I didn’t mind it when she turned up without me knowing.
I liked her unpredictability.
And that wasn’t something I normally liked.
I couldn’t tell you why I fell in love with Carrie Brown. It could have been because she was beautiful and broken. Or it could have been that she knew I was weird but told me it was okay to be so. Carrie made me feel accepted and understood. She made me feel both normal and weird. And she made me feel that either was okay.
Love is a strange thing. You don’t even know that it’s happening until it’s happened, and you’re ten feet deep in a puddle of love that makes you smile for the first time in a long time.
I think it was the only reason my mom let us be friends: Carrie broke me out of my shell. She made me leave the carefully guarded world I had built for myself. She made me leave my sanctuary.
She was fascinating and beguiling and she wasall mine.
Only mine.
We shared our first kiss on her eighth birthday.
I had bought her a sparkly headband. I’d worked all month doing jobs for my mom and dad so I could get it for her. She looked confused when I gave it to her. And then she cried when she opened it.
I told her not to cry and that I was sorry. My present was supposed to make her happy, not even sadder, and I wouldn’t have bought it if I had known what her mom had planned to do.
And then she said sorry to me. She put the headband on and then she leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. Her lips were warm, but not as warm as her tears on my cheek. And then she turned and left because her dad was calling her from the front step.
I felt bad because her mom had finally gotten sick of the head lice and had shaved Carrie’s head completely bald.
Every inch of gold was gone.
But I still thought she was beautiful.
With or without her hair.
I didn’t see Carrie for a month after that.
