other's clothes and shoes and such. It was the first really girl-y friendship I'd had because I was actually in the general proximity of the girl so we could share all of that stuff (as opposed to being out in the country miles apart from each other). I would make sure she got home after the parties we went to and one time I took care of her when she drank herself sick while trying to match my roommate shot for shot (not realizing that my roommate could really hold her liquor and drank vodka like it was water). She was the only best friend I had in my college year.

That first year of college, I was so busy having fun that I repressed a lot of my true neurotic-loner personality. Not on purpose, of course, as I was simply experiencing so many new things at once. I mean, guys were actually noticing me and finding me attractive, a concept so completely foreign to me that a few guys could've taken complete advantage of it, but they either didn't or I wouldn't let them, depending on the guy. This was the me Chrissy was attracted to; the happy, social, party girl part of me that had been trying for years to come out and finally got to have the limelight for awhile. We talked about everything, boys, sex, religion, shoes, boys. We almost rushed the same sorority until I decided I didn't want to buy my friends and she learned that her grades were teetering on the edge of eligibility. But we still had fun and pursued pledges from the same frat, split six packs of our favorite beers at parties and all that cliche college stuff.

She began drifting when things started levelling out for me and I was becoming more of my real self and she couldn't handle my moods. We were supposed to room together our sophomore year, but she changed her mind and said she was going to room with an old high school friend who was an incoming freshman. I later learned that it was a lie and she was going to room with another girl on our floor, Dana, even though they had nothing in common. But Dana wasn't moody and always faked her happiness, so she was just up Chrissy's alley. But we held on and still had fun as much as we could. Over the summer, we wrote a few letters and reunited the next year. We didn't hang out or party as much, but we managed to remain friends for about half of the year. Then, she dragged me to a Superbowl party. We got there and I didn't know until about an hour into it that she went to flirt with this guy on the baseball team that lived there. It turned out that she only asked me to go with her so I could tell her if I thought he was into her. He had a girlfriend, so I figured no, he wasn't interested. Well, he started talking to me, nothing overtly flirty, just chat and Chrissy went nuts. She was rude and cold to me the rest of the night, even after I told her that I was only talking to him and had no interest because I had a boyfriend of my own. She, of course denied that she even liked him, yet managed to get some of the other girls that went with us to glare at me for no reason other than the fact that I was polite to the guy whose house I was drinking at. She insisted that he wanted me and I was trying to ruin her chances with him, even though he was the one who shot her down. She left me there without saying a word. I talked to the guy awhile after everyone left and he was pretty cool and it turned out that he was mildly interested but not prepared to do anything because we were both spoken for. He was sorry that she did that to me. I was too.

The next day, Chrissy came to my room, still pissed at me and barely talking, acting like I'd just shot her puppy. She brought back a shirt of mine that she'd borrowed and I told her I'd get the shirt I'd borrowed back to her when it was washed. I'm not sure if it ever did get back to her because I only talked to her one other time during my college years and that was in passing sometime the next year. I don't mourn the loss of that friendship because I did nothing wrong. And because it was the only time in my life that I was deemed good enough to be "chosen" by a guy over one of my friends, even if it was just for hypothetical conversations in the wee hours.

The third is Penelope, my best friend since kindergarten (about 22 years now) and my only friend from childhood that succeeded into adulthood. We've had ups, downs, fights, makeups, and the last 5 years living over 500 miles apart. All through school, we were close and even her time in the Air Force couldn't diminish our bond. I helped her raise her son for the bulk of his first year while her drunken husband (when not verbally abusing her) was out drinking, losing job after job and/or fighting with his daughter's mother (not Penelope, by the way). He usually kept himeslf in check when I was there because he was all about appearances. And I think he knew that it wouldn't have bode well for him if he'd said or done something that degraded her when I was present. I didn't know until about a year and a half after she left him that he'd actually hit her and she'd kept it from me. Penelope always had a few secrets, this I knew. I think she kept this from me because she knew that if I knew about it, he'd have disappeared forever. That's how deep my devotion for her is, I'd do anything in my power for her. I still would. The best thing I ever did for her was help her find her strength to finally leave him, even though it meant that she would be 552.8 miles away from me.

I only see Penelope a few times a year, and we're both absolutely terrible at keeping in touch. But it seems that no matter how much time has passed between visits, we can still pick up where we left off, as if we'd talked every day in between. She is as close to kin as one can be without actually being born into a family. Her son is my nephew. I have two sisters; my sibling and my Penelope.

