Charley and I met freshman year of college. She was the blonde one, whereas I was not. I was never the blonde one. We went to college on a big hill, warm in the summer, warm in the winter. We both came from small towns in the same state.
Charley was more focused on boys at the time, and I girls, though this soon changed, and I was focused on boys too, though never the same ones as Charley. I was focused on this one brown-haired girl who seemed to be too alike to me for it to ever work: damaged and harsh. Charley once cornered a boy we both knew in an elevator and made out with him, which impressed me. Not that I didn’t think I was attractive, but the brazenness of this action, without even a shadow of a doubt that the other person would want to kiss you back. Charley operated on the assumption that all boys wanted to kiss her because of how she looked, and they usually did. I operated on the assumption that I could make any boy fall in love with me because of how smart I was, and then they would love the way I looked too.
She had a soft rounded face and innocent expression that I was jealous of because it tinged all of her actions with a sweetness and innocence that I thought at times, was unearned. I had a harsh, tired, haughty face that seemed to allow others to form negative opinions of me because they knew it wouldn’t really hurt me, or they didn’t care if it did. No one ever formed negative opinions of Charley. Or if they did they wouldn’t say it. Once a boy called her “boring” to me, and I felt like I would cry on her behalf. I knew I would never be boring, or have to try hard not to be. I knew I would never be universally beloved either. But in that moment I didn’t feel anxious about my own perceived interestingness or superior. I felt really sad, and I hated him for saying that to me.
She taught me how to drive, I remember that. She was kind and patient, unlike my parents, who raised their voices at me when I did something wrong like braked too suddenly or flat out refused, seeing driving as one of those skills I would intrinsically never be able to master because of my personality. Charley’s parents never raised their voices at her. She had no siblings or even pets. We went to her house once or twice, driving through the rolling hills and flat streets with kitschy mailboxes. We went shopping or to the beach a lot, I remember that. She always woke up with an idea to do something, and we did it.
We shared clothes and a bedroom. All our little tchotchkes lined up on the dressers. We would have our boyfriends stay over in our twin beds. We drank a lot, or maybe just I did. I never remember Charley getting very drunk. She was never embarrassed by herself, though sometimes I thought the things she said would be embarrassing if said by someone else. Never by her though. She was too beautiful to truly dislike. She would nudge her head against your arm like a cat, or eat blueberries with honey and leave the bowl out in the living room. She never assumed she wasn’t liked or wanted somewhere, and she was usually correct. But I wondered if it was hard to be so legible. Maybe I was lucky people held horrible opinions based on the things I did or said, my uncompromising and contradictory beliefs on everything. She would have breakups and barely even talk about him after. I would stay in bed for weeks. I still do this. She would say she “learned a lot.”
We stopped being friends for some reason or other. I thought it was because I didn’t look cool enough in her pictures or something. But maybe it wasn’t such a vain reason. I moved all my stuff out of our apartment 15 days before our lease ended. She came to my new apartment maybe once. I guess I didn’t really like people being there. Even my boyfriend, I thought he looked funny there, like it was a doll’s house. It seemed too small for anyone to inhabit but me.
Once I saw on her instagram she was wearing a pair of shorts she had borrowed or taken from me, and it made me a little annoyed but not too much. She was always going on vacation somewhere on a beach or posting pictures of her legs. It was kind of funny to me, that she was still like this, but I wondered what it was like to be so unrestrainedly happy. And my own superiority, was it not vanity too? Had I not always perceived myself as a different, better version of her, her a different, better version of me, us the same person, really?
I found out on the phone with a friend that she slept with my ex-boyfriend. She hadn’t told me, of course. I lived somewhere else. I wasn’t mad really, more mildly annoyed and repulsed. I wished I could be though, calling over and over, sending an angry text. Which is probably why they had done it. You could shake me over and over very hard and I would still have the same placid expression. Like a very cold lake. One you drown in and die. We went to a lake once, her, my boyfriend, our friends. She had never given any inclination that she had wanted to sleep with him, that was the strangest part. I had no idea why she did anything. We were the same in that way, our blankness.
Later she texted me about some movie she was in that was playing in my city. I didn’t reply.
She would always keep running lists of what she ate in her phone. I would do similar things, not eat from 8 pm to 12 pm. We didn’t talk about it though. I don’t even remember what we talked about. Once I saw her really lose it over a man, and it was the first time I ever related to her, seeing men not as a fun experience but a perverse need that you hated yourself for wanting to possess entirely. Trying to hurt someone else on purpose, destroy them. Because you loved them, but also because there was something bad about you, really bad, worse than anyone else.
I still hope she’s doing ok, and feel something about her, between hate and love. I hope she gets to be what she always wanted to be. I hope she gets to be a star.
