We sit on a dock, its body extending into the water like the sun-baked body of a snake. The sky overhead is a deep blue of July, clouds large and lumbering but not promising rain. The sun pours down all around us, dripping into the lake and into our hair in puddles, lingering on our eyelashes. I sit with my feet into the water, which still carries a chill. My two friends have their bodies sprawled against the bleached wood of the dock, their arms dipping into the water below. Their pale skin and the crescent moons of their fingernails reflect light, causing fractals of light to dance around their hands. We have been sitting here for a while, but we don’t know how long. Time eludes us. It seems to sprawl itself into the landscape of lake Champlain and unwind slowly, each blade of grass bending from its weight.
“Do you think we’ll still be friends in high school?”
Someone has asked this question. I do not remember if it has originated from my mouth, or somebody else’s, but we are all thinking the same thing. Quietly, we let this idea brew in us. We know that high school is approaching, and our sense of realism is developing. We study each other’s differences, aloof. This one’s too popular to hang out with us anymore. The other one is too interested in school to pay attention to what’s going on. This one is too bored with her life and will seek adventure elsewhere. We know that we are being evaluated by each other, but we don’t say how.
“Of course we will.”
This is the definite answer we have come up with. And because of this half second of reassurance, suddenly we believe it. Although I detect doubt from myself and my friends, I believe it. I must. I look across to watch their bodies, the sun coloring their skin. In this moment, my friends are all the world I know. For years, we have nearly lived together. Sleeping at each other’s houses every Friday night, playing endless and pointless card games, staying up until three in the morning just talking. We have confessed secrets, we have admitted fears, told inappropriate jokes. I have come to know their homes as part of my own. It is sprawled in their kitchens, making microwavable macaroni and cheese and watching Parks and Recreation, that I have fit in. We have hung up the phone saying “I love you”. We have cried and laughed and hated each other, only to come running back on Monday morning with arms full of hugs and apologies.
“Let’s make a pact. Even if things change, we’ll all still be friends.”
High school does not seem real to me. In my mind, I envision what books and TV shows have shown me. The adult aspects of pressures of college and the oncoming independence seem too far off, like I am being given something I am too little to carry. Something in me feels that the onslaught of all these new variables were impossible for us. As we sit on the dock, even though we have the entire summer ahead of us, it seems like the last moment we will still be together. I feel, stirring deep inside me, that we are growing up and have been selected for new fates, diverging off into the world and carry pieces of our shared memories with us.
None of us could envision what our lives would be like. We could never have guessed that before the end of middle school, one of us breaks the pact. How we watched, hearts bitter and mournful, as she faded into the rest of the crowd, with newer and better friends. We would never have guessed that by freshman year, another of of us would have broken the pact, falling into trouble at her new school with drugs, and cutting us out from her life. We would never have guessed that I would be the last one, holding the words of our promise in my hand, tiny and feathered like the fragile body of a bird. We never guessed that I would make new friends, find new places to hang out after school. That I would pass through the halls and become a stranger to them.
But now, sitting on the dock, sun on our faces.
“I promise.”
“I promise.”
“I promise.”
I Forgot How To Write 