It was heartbreaking and sometimes I still think about them. However I just want to post this message to encourage the broken hearted: You'll make new friends. I am starting to make good friends who like me for me. Sometimes friendships become toxic, and you just have to move on with your life. I have a new best friend now; actually a couple, and it's great! Maybe adult friendships with other women are different and childhood/adolescent friendships, but if you're still young at heart and you're able to goof off and be yourself around them, I have found that they are really not so different. Just thought I'd make a positive posting because I know how heartbreaking the end of a long friendship can be. There is light at the end of the tunnel!

The thought of being the experienced senior on a Varsity basketball team that ruled the city, a stressed out student who has only time for practice and AP homework and a leader of those younger kids just coming up both excited and scared me. In basketball we were losing six players, five of them starters and the other our sixth man. I, was a scrawny forward whose only light on the court came when the score wasnt even mentionable or when her guards were in foul trouble, which was rare mostly because the refs in our city feared our coach more than any other. Two other senior players would be along side me scared shitless of the legacy and acclaim left by the players before and the huge shoes left behind would go unfulfilled. I even had dreams of complete and utter failure. How sad.

Our first district game came up and we werent focused one bit. We lost in overtime by a foul called at the buzzard that put one of their girls at the free throw line to beat us by one without giving us a chance. A heartbreaker to say the least and a coach to kill our confidence after in the locker room.

But what only a few people saw, was my coach take me aside after the game and yell into my face. I was blamed for lack of leadership, lack of focus and for sucking straight out. This was actually the second time shed done this to me, taking me aside the year before and yelling at me for another game, one we didnt lose, but was affected by my crappy play. That year I was alone. This year, someone saw the whole thing and waited for me and my tears.

I'd never really liked Stephanie particularly. She just seemed like another tall girl who could play. Nothing really to her. We did have the occasional finishing of each others sentences, echo of laughter and eye contact at something peculiar my coach said and only we caught. But still- just another player. That night changed my image of her completely. As my other teammates drove off to their homes or parties or meetings with friends, Stephanie stayed behind and waited for me at her car. I didn't cry in front of Coach, I was too proud to show her that she affected me and that every word she said pierced my confidence as her leader. I walked slowly to Blue-my truck, biting the sides of my mouth as to not cry and unlocked it. I put my head down, thought to myself that every word she spoke was true and that I was worthless. Never once did it cross my mind that like my mother, maybe Coach used this as a motivation.Never once did I believe that she believed in me. I felt like the scum of the earth; already failing my team.

And there stood Stephanie. Outside my passenger door awaiting me to open it up so she could join in my breakdown. I let her in and changed my life as I knew it. I think hers too. She watched me cry, speechless; not in a negative way, but in a way that said she was there and didn't need to say a thing to show her concern or love. I think there was one point between me sucking air and tasting the salty drops on my lips when I looked to her and she was just staring off as if she felt everything I felt and hurt as much. I wondered why it was her next to me. Why this unsuspecting soft-eyed kid who barely knew me, and from what I'd heard before was jealous of my involvement with the love of her life, which I hardly even remembered- was now at my side. And from that day on would remain stuck there.

When I was little I never believed in the term Best Friend. It seemed too permanent to me and I've always been afraid of commitment, even if it was just to a friend. The word Best before Friend was never used with any other person. This was the first I would even imagine it with. My older friends whom Ive grown up with were different, they were not there by my choice. With them it just came naturally growing up with them. With Steph, we had to work at it.

The year went on and Stephanie became closer to me than anybody else. We did almost everything together. Memories of staying up in a hotel room with her on opposite beds just wondering who it was we were staring at. Sitting on a cold bus on a lonely night looking at the moon that always seemed to smile back at us and holding each other in the most comforting and friendly way; just knowing that we were safe. Looking at a mirror image of teeth smiling back at me, her top teeth as straight as could be as her bottom teeth stood slightly crooked just like mine. The way her nose cringed when she laughed to herself. The way she knew what to say when Id had a crappy game. How we walked up the stairs from our locker room after every game together and greeted our families simultaneously still wishing we could spend another hour together. And then doing so outside; usually in her car. It smelled like sweet candy in her car-a smell I can still feel lingering on my nose to this day. We didn't even talk much in that next hour. We just sat there, I played with her vents and we listened to music that only she and I could sit through without singing. She had freckles on her ears, and I was proud told the story behind it. She told me one day the most peculiar thing that nobody had ever said about me. She told me that when talking to her at home or in school or indoors my eyes were a perfect brown, but she said that when I smiled into the sun, or into the gym lights that my eyes turned almost the lightest green. Nobody had ever noticed anything like that about me or my eyes. I don't remember a day that she wasn't in my presence or when we didn't try to just see each other even if only for five minutes.

