I couldn’t believemyluck. To have her as my best friend.
I open the closet.
I know some of her clothes, but not all of them. The gray sweatshirt hoodie with the orange stripe across the chest, I remember from fall our sophomore year. She wore it all the time, so often that the cuffs are frayed. The white eyelet top she wore to my birthday party one year. The skirt that she wore to the Homecoming game junior year.
I don’t know why it turned. Why we started getting jealous of each other, in weird ways. I don’t know what I did, but it must have been something. Or maybe it was nothing and we had to turn it into something to make it end, to make it easier.
But what? Why?
I turn away from the closet.
There’s her phone, right on the nightstand. She would never have left it behind. I pick it up. I try to power it on, but it doesn’t work. Dead battery? I rifle through the drawers, pull out a charger, try a few different outlets.
Nothing. The phone won’t turn on. I can’t find anything out that way.
So instead, I go back to the closet.
I pull a navy-blue top off the hanger. I’ve never seen it before. She must have bought it recently. The tags are still on. I used to know every piece of her clothing, and she knew mine. We swapped sometimes. But not anymore.
When did you get that shirt?
When did you cut your hair?
When did things start to change between us?
When did we decide to leave each other behind?
And then I hear a door slam below.
45.
once
“Nice run,” Syd said to Ella, exhaustion and admiration mingled in her voice. The two of them had been fast the whole run, and for the last quarter mile they’d been outright racing, long legs matching long legs, stride for stride for stride.
I hadn’t been able to keep up with them at the very end, but I hadn’t been that far behind. Close enough to tell that it had been pretty much a dead tie when they reached the spot near the marquee that marked the unofficial start and finish of every run.
“Let’s get out of here before the rest of the girls catch up,” Syd said, already heading for my car. “I’m starving. Ella, you want to come get breakfast with us?”
“Um, yeah,” Ella said, beaming. “That would be great.”
As we drove the few blocks to Zippy’s Diner, Syd turned back to look at Ella. “That was insane. You’re going to make sure I run the fastest time in the state this year, aren’t you?”
“Sure,” Ella said, easy as that, and Syd laughed.
She’d fully accepted Ella.
Hadn’t she?
Was I glad?
Syd and I had done this—gone to breakfast at the diner after practice every now and then—ever since we were sophomores, back when we didn’t have cars and our parents had to drop usoff and we were supposed to walk home or find rides with the upperclassmen.
Back then, we had no jobs, no responsibilities. We would walk to Zippy’s and eat all we wanted and horse around downtown before we wandered home or texted someone to come and get us.
“They change the fruit in the pancakes depending on what’s in season,” I explained to Ella as we sat down at a table. My fingers stuck to the menu. Everything at Zippy’s was always a bit sticky.
“I know,” Ella said. “I’ve been here before.”
