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Authors: Abigail Haas
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whenever Lindsay would aim a new barb in her direction—her resentment for me nothing compared to the betrayal of a former friend. “We don’t need anyone but each other.”
And we don’t, not those first few months. The world of girl friendship and intimacy that has always seemed so foreign to me suddenly opens up, just the way I’d glimpsed that very first afternoon. It may sound wrong, but I’m the happiest I’ve even been that summer, even with my mom’s chemo treatments starting up again, and that sickly-sweet medicated smell lingering over my parents upstairs bedroom again. Because I have a place to escape now, a place of my own in the world, full stop.
I’m not alone anymore.
• • •
Elise and I fall into friendship like it’s gravity. We eat lunch together in the shade of the far trees on the east lawn and toil over our homework at coffee shops downtown. We trade clothing and music, passing notebooks filled with lyrics and doodles in the back row of every class we share, and learn the exact texture of each other’s bedroom floors from long nights sprawled on our stomachs, watching trashy reality TV. But soon we want more, and weekends become an adventure: fibbing to our parents about sleeping at the other’s house, then sneaking out in our best tight denim and chunky boots. It almost doesn’t matter where we go, as long as it’s somewhere nobody knows us, where we can be anyone we want to be.
Elise buys us fake IDs from some MIT student hacker, and although the door guys look twice, they always let us through.Rock shows, and dive bars, and the college haunts that line Boylston and Beacon—most of the time it isn’t even about the alcohol, we just want to see the world waiting for us, after the battle of high school. One night we put on our best vintage dresses and red lipstick and take the elevator up to the lounge on the top of the Hub, a skyscraper high above the city. We sip cocktails from sugar-rimmed glasses and watch the lights over the river, fierce with the knowledge that this will all be ours one day, for real.
The night I meet Tate is near the end of the semester, when summer vacation looms, full of promise and freedom. Elise and I luck into a college party invite from our favorite barista at Stumptown, off-duty with his friends at the table next to ours. Elise shrugs, casual, and says we’ll try to make it, but the minute the group leaves, we grip each other’s hands, bright-eyed with delight. “Tell your dad you’re crashing at my house,” Elise orders, and I call him to leave the message, knowing there will only be a hurried text in reply. Ever since I brought Elise home, and he made the connection between her father, Charles Warren, and the state senator of the same name, my father has let me go out with her anytime I want.
So we do: getting ready in a flurry of discarded outfits and lip gloss, then sneaking down the back stairs while her parents are in the den, breathless in the backseat of a cab as we cross the twilight city, heading for adventure.
“If anyone asks, we’re freshman at Berklee,” Elise orders me as we clamber out of the cab outside the scribbled address. It’s a warm, muggy night and the street is busy with college crowds; music is already spilling out of the upstairs windows of a narrow brownstone. “I’m studying psychology, and you’re a business major.”
“Boring!” I protest. “I’ll be a Lit student. No, drama!”
Elise laughs. “Sure, with your stage fright?”
“They don’t have to know,” I say with a grin as we climb the front steps and push inside the narrow lobby area. “As far as they’re concerned, I could be a fabulous actress, auditioning for all kinds of Broadway shows.”
“And Hollywood,” Elise adds. “You got offered a role in the new Chris Carmel movie, but you turned it down because you wanted to stay in school and perfect your craft.”
“I’m very dedicated,” I agree, laughing. I can feel a
And we don’t, not those first few months. The world of girl friendship and intimacy that has always seemed so foreign to me suddenly opens up, just the way I’d glimpsed that very first afternoon. It may sound wrong, but I’m the happiest I’ve even been that summer, even with my mom’s chemo treatments starting up again, and that sickly-sweet medicated smell lingering over my parents upstairs bedroom again. Because I have a place to escape now, a place of my own in the world, full stop.
I’m not alone anymore.
• • •
Elise and I fall into friendship like it’s gravity. We eat lunch together in the shade of the far trees on the east lawn and toil over our homework at coffee shops downtown. We trade clothing and music, passing notebooks filled with lyrics and doodles in the back row of every class we share, and learn the exact texture of each other’s bedroom floors from long nights sprawled on our stomachs, watching trashy reality TV. But soon we want more, and weekends become an adventure: fibbing to our parents about sleeping at the other’s house, then sneaking out in our best tight denim and chunky boots. It almost doesn’t matter where we go, as long as it’s somewhere nobody knows us, where we can be anyone we want to be.
Elise buys us fake IDs from some MIT student hacker, and although the door guys look twice, they always let us through.Rock shows, and dive bars, and the college haunts that line Boylston and Beacon—most of the time it isn’t even about the alcohol, we just want to see the world waiting for us, after the battle of high school. One night we put on our best vintage dresses and red lipstick and take the elevator up to the lounge on the top of the Hub, a skyscraper high above the city. We sip cocktails from sugar-rimmed glasses and watch the lights over the river, fierce with the knowledge that this will all be ours one day, for real.
The night I meet Tate is near the end of the semester, when summer vacation looms, full of promise and freedom. Elise and I luck into a college party invite from our favorite barista at Stumptown, off-duty with his friends at the table next to ours. Elise shrugs, casual, and says we’ll try to make it, but the minute the group leaves, we grip each other’s hands, bright-eyed with delight. “Tell your dad you’re crashing at my house,” Elise orders, and I call him to leave the message, knowing there will only be a hurried text in reply. Ever since I brought Elise home, and he made the connection between her father, Charles Warren, and the state senator of the same name, my father has let me go out with her anytime I want.
So we do: getting ready in a flurry of discarded outfits and lip gloss, then sneaking down the back stairs while her parents are in the den, breathless in the backseat of a cab as we cross the twilight city, heading for adventure.
“If anyone asks, we’re freshman at Berklee,” Elise orders me as we clamber out of the cab outside the scribbled address. It’s a warm, muggy night and the street is busy with college crowds; music is already spilling out of the upstairs windows of a narrow brownstone. “I’m studying psychology, and you’re a business major.”
“Boring!” I protest. “I’ll be a Lit student. No, drama!”
Elise laughs. “Sure, with your stage fright?”
“They don’t have to know,” I say with a grin as we climb the front steps and push inside the narrow lobby area. “As far as they’re concerned, I could be a fabulous actress, auditioning for all kinds of Broadway shows.”
“And Hollywood,” Elise adds. “You got offered a role in the new Chris Carmel movie, but you turned it down because you wanted to stay in school and perfect your craft.”
“I’m very dedicated,” I agree, laughing. I can feel a
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