Our season was coming to an end and it seemed that our friendship was doomed for the same. Stephanie and I grew even closer towards the end, knowing that these last trips out of town would be the last we could spend holding each other and looking at the smiling moon. It was inevitable. Our season would end and after that last game was lost, it would be our last trip home on a bus together. I held my head high, knowing that we had done what honestly nobody had expected by winning bi-district and we were proud. I walked out the gym doors and left behind my high school years. My friend right beside me. I was happy and proud of the team and as we got onto the bus last as always and then a few of the younger girls yelled to me they loved me. I swallowed hard and smiled. Stephanie sat down and looked out the window. I continued smiling and grabbed Stephs hand and for once she didn't look back at me. The bus started and as everybody else ate their pizza I waited for the lights to turn out so I could ask Stephanie what was wrong. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said "Its over". It hit me that we'd never play together again; we'd never stay up late nights in unknown cities and never walk up those fateful steps again. But little did I know that when she said those words, behind them was the thought of the "IT" being our close friendship.

After season we tried as best as possible to keep our friendship alive. We'd lie to our parents and spend countless hours in the writing center just being together. We'd say we were going to Starbucks and when we'd get there we wouldn't even get down from the car. It stayed strong for a very long time. We were still so caring towards each other and we thought it would never end. I figured I'd be going to UTEP for college since nothing in basketball had shown up, but I was mistaken. A university in a smaller town caught my eye and offered a great escape from the things I wanted and needed escaping from. There was only one thing that lingered in my mind and it was losing Stephs friendship completely. There were things in her life I didnt agree with and things in my life that she didnt. Over time these subjects became the frustrations we held within and instead we fought over the silliest of things- we took our seperation out on each other. She knew I was leaving and in a way held it against me, even though she was probably the most happy for me and the thought of me continuing in college Basketball. I was upset that I couldnt have it all. I was upset that as I was leaving I knew she'd continue to do the same things we'd once done, and maybe even with someone else. Days came where we couldn't stand each others presence and times when the looks we shared with each other were forced because of the love behind our anger. She was the first friend I had that told me she loved me and cried as she said it. And yet I was the one person whose love wasn't enough. The times we had together were mostly simple times, watching Dawsons Creek on tape at her house or laughing with her sister at Elf. Sitting at her kitchen table and talking to her mother about my future. Watching her eyes watch mine and knowing that there was no better best friend for me because this kid was just that.

I left in August after she'd already started school. I went to as many lunches with my young friends as I could, my other closest friends "the square". I would miss them so much. But it seemed that as I said goodbye to each of my other friends, Stephanie was waiting last in line for me to say goodbye. The night before I left Stephanie and I only hung out a little bit, I guess her mother didn't think I was important enough for her to stay out past ten. Thats how it went though. Long nights at her house and an hour at mine. It was never fair. But I took what I could with her; I knew it would have to be enough. And so I was gone.

More than a year later, here I am. I'd like to say I'm a completely different person, but only a few details of my life have changed. My address is sometimes different, I have a steady job, I'm completely and utterly in love, and The Best friend I once shared my heart, mind and soul with is no longer in my life. I tried very hard to keep in touch, but so many people including Stephanie had the lingering idea that the distance was just too much. Days became weeks and weeks became months, until finally there came a time when she didnt even cross my mind. I still have dreams about Stephanie, dreams of her and I doing exactly what we used to do, which was nothing at all. But we'd do it together. I have dreams of us in the future, living down the street from each other like we planned and rocking back and forth on chairs atop my porch. But every morning I wake up and know the truth. Dreams- thats all these ideas have become. Try as hard as we may to reunite and forgive each others indiscretions, the innocence of that year not so long ago will never be duplicated. I have a new best friend now, someone who loves me for all the quirks and flaws I own. Me for me. Nothing less, nothing more. Without her, I dont know how I wouldve been without Stephanie.

