We were six the first time she pulled all the blankets off her bed, stacked them in a messy pile on the floor, and grinned at me. My eyes were puffy and red but she pushed back my hair with glittery nails and shrugged her narrow shoulders. "I think it's blanket fort time," she'd said as if we'd done it a thousand times. Her butterfly quilt took both of us to lift over the chairs and stacks of books she'd made in her usually tidy room, and I remember her blowing the hair off her red face with the biggest smile, her entire body sagging forward with exhaust after we'd secured it. Even then, there was something about her determination to generate light in someone's day that left me a little breathless.
I always thought I wanted to be like her, more caring, more passionate. Prettier, for sure. She hated it when I'd say that one though, she always fought me on it. When we were 13 she conceded in saying, "Okay, I might be nicer. You're kind of bitchy, so I guess you're right. But you're definitely prettier and that's that." I liked the way she whispered when she swore, like it was a secret we were both in on. Back then, it kind of was. I bet if she swore today she'd do it though, she did just yesterday after all.
Or like when she died her hair in the eighth grade and I begged my parents to let me do it too, both absolutely against it until she bought cheap wash out stuff at the CVS. We both ended up covered in red hair dye in her bathroom like a bad tampon commercial or war documentary, but we laughed so hard we were both in tears. Mom had to take me to the salon to get it fixed, and when I went over to our tree house connecting our two backyards that afternoon, she shook her head with a smile. "Of course it looks better on you. God."
It didn’t really occur to me that maybe she wanted to be more like me until we were fifteen and she wore blue nail polish just because I bought it and Connor N. complemented it in gym class. We sat on the floor of our treehouse and I painted her nails while she sang. She was always singing, practicing for some recital or something. She's always been in the advanced choir and as terrible as I am at singing, she always complains that I'm not in there with her. I'll never forget what she said when I blew on her nails to help them dry, my hair long that spring and whisping into my face so much I could barely see her brown eyes. "I'm so lucky we're friends, I don't know what I'd do without you. You're the coolest person I know." And her voice, god her voice rumbling over the words like a freight train.
In hindsight, I probably should have guessed that I was in love with her.
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