Rachael

First appeared in Allium, September 2022

Our days are filled with books, overstuffed backpacks, lunches from vending machines, and the gossip of school halls. But the afternoons from 2:30 on belong to us. As soon as school lets out we race to her ancient house for the privacy of our retreat: her bedroom, pale pink. We giggle as we hurry up the stairs. The dark mahogany creaks under our feet, burdened with the weight of a thousand stories. We throw our backpacks on the floor, shut the door, and collapse onto her bed to dissect the day, her white ruffled bedspread crinkling underneath. We trade secrets: what happened at school, what her crush did in the parking lot, the girl who sneered at me during chemistry.

Sometimes her mother brings us fresh berries from her garden and we eat them hungrily between stories we tell each other. Nothing is off limits. I share details of the boy who put his hand into my jeans, as she bites into a strawberry. Her tongue catches the juices that drip outside of her magenta lips, like open orchids. I push her blonde curls away from her face, tuck one behind her ear so it doesn't get sticky.

One day she instructs me to lay down on her white carpet, patchy with nail polish stains. I look up at the cracks in her ceiling, the fan pulsing. I exhale shakily and place my hands on my belly. Are you ready? Her voice is breathy. It'll hurt but it'll be over fast. I close my eyes as she leans over my face, and I smell water lilies and Pantene. Tenderly, she takes the tweezers perched between her thumb and index finger and plucks out an eyebrow hair. I wince. She moves on to the next one. When it’s over she gently dabs around my eyes with ice cubes wrapped in a threadbare washcloth, dotted with my blood. When she's done she walks me to her vanity mirror, smooths my hair behind my shoulders, whispers to me that I’m beautiful.

Some days we stop at Blockbuster on our way home. We browse through the horror section and pick up every movie that looks campy, over the top. We watch killer clowns hunt children, talking murderous dolls. Dreams that lead people to serial killers, haunted mental institutions. We take them all back to her house, to the basement where it's dark and cold and we find dead spiders in the windowsills. We pull the itchy wool blanket high up under our chin. She takes the sweet snacks, Reese's Pieces and Skittles, while I reach for the salty popcorn. She pinches each treat with her long, bright red lacquered nails, and brings them between her candied lips.

There is no closeness that compares with that of two teenage girls. We share everything: dreams about the future, our darkest fears of how life might be, our deepest insecurities. She helps shoulder the burdens that are too heavy for me: what happens inside the walls of my home that no one else knows about. I tell her about how I wake up with scratches and I'm not sure where they come from, she whispers she wishes her breasts were smaller. She is my safe place, where I can set down everything that's too heavy for me to carry alone.

I wait for her at her house the day she has surgery. Are you ok? I brought scary movies for us. I pull the wooden handle on the side of the recliner, pushing the top back gently so she can recline. After two movies, she asks me for help changing her bandage, the way her surgeon told her. We slowly climb the stairs to her room; she's still shaky on her feet, and I hold her hand to steady her. In her room, I take the zipper of her hoodie and pull gently, delicately easing each arm out of its sleeve and letting it drop on the floor. She spins around slowly like a drunk ballerina, as I unwind the thick white gauze, streaked deep red in places with her dried blood. Her breasts are swollen and covered in stitches and more gauze. She quietly instructs me how to wrap her back up, where to add pressure, where to lift. I wrap her in the bandages, then her hoodie, then a thickly knit blanket tossed over her bed. She lays her head in my lap, kicking aside Glamour and Cosmopolitan, and I go through the gossip of the day as I stroke her hair. I had cramps in gym class today and sat on the bleachers next to Richard. Sarah and I snuck out to the field to watch soccer practice after French.

She tells her mother she's at my house while she really goes out with a senior. I abandon my house and stay at hers for days when I find more scratches. There are more stories than there are words. After my graduation party we cram into a convertible with so many people that she sat on the hood of the car and slides off as we round a corner toward my house. I take her upstairs into my bathroom, silently, so we don't wake up my parents. She lies down on the floor as I dig under my sink for cotton balls and Neosporin. She pulls her shirt up to her chest wordlessly, and I dab around her belly button. Her belly is soft. We whisper about how life will be different after this. When she smiles at me, I can see her perfectly imperfect gap between her top two front teeth. I lay down on the floor next to her, and we let our heads touch. We wonder what will come next. We tell each other this is a bond that will never go away.