Part 6
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She sat in an empty auditorium with a friend. I didn't know them yet, but it seemed that they might have been waiting for me, so I introduced myself. They were a pair of giggles and that pleased me. One would end up as Fess's girlfriend. The other would get me arrested.
We clicked together, slightly askew, she and I. We were the closest we could be without the burdens of romance. Though I suppose that at different times both of us would have liked to have felt it's weight.
Her family was an introverted unit whose corners were folding in upon itself. They lived on the edge of town and I suppose some may have considered them 'low-end' society. I would be one of two people outside of the immediate family that set foot inside that house.
Her parents owned the print shop smack in the middle of town, surrounded by other stores that did equally poor. It was a tiny pocket of commerce hidden deep within an isolated community. To be honest, even though I lived at the Esplanade which was fifty feet from there I still don't know what other stores were tucked away .
She had a sister. Almost mythical, she was in and out of rehabs so much she'd probably spent under a month in total actually in the high school. Her sister was paper thin. She weighed about 80-90 lbs was 5'8", anorexic, bulimic, took 500 laxatives a day and still considered herself fat. I met her once, barely.
Both sister's died there hair red, and their parents had long since gone grey so I hadn't known that it wasn't natural. She was fair and petite and a bit of a misfit. The latter may account for how we hit it off. She was the last voice I would hear before sleep took me every night, and I hers.
For years I would consider her my best friend. But it ended abruptly with uncertainty, shadowed by lies and deceit. As far as I can tell, she still doesn't know I was arrested for her. What she does know is that I betrayed her. That may have been the only thing that wasn't a lie.....and it haunts me still.
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