Children make the best friends. Their sweet innocence and optimism draws them together like moths to a flame. They don’t see gender, ethnicity or religion. They see someone to play with.

I tried to peek at the girl without her spying me through the gap in between my mother’s legs. Above me, my mum was speaking animatedly to another giant lady who mirrored my mother’s dimpled smile. The girl looked at me curiously and I guess it was time to say hello. I crawled towards her tentatively, stretching my hand out and trying to reach her…to touch this stranger.

Moments later, we were laughing and giggling mirthfully. We played gleefully with dust bunnies on the ground, we had tea parties with imaginary friends, and we would dare each other to blow the candle out from our grandmother’s ‘butsudan,’ singing the birthday song as we did it (according to my mum, we would get into lots of trouble from the mess we made). Our curious minds gravitated towards the crawling dots on the ground. She picked one up and stuck it in his mouth quizzically. Before I could do the same, my mother scooped me up and it was time to go. The next time I would see her (the next evening), she would be a stranger and these few hours of continuous happiness would not mean anything. Due to our child minds, our friendship that had so quickly escalated would just as quickly fade to nothing but a meaningless memory, but at least we rebuilt it just as quickly when we met again.

The next day, I saw her face. Familiar. I knew her. We stumbled towards each other, our mothers chumming us along, encouraging us to reintroduce ourselves to each other, to regain that friendship. It was soon found again. We played hide and seek and had rides in the elevator of my grandmother’s house. The elevator was beautiful and exciting. It was brightly lit with mirrors on all four walls. A small chandelier hung from above and a thousand little sparkles twinkled above us like colourful stars. I don’t remember much about our games, but it consisted of running down halls and talking in a language that the adults would never be able to decipher: a mixture of hand gestures and nods and slurs. We’d burst through each room of the gigantic house, our smiles never ceased. Then eventually, after hours of pure glee, it was time to go. A pang of sadness gripped my heart as we departed. We waved goodbye for as long as we could see each other. My mother turned a corner and she vanished. My short attention span soon found something else to ponder over and those fleeting hours of joy dimmed and would be forgotten. Our friendship that had so quickly reached its peak, would mean nothing more than a memory, we would be nothing more than strangers. But even so, the next time I saw her (a week later), our friendship would go through this same cycle.

I saw her again the next week and after a few seconds of awkward glances at each other, we ran off to play. Up and down the steps we ran…and then I stopped. She turned back at me, puzzled. I crouched down next to this green thing with antennas. That’s how I identified creepy-crawlies as a child, by checking if it had antennas. I went to get daddy and he reluctantly came over to look at this mystery bug I had found. He went to the kitchen and came back with a plastic container. Carefully, he caught it and my friend and I spent the next few hours playing with it, agitating it. We tapped the container to try to get it to move. Soon, it was time to go and we took the grasshopper out of the house and into the garden. Together we released it. We were sad, but my dad convinced us it was for the best. As for us, we went our separate ways, and our child minds would make us forget, would make us into strangers again. I’m sure we had more times together as a child but my memory fails me. The point is, we always had to leave each other and there came a point when our friendship was no longer a happy memory to be reminisced, but a memory to scorn.

Her parents, my uncle and his wife, had a divorce. Their broken relationship inevitably led to the shattering of our friendship. As children, we had always mended it. But now, we were past that. We only saw each other once a year and when it happened (I was about 10), I was confused. I went to each meeting with her with a plastered smile on my face, no longer shy. I was greeted by a forced smile with lightless eyes. Her body was stoic and she turned into a doll which communicated as little as possible. This went on for years and eventually, I stopped greeting her with smiles. I stopped trying to make conversations with her as I only received one-worded answers. I stopped liking her. Our lunches together started out with us being shy and awkward, but this time we didn’t gradually warm up to each other, we just sat next to each other coolly, not really acknowledging the other’s existence. Anger and hate would boil every time I was forced to sit next to her. Never again did I smile at her. Never again did our friendship bloom. This time we remained strangers.

I heard stories about her. How she was doing so well in school while I was getting Cs for maths, malay, failing mandarin and basically doing badly in everything academically. I would get compared to her because she was still doing graded piano while I was doing contemporary and never practising. I got compared to her because I had turned out to be quite the outgoing tom boy while she was the timid, shy, feminine doll that the family loved playing with when she came around every year. They loved her blindly just because of the divorce. Just because she was brilliant. I hated the way they would say nice things about her even though it was so obvious she didn’t want to see us.

There was a time, a few months after the divorce, before I hated her of course, that I bumped into her on the way to piano lesson. I hadn’t seen her for months. She was there for singing lessons that started half an hour later than my piano lessons. I was so desperate to talk to her I mingled in the lobby where she was waiting, fully aware that being late for my lesson would result to me being punished by my teacher and scolded by my mother. None the less, I stayed. I stayed in the awkward silence that grew between us and finally I got the courage to ask her, “Do you remember me?” She stared at me blankly and responded with a cold, “yes.” That lit me up with hope. I wish it didn’t. It prolonged my pain. My teacher walked out of her room then and forced me inside, forcing us to depart. I realise now with a darkened heart that I shouldn’t have tried so hard. That the question I should’ve asked was, “Do you still love me?” At least then, I wouldn’t have tried so hard the years later. I wouldn’t have a terrible time sleeping at night convincing myself she was just getting over the trauma. I wouldn’t have tried to forgive her. I wouldn’t have spent all those days thinking about what she was doing, if she would ever smile at me again. It took me years to finally accept that she no longer loved me. My cousin and best friend didn’t. Love. Me.

E*****, what did I ever do to you?

I want you to know, I don’t love you now either.

Once again, we are perfect strangers…permanent strangers

Are you happy now?