Watching Stephanie walk across that stage at her Graduation to leave behind our memories was the hardest thing I've had to watch in a long time. Images of her love flashed into my head and left just as soon. I'll never forget the memories we've had together. The hugs, the tears, the countless fights. In the end things change, people change, and me writing this has been as emotional as the relationship was. I feel that this marks my lifes acceptance. It has to be the hardest acceptance in my lifetime so far, but it is done nonetheless. Stephanie has since tried very inadequately to get in touch with me and get together. Our efforts have yet to be rewarded, but Im ok about it. If shes not trying very hard to be a part of my life now after all of our trials and tribulations, then I think the efforts I put forth would just go leaving me heartbroken once again. Sad to say it, even more sad to truly realize it.

Unfortunately, mine both ended because of time and space, not because of any major falling out. I still think about them every day.

I have tried to sit here and write a story about them, but I just can not. I can't seem to share it with strangers. But I will say that I search for these kinds of friends all the time, only to continually be disappointed. I have resigned myself to the fact that after a certain age, it is simply impossible to have the kind of friends you had as a young person. I don't understand why, and it depresses me.

Just like in the novel, if someone saw one of us without the other it just seemed odd. We shared everything - clothes, secrets, mistakes, heartaches, dreams, even boyfriends. We would "accidentally" bump into each other to make sure a first daye was going well or if the other was in need of rescue.

We almost lost the friendship once through pure laziness. I remember sitting down and thinking should I just let it go or is it worth fighting for? So, I wrote her a letter telling her how much her friendship meant to me and how her absence in my life was painful. Like Sonia, I remember writing to her that events just didn't seem real if I couldn't share them with her. She wrote back telling me what I meant to her. I still have the letter. I keep it in my top drawer next to the letters my daughter writes to Santa and the poems my mother writes me for my birthdays.

Alicia and I are still best friends. We have seen each other through a lot - overseas moves, marriages, motherhood, post partum depression, health problems, divorce. No matter what we are there for each other. I think she and I were meant to be in each other's lives.

We were such good friends until we became roomates- then all Hell broke loose. We couldn't even stand to be in the same room together. It is like what the book said: that I tried to tell people what happened between us; why she moved out after only a few weeks and we haven't spoken since (years later). But no explanation seemed like enough. I still don't know what exactly went wrong. I think she and I had just changed, and it took moving in together to see how different we were. I treasure our memories from college, and the memory of our daily phone calls for a few years. But I don't like her anymore, and I don't regret our falling out.

The hardest part about it is that only a few months before that falling out, I had another falling out with a girl I had been friends with for ten years. So I had two major falling outs within a year of each other. It was one of the hardest times of my life. It has been years since that dramatic period of time, but as I sit here typing this, I'm trying not to cry because I don't think that adult friendships with other girls are as close, and I've lost the only close childhood/ college friendships I've ever had.

We were always together, giggling and being stupid. We stuck together through the cruelties and awkward middle school years, and our friendship grew even more all through high school. Our senior year of high school we became closer than ever.

We went to different colleges, but we kept in touch and spoke often. We began to drift apart around age 20; I was losing my cynicism and judgementalism that we shared for so many years, and she didn't like it. I began to feel like she was constantly looking for little things to get mad at me about. Everything I did or said was misinterpreted, so she always ended up crying and mad at me. She turned everything around on me, no matter how hard I tried to make us stay best friends.

I eventually saw less and less of her because she was so hard to be around. Finally, things came to a head and I blew up at her over email. We subsequently got into an email fight because I was too angry to speak to her. She said awful things to me, and I to her. We both agreed we hadn't liked each other for a while, even though we had shared many years of good friendship.

The next day, I regretted it and literally sent dozens of emails and letters. I left so many messages on her machine, and she never responded to one of them, except for to say she was confused by my sudden change of heart; she didn't understand me. It has been several years since we have spoken. I still think about it more than i would like to admit. I still tear up at the loss of my first real friendship, although I know in my heart that there was nothing I could have done to stop it from ending. It has taken me a long time to come to that conclusion, and I still miss what we used to have together.

