I don’t want to begin this story. To acknowledge a beginning would be to acknowledge an ending. And there can’t be an ending. Because how would I end this story? How can you end a friendship that lasts a decade? Can you even do it?

“Then I was young and unafraid/ So dreams were made and used and wasted/ There was no ransom to be paid/ No song unsung /No wine untasted.”

Maybe it starts the same way everything starts. I am young. I am young and gangly and I can easily fit into peoples arms. My hair is light, so light it’s almost blond. People say I have my mom’s smile and my dad’s eyes. I am happy. I am niave and uneducated and so, so happy. I have never counted calories. I drink milk by the gallons. I like climbing trees and adventure novels and American Girl dolls. I am so hideously normal that it’s gorgeous.

  “There was a time when men were kind/ When their voices were soft/ And their words inviting/ There was a time when love was blind/ And the world was a song/ And the song was exciting/ There was a time/ Then it all went wrong.”

She is young too. She’s shorter than me – a physical trait that she will eventually shake. Her hair is dark, her eyes are dark, and her skin is dark but it’s a light kind of dark. People say she looks Indian which sets her teeth on edge. She doesn’t have siblings yet, as  I recall, or if she does they’re babies. She likes concerts and horror movies and hasn’t had a crush yet (I, on the other hand, am hopelessly infatuated with a boy that will eventually become a close friend). She’s normal too but a grating normal. She’s the kind of normal that makes you look twice because you were so sure for one second that she wasn’t normal.

There are so many authors there. I have already discovered some myself. I’ve seen the beauty of Shakespeare, the prose of Dickinson. I’ve falled in love with Louisa May Alcott and I sincerely hope F. Scott Fitzgerald writes the syntax ot my death. I read, on average, fifty books a year. Last year there were so many authors, most of them still alive and well during my own time.

I hated her guts when I met her. I hated her in an all consuming way that aways stays with you. It’s like having feeses under your fingernails. You can always smell it and you realize it when you’re at the produce section of the grocerty store and you run to the bathroom and scrub your hands and curse yourself for your own thick headedness. But then you’re panting and covered and soap and it’s actually kind of funny.

There’s James Patterson who most certainly has a team of ghost writers working for him. And J.K. Rowling who has a cult following which I feel no need to add to. And Kingsolver who really needs to learn to keep her personal life to herself. Capote could have become a serial killer. William Strunk and E.B White never got laid. Dessen and Giffin who have contributed to the high bar I hold for all males and Lisi Harrison who has more gossip than the E! Network.

Our story is so cliché, it’s almost ridiculous. You knew from the beginning we were going to stop hating each other. We had too, or else this story isn’t dynamic. Suddenly, we went from worst enemies to best friends. We went to sleepover togethers and made terrible jokes and met each other’s parents (her mom is much cooler than mine). And she changed from a light, lithe, little girl to a cynical pessimist. And I became the storyteller I always wanted to be but wrote stories that I wish I never wrote. 

Oh, Jennifer E. Smith, sing me to sleep. And Sherryl Woods better write all the family weddings I go to. Nicholas Sparks needs to stop committing affairs with happily married women. Amy Reed should probably go to therapy for pshychological issues. I can’t even mention Gurtler because she disgusted me so. But I’d love to sass Rob Bell.

You don’t really notice her pessimism until it’s two in the morning during a sleepover and she tells you what she wants. She wants there to be nothing after death. She wants to go to sleep and just never wake up.

In dance, you are always moving. Every inch of your body is engaged. Even when the teacher’s back is turned, your feet are turned out, your abs are tight, and your butt is clenched. Even when the music starts, there is no release. You are focused making sure your technique is flawless. In in the middle of that deep concentration, emotion comes through. Suddenly during a pas de bourree, your face changes. You are suddenly smiling as the music crescendos.

I’m silent because I want there to be something. I think of what she describes – blackness forever – and it makes me shiver. Has the God of my childhood forsaken me? 

“But the tigers come at night/ With their voices soft as thunder/ As they tear your hope apart/ And they turn your dream to shame.”

I have done some awful things. I have taken the words that God has given me and used them to hurt people. My tongue has become a steak knife and has rammed itself into the ribs of other human beings. But I have repented. I have seen the error in my ways. I have apologized. I have had nightmares about the person I’ve been – I’ve felt so guilty that I’ve made myself physically ill. Blackness forever. Would I take blackness forever to get away from my own reflection? Is that my punishment – I’ve overanalyzed existence so much that existence rejects me?

“He slept a summer by my side/ He filled my days with endless wonder/ He took my childhood in his stride/ But he was gone when autumn came/ And still I dream he'll come to me/ That we will live the years together/ But there are dreams that cannot be/ And there are storms we cannot weather.”

Rick Riordan commands his fans under the title Uncle Rick. Dickens sends up ghosts from beyond the grave. Stephenie Meyer unveils what every sixth grade girl wants to the public and the citizens gasp in horror. Ally Condie creates a dystopian society where being a writer matters. And Neil Gaiman gives me nightmares of an evil Snow White whose painted in blood.

I want there to be something. No, not something, I want there to be someone. I stick my hand out from under the covers and feel for hers. Her fingers are bony, knuckles scratched. I can feel a hair tie on her wrist. I need there to be someone.

“I dreamed a dream in time gone by/ When hope was high/ And life worth living/ I dreamed that love would never die/ I dreamed that God would be forgiving.”

I used to perform in the Nutcracker as a child. I did it for years – I must’ve been it in five or six years. And one year, one of the professional dancers cracker her ankle the night of dress rehearsal. One minute she was in the air, spinning, her tutu stuck together like discarded laffy taffy, and the next, her ankle hit the hard wooden stage and her bone snapped. There she was, she’d been training for weeks, and suddenly she was nothing but an invalid. Two burly men carried her into the wings where I sat in my reindeer costume, terrified, knees knocking together. But what really stuck out was her expression. She wasn’t crying. She gave me a small smile. Next time, her expression seemed to say. There will always be other performances. 

“I had a dream my life would be/ So different from this hell I'm living/ So different now from what it seemed/ Now life has killed/ The dream I dreamed.”

She spent hours on the phone with me when worry would overtake me. She listened to every word I said with patience that not even my mother possessed. But she didn’t believe everything I said. Quite the contrary – she doubted it. But she listened to me fret. And slowly the guilt started to melt away – like hail after a snowstorm.
Ransom Riggs looks at Cassandra Clare, Kami Garcia, and Margaret Stohl. He sees their literacy babies stalking girls in small corridors. So he writes a story about children and a bird that somehow live forever on a little island in Wales. Peterson, decades earlier, makes Arthur pull a sword from the stone.

There was a time in my life where I concealed myself from my own family. I was methodically programmed – I ate, went to school, and slept. Repeat. And repeat again. There were very few people who really knew me during that time. I withdrew from my friends and spent lots of time by myself. I wrote and read and lay in the attic staring at the nails on the ceiling. I was completely miserable. And somehow, during that time, I became alive.
And then there’s me, published only in obscure books and magazines, but published nonetheless. So I pick myself up and stand in their ranks awaiting judgment knowing that I will be prepared if things end.