In the summer of 2002, Paul and Mia and everyone else and I began forming a circle every afternoon in the empty plot of grass behind the church. At first we talked about whatever it was that helped us escape the mundanity of the suburbs, but, as the years passed, we became a festering snake pit of inside jokes and gossip. In a way, it was the closest thing any of us had to a proper community, with years of history and a group we could count on to be sitting there every boring weekday.
Like every good friend group, we went through our phases more or less collectively. We had a year or two where Ezra declared he hated jeans, and one by one we started wearing shorts. There was the month where everyone was falling head over heels for Amy, followed by the brief “Alejandro incident”. All throughout, I remember flip-flopping between friendships and enemy-ships, love and hate, with more or less every person in our circle. Except for a few—like Lily, who was only ever there once or twice per month; or Opal, who no one went to school with, and who contented herself with laying on the grass and listening to us speak.
We ventured out of our circle many times, on adventures to the local public pool or the arcade. But, really, there never was much to see. It was a desert of white picket fences and boring houses. Then, in 2006, Lucas moved to Chicago. He was followed by Paul, who was more or less the life of the party, and without whom our conversations always seemed just a little duller. One by one, our group fell apart, either by time or circumstance.
Eventually the only ones left were Opal and me. I found her one day laying in the dying grass beside our circle, enthralled by a few distant clouds. I sat down, but I did not speak. I only gazed at the clouds, and then at her, realizing that I had never truly done so before. I found tears in her eyes. Bitter, angry tears.
“I told myself I would start joining in on the stories,” she sobbed quietly. It was as shocking to hear her cry as it was to hear her speak. “I told myself I would last summer, and I swore it on all that I loved this fall, but now it is spring and there are no stories anymore.”
Not knowing what to say, I laid down beside her. I concentrated on the clouds. They were so far, so thin, so false. They had that air of pretense that everything seemed to have in the suburbs, always almost exciting, but never truly. We stayed like that all evening.
The next day, she showed me some sketches she’d drawn over the years. Of all of us, of the neighborhood, of our circle. We talked more, about bugs and rocks and books we liked. Suddenly, she wasn’t a spectator anymore. She was as real as everyone else had been, yet a little more. I no longer felt like I was just talking, I felt like I had found a real person, a real friend, with likes and dislikes and countless talents and interests.
Over the next few months, we did more or less everything together, from trips to the gas station at night to frolicking in the fields of strip mall parking lots. She introduced me to The Velvet Underground, to Pokémon, to MySpace. She told me she liked strawberries, and that her birthday was in June. Those two things I remember.
The day of her birthday I brought to the circle a strawberry cake, and she wasn’t there to take it. There were no phone numbers exchanged, no letters received. That day I walked the streets alone, afraid, unsure. I was watched by the fake clouds.
Now there is a house behind the church.
If the grip of circumstance
Were to force me away
From those vices I call habit
I would fight it, and bear with pride
The name of a rebel
Yet the world works no such wonders
And I have only to fight
The unapproving nod of fate
Neither fist nor yell
But a chilling sigh of disappointment
– Rose Stedman