  It's the truth. Still today.  A guarded, uptight girl from a small town meets an open outgoing girl from a bigger town. These two personalities would remain the same throughout a wonderful, awful relationship. I stood to learn from her that at times I needed to step back and be a little more quite and realize that it's not always "okay" to do and say what I want.  That someone may actually get offended by something I do even though I'm not easily offended by others.  She stood to learn from me not to take everything so personally and seriously and that if she let loose once in a while she might have FUN! I won't bore you with all of the details, but eventually 15 years later the two personalities that once meshed just enough to be best friends would ultimately become too set in stone to come together at all.  Eventually we were like oil and water. When Katie's life dealt her some SERIOUSLY DEVASTATING news...more than once...she was unable to continue friendships with girls whose lives were heading in the direction that they wanted.  She was only able to be friends with girls who were experiencing some of the same strife that she was at the time.  I was no longer able to brush off the fact that she simply didn't like me anymore because life wasn't failing me quite like hers was so I moved on as well. I miss her sometimes but I don't want to go back.  The life I have now with my friends and family (especially my little girl) is rose colored for now and I don't want it tainted.  I would have to say that would bother her enough not to want to go back either.  Most of all what I guess I find to be as strange as this world we live in is how love can turn to hate so easily.  I know it doesn't happen over night although it certainly seems like it at the time.  It just happens.  If it never happens to you you're lucky.

Kris and Beth were roommates, so the three of us became quite close right away.  That was almost sixteen years ago.  Beth, Kris and I remained close until about three years ago, then Beth started to change.  She became jealous if things came easier to me or Kris.  She worked hard and she wanted everyone to know it and praise her for it, but I never really think she was happy with herself.  Her best friend from high school was murdered by a stalker about three years ago...now that I think of it, that is when she started to change.  It seemed like she found a flaw in each  of her friends and if someone didn't see things her way, she just stopped being their friend....plain and simple.  I think she wrote off everyone she tought had an "easy life."  Maybe she just didn't want to be close to anyone anymore after she lost her oldest friend.  This story may not make sense to anyone, but after reading THE MYTH, I realize that I really miss Beth.  I hear she is pregnant with triplets after a few years of trying to get pregnant.  Part of me wants to reach out to her, but I also don't want to feel her rejection again.  Life is too short, I should just pick up the phone and ask if we can start over.....I miss Beth

  We were heading to the ocean. It's hard to explain just how strange it was that when Morning Assembly began at 8 o'clock sharp at our private all girls school that we weren't sitting in the senior section listening dispassionately to the announcements, hard to explain how strange it was that when the first bell rang at 8:30 that we weren't running into Sister Cherry's AP English class, and slamming down our books.  It was strange, because we were good girls—generally on time, generally polite, generally reliable. The camera on the seat behind me, the rolls of black and white film thrown into the bottom of my lacrosse bag, were the reason that we were going to the ocean.  I was finishing the photo essay that was due at the end of the week. Unlike Tory, I did everything at the last minute—everything, and I wasn't especially concerned about my photo essay, after all, I took photographs the same way that I breathed—all the time, almost without thought.  My hand always cradled the long neck of the lens; the camera was always pressed against my eye.  But the good girl in Tory worried, imagined scenarios where I'd have an in-school suspension for missed assignments, or be prevented from graduating, which rumor had it had once happened to someone.  And so maybe the worry overwhelmed the good girl, but whatever the cause, it was Tory who suggested the trip to the ocean.

"We'll be back in time for second period. You'll finish the assignment there," she had rationalized, as I'd thrown my stuff into the backseat.

 We had become inseparable best friends four years earlier, both of us skinny gym-hating freshmen, hiding in the never-used locker-room that was adjacent to the school's swimming pool, trying to muster plausible excuses for why we should be excused from running the mandatory gym mile. On the surface maybe, we seemed like opposites—she was smart and responsible where I was dreamy and disorganized, but really in a sense, we were the same person; both of us eager to lose ourselves in the sort of binding friendship that some girls seek.  We were the annoying kind of best friends who could finish each other's sentences, who had the same handwriting, and speech patters, and sense of humor; who could almost telepathically communicate.  It was hard to imagine that this symbiosis would end soon, hard to even entertain the idea.  And really, I think we were headed to the ocean to slow down time.  During the spring of seventeen, everything happens so quickly, and so suddenly—the painfully slow years of middle school and high school shaped by homework and senseless rules that made no sense, the perceived slights and the petty fights that define life in an all-girls school had suddenly slammed into fast forward.  Now there were parties, sports banquets, summer plans to cement, and college decisions to make and the days were suddenly too crowded, too busy.  It seemed like all the lazy Saturdays—the ones that had seemed so boring to us once—were now precious.  Those weekends spent lying on the den room floor reading and gossiping and talking about nothing, seemed meaningful, seemed weighted now that they were about to be over.

