Skeletal The sun was a bright disc in the cloudless sky, casting over everything an oppressive heat that was made only somewhat bearable by a slight, warm breeze rustling through the trees. It was that awkward period towards the end of summer break where it was really a bit too early to begin thinking seriously about school starting in September, but each careless day was tainted slightly by the knowledge that soon you would again have responsibilities. Instead of making the most of the time we had, my best friend Miranda and I instead often wasted our days hanging around the neighborhood doing nothing or sitting around on her front step. Miranda lived in an unexciting looking house that was painted a light beige and had a roof made of tiles that had faded from black to a worn-out gray. The only thing that made her house stand out from the other houses on her street was the Japanese maple tree on her front lawn.
Miranda’s house was a twin, and a few feet to the right of my friend’s front step was another that looked fairly identical. The neighbors were rarely home, however, so we had claimed their step for ourselves, to be used as an asylum when the wasps situated in a small nest above Miranda’s doorstep began to act up. I’m not sure they ever knew or cared that their front step no longer belonged to them. On this day, the heat had caused the wasps to become restless and so we were situated in our makeshift wasp-escape place, whiling away the time talking and drawing on the ground with sidewalk chalk. We weren't doing anything incredibly interesting, but it seemed like we were having fun just by being in each other's company. “My aunt Mary is coming over later today. Well, she’s not my real aunt but her and my grandma have been friends since they were kids in, like, the 1940s. Isn’t that cool?” Miranda said, brushing her brunette bangs out of her eyes. Her grandmother trimmed her hair for her, and the bangs always seemed to come out the slightest bit uneven. “My grandma says everyone should have a friend like that, that they know their whole life.” “That’s true,” I said. I figured having a best friend for that long must be something like having a sister that you had picked. Miranda brushed her bangs out of her eyes again, this time smearing pink sidewalk chalk all over her forehead. “When she told me that, I said, ‘that’s easy, I already have the friend I’m going to be friends with my whole life!’” she said, smiling and pushing me good-naturedly. I smiled, pushing her back. ~~~ As the years passed, Miranda and I saw each other less and less. She got taller and thinner and started wearing makeup, while I continued to resemble something like a baked potato. I got the feeling that our friendship had been put aside for more interesting things, that it didn’t fit into her “cool girl” lifestyle anymore. I started to feel stupid for being the only one who cared about the friendship, so I stopped making an effort to keep it alive. Once I stopped calling her, we nearly stopped talking altogether. ~~~ The decades old metal clanged loudly as I slammed my locker shut, the loud noise barely audible over the cacophony of students talking in the high school hallway. The commotion of changing classes made it impossible to hear anything that didn’t break the sound barrier, so I was incredibly startled when I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. I whirled around. It was Miranda. “Hey, girl!” she said, as if everything was like it had been years ago. “Oh… hey.” I wasn’t sure how you were supposed to interact with an almost-but-not-quite-former friend who you had technically not ended on bad terms with, but had become the sort of person that I didn't have anything in common with; didn't really WANT to have anything in common with. So I just said ‘hey’. Miranda brushed her light blonde bangs out of her eyes. She’d had her hair bleached from her natural brunette. She’d always made fun of me in the past for being reluctant to dye my dull, ash brown hair to something lighter. “How have you been?” “I mean, I’m still alive.” There was the odd awkwardness of making small talk with someone who practically used to be your sister. At some point, Miranda and I had stopped being ‘BFFs’ and become barely more than casual acquaintances. I wondered when the turning point had been. The start of middle school? When we had stopped liking the same music? There had been a time when we had spent nearly every day together; where we had known each other so long and spent so much time together that we were practically two halves of a whole. You could have one without the other, but there would have been the underlying sense that something was missing. Now, it was rare that we would see each other more than once every few months. And even that felt pointless and unbearable, like trying to defibrillate a skeleton. Miranda glanced across the hall. There were several people who seemed to be waiting for her to finish up. They all looked like they type of person I would avoid. “Listen, I have to go. We’ll hang out soon, alright?” ~~~ We didn’t speak again that year. Or the next. It was hard to accept that Miranda and I’s friendship was dead. But we could never go back to being the way we were as kids. We had just become entirely different people. ~~~ My phone beeped cheerily, the screen lighting up with multiple notifications. The artificial light cast a sickly looking glow over the walls of the dimly lit room; it had just begun to grow dark outside. I glanced at my phone, the unnatural, white light hurting my eyes a bit as I scrolled through the messages. ‘hey, why don’t you ever text me anymore? I miss you girl’ Did I even know this person anymore? I had at one point, but that felt like a lifetime ago. I hesitated a moment before hitting the phone’s lock button; the messages could wait, they weren’t that important. The room fell back into semidarkness.
1 Comment
Sabatino
4/26/2017 07:20:07 am
What a draft! I see the choices you made in revising this draft: use description so we can see/hear/feel this story, use of figurative language to develop depth and themes, use of diction and dialogue to create voice and energy, telling moments of reflection to fill in the gaps, and arrangement/selection of details to create arc, structure, pace, and conflict.
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