Motown.
it’s a cold night in november and you miss your best friend. to warm your heart (and distract yourself from tomorrow’s responsibilities), you reminisce.it’s a moody afternoon on a thursday in your second year of high school. you’ve just transferred to the school your oldest brother dropped out of, and you’re still unmedicated and horrible at socializing. you’ve decided to humor your mother and join some after school debate club. you told a classmate and they looked at you as if you were a cyclops. guess people aren’t too interested in debating, you surmise. but now you’re here, at this stupid meeting. might as well commit to it for today.
the people in the front— whoever the hell they are, have you all go into four corners and debate after declaring positions. some girl, presumably an upperclassman— she looks too annoyed and tired to fit your year. pushed to argue about einstein and his purported IQ (you were never good at suppressing your temper), you have this odd feeling that this club just might be tolerable for a semester.
it takes a few months (an exaggeration) until you’re comfortable-ish talking to the upperclassmen each thursday. not like there’s many other people your year that joined. actually, now that you think about it, there were probably two or three.
you’re most comfortable around two guys (one will be completely out of your life by the time your third year begins, and one will ensure you hate men forever) and this blonde girl. this is a bit risqué, but you’ve seen
you seem to overwhelm her with your energy, and that’s understandable but unavoidable. you learn from a different member of cabinet that she’s a bit scared (was it scared? or did she say she was freaked out? something akin to the whole unease) of you (due to your habit of incessantly poking at people and labeling it as a joke), and you feel your intestines rot. how could you be such a retard? jesus, what if she was just being nice this whole time but secretly wants to punch the shit out of you? oh god, she’s going to never fucking talk to you again. she hates you. everyone does, but she’s someone you want to not hate you. there’s some smoothing over of the issue, but when you get older you worry about it every now and then.
it’s february of your second year. you’re going with the club on a trip to the nation’s capitol (or capital? who even cares… probably that girl from the same club but different chapter who became an actual author. oh well.) and you and melanie are pretty good friends, well, as far as you can tell. you’re sitting next to each other on the bus ride, and it’d be easier to get teeth pulled without anesthesia than it was to hold in compliments. the more you get to know her, the more you enjoyed her being around.
you learn that when she does get passionate, she still has a quiet voice. or maybe that’s just the ethnic family screaming that tweaked your definition of “quiet”. you watch this weird video with her about animated beans (it becomes a staple of your humor soon after), you discuss nap preferences, and you take (albeit horrifying on your end) pictures together. it becomes of the nicest roadtrips you’ve ever taken, despite the 20? 30? other people all screaming around you at all times.
quite honestly, there isn’t much you can recall of your friendship during your shared time in school. illness has stolen much of the joy that was possibly daily messages, jokes during meetings, etc. you cling to the fondness of the friendship and you hope it’s enough to help you recall. that, and motown.
in your last year, (or was it after quarantine? who knows! you don’t.) you two hang out outside of school. is it the first time? you can’t remember. it was a cause for celebration in the house that day— you finally had a friend to prove to your family, and this friend wanted to hang out voluntarily. there are surviving pictures of the excursion, but they won’t be shown to anyone outside of your and her eyes. another excursion you get a polaroid, and take a picture of her. you two are downtown; it’s freezing, and you go to dunkin. is it on state? or was it by the art museum? who knows. she gets a grilled cheese and you make an internal note of it. you see the bean for the first time with her; it’s bigger than you expected. you remember her when you go past it.
she goes to college. you’ve never felt lonelier.
you go to college. now you’ve never felt lonelier.
you two talk more in the following months than you can recall in high school. it’s nice. it’s more than nice, it’s familiar. it’s home. it’s comforting.
sometimes you two are only able to reply to something, others there’s a long conversation. you feel how you’ve both grown. you feel how you’ve both stayed the same.
you see her grow into adulthood.
she looks less nervous. she’s more beautiful; not a teenager anymore.
she loves soul, and it makes you feel connected to her when you put on the crystals, the four tops, the temptations and especially the mamas & the papas. each song has a little bit of her in it. hell, even hotel california has some bit of her in it.
you anticipate and dread the coming day when you get to reunite. you know you’ll probably cry, hopefully in solitude so she isn’t freaked out. you hope you worked on your social skills so she isn’t freaked out by you again. you miss her laugh. you miss her. more than you’ve missed anyone.
in bed, you curl up while the box tops play. you try to blink the tears away. you look forward to being in the same space as her again.
is this what having a sister is like?
hi mel. thank you for being around me when i was insufferable, and less insufferable, through the years. i love you. i hope i get to spend my life with you as my friend.