Those last months in high school are a threshold—one that you must step through, no matter how much you'd like to stay frozen in time.  And we were scared to step through, scared to leave each other and find ourselves as individuals again; we had spent four years safe in the security of our twinness, in a near inseparable friendship where we didn't need much more than each other.  This is the strange divinity that adolescent girls find in a best friend—the constant reassurance that someone will always agree with you, someone will play the audience for you, listen to long stories about unjust parents and mean teachers, and loyally declare you right every time.  In college this need will fade, will be replaced by confidence and boyfriends and sorority sisters, but at seventeen it was hard to imagine myself without her completing me.

The ocean was steely gray, and the air was too cold for April, wind slashing through the water, tossing up white caps and dark waves on the empty beach.  Still, the day was pretty, and there was the smallest hint of spring in the flower gardens that flanked the club's winding pathways, the lavender heads of the crocuses open to the sun, and the sky the pale blue of an Easter egg.  On the beach, Tory pulled off her anorak, and I set up a tripod in the sand, a sliding and unsteady thing.  She wandered towards the far end of the beach, collecting rounded stones and pale sea glass, cradling them in her hand carefully as if they were very precious. I unwrapped the camera and screwed it tightly to the tripod, focusing on the water and a far away barge that seemed frozen upon it.

Two rolls later, Tory drifted back to the camera, dumping the small stones and sea glass by the tripod and flopping down beside them.  I unscrewed the camera and dropped down too, falling backwards onto the sand.

"Good photos?"  She asked, idly counting the tiny pastel pieces of glass.  I shrugged, Passable.

"There are huge clouds over there, she gestured with her head."  And I knew that she meant that I should photograph them.

I lifted her wrist, and twisted her watch so that I could read it, "We should go."

"I don't want to leave," she jumped up, suddenly energized, and spun across the beach like a small star, long blond hair whipping around her like the tails of a comet.  Panting she stopped, "Come here," she called from the stones that lined the man-made edge of the beach, that stretched out into the water like a small peninsula.  'Let's go out on these," she danced forward on the stones, a quick movement.

I sat up, lazily, and then still carrying the camera, ran to the stones, following her onto them carefully, frowning as I stepped onto the slick, moss-covered rocks, feeling the stiff crunch of white barnacles beneath black loafer.

  "Stop, I'm going to fall," I was laughing, but still I stood frozen, camera tight against my chest.  If we were to fall now, the water would have been over our heads, and cold. I looked back to the shore where the folded tripod lay on the white sand next to the faint pile of sea glass and the deserted windbreaker. It looked oddly lonely.  We were islands alone in the water on a day that no one wanted to see the ocean.

A little further, she coaxed, and I inched closer to her, where she stood on the last possible rock, the ocean licking at our ankles, a great spray of foam and mist.

"Here," I raised the camera to my eye, and focused on Tory, "smile," I ordered.  She didn't, and I took the photo anyway.

It's an old photograph now, though in it I think you can see the woman she will become—but in that picture she's still a girl, her long blond curls flying into her mouth, her blue eyes black, and the dark sea stretching impossibly behind her.

In four hours we will be back at school in time for lunch, and find ourselves in detention for a week, in six hours we will be in the darkroom, and I will develop the photo of her on the cliff of the sea, and she will ask, will we be best friends forever? And I will answer, yes. In two months we will graduate, walk like very young brides down a grassy aisle in long white dresses carrying wrapped red roses, then there will be summer trips to Martha's Vineyard and an internship at the White House, and in five months we will go to college—she will go east to the snow of Vermont and I will go south to warm weather and moss covered trees—and in eight months it will be Thanksgiving and my hair will be long and hers all cut off, and then another moment will pass, and it will be four years later and we will be roommates in New York City and I will be in graduate school and she will be a publishing assistant, and then it will be five years again, and I will be photographing in the jungles of Cambodia and she will be an editor with her own imprint, and then another minute will pass, and she will marry the boyfriend who I once hated, but now in spite of myself- love, and blink, she is the mother of twins, and I have a boyfriend that she hates, and time trips slowly forward, on and on.

But not yet, not yet.  For just a moment more, we are seventeen and on the Old Post Road driving to the ocean with the camera and the pop tarts on the seat behind us, and the future stretching like the ribbon of road ahead of us.