Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [140]
Do you think it's strange that the day you called, I was thinking about writing you again? I was thinking about writing you again because I bumped into an old friend who once mistook me for her best friend. Her name was Jane and you never met her and I intentionally never told you about her because I felt like I was cheating on you with her.
Jane and I resembled each other, shared clothes, had similar likes and dislikes, blahblahblah. Our friendship seemed so obvious that I tried to overlook how she was always judging me and trying to make me feel bad about anything she didn't approve of. The biggest one of these things was Marcus, and it was her exhilaration over our breakup that led to the demise of our friendship. This was an ironic turn of events, because I reserved my own opinion about her asshole boyfriend for fear that it would have a similar outcome.
When I saw her today in the elevator, my first reaction was, “Oh my god, this is awkward.” In three years we had somehow managed to avoid each other. But now, on one of my last days on campus, here we were together, trapped in an enclosed space for the interminable time it would take the creaky campus elevator to drop ten stories.
“Did you get back together with Marcus?” she asked.
“No,” I replied.
She smiled. “See? I told you so.”
And I could have let it go. But I didn't.
“Are you still with Jake?”
She frowned. “No,” she said as the door finally opened. “He ended up being a total asshole.”
“I didn't tell you so,” I replied. “But I should have.”
And I quickened my pace before I could get stuck inside the inevitable excruciating pause.
I realize now that our friendship didn't end because of Marcus or Jake. It ended because we weren't very good friends to each other. Period.
After Jane, I got to know a girl named Dexy, who was nothing like Jane or me. She was an exuberant spirit who made everything fun. If anyone, she reminded me of you, only without most of your depth or artistry. I never thought that we would be anything more than hangout, superficial friends. That is, until she had a nervous breakdown and never came back to school. I miss her more than I ever would have expected. But my reunion with you—the one that's happening between us right now with these very words—makes me hopeful that Dexy will return to my life when she's ready.
And then there's Bridget, who has been a part of my life since diapers, and whose positive presence I continually forget to appreciate until she's gone. But she, too, always comes back, and always when I can best benefit from her blond wisdom.
You, Hope, have always been a good friend to me. The best. I'm afraid I can't say the same, though I sincerely believed that removing myself from your life—not writing, not calling—was in your best interest. You've been so content these past three years and I've been . . . a mess. I didn't want to be responsible for fucking with your bliss, especially when it's so hard to come by in this world. Thank you for reminding me of a profound truth about all devoted relationships, be they romantic or platonic: We love each other because of our flaws, not in spite of them. They make us who we are.
I was terrified that I had ignored our friendship to the point of no return. I'm ecstatic to hear that such an end point doesn't exist. I'm glad you're back in my life, though, in truth, you were never really gone. I can't wait to see you and begin our adventure. There's no one else I'd rather sit next to in a car for days and days on end.
Synchronically yours,
J.
* * *
the twentieth
December graduation is nothing if not anticlimactic. What a far cry from my high school graduation, with all its pomp and circumstance and my big salutatorian speech about not wanting to change any of my crappy high school experiences because they all contributed to the content creature standing before them, the one boldly proclaiming that I was happy being me, yes me. Ha. It's easier