Falling Apart

“Do you want to sit with me on the bus?”

            Their eyes connected, and Addison was instantly transported back to when she’d first met Kaylee. They’d been in the same group at practice, and they’d finished their workout tired and sweaty and friends. Kaylee was a new face, but she felt like an old one, and Addison wasn’t used to that.

A few weeks later, Kaylee said to Addison, “You know, when we stop being friends, there’s going to be some huge blow-up and we’ll never speak to each other again.” And of course they’d both laughed uncomfortably and moved on, but it had always lurked in the back of Addison’s mind along with all the things she knew were true but couldn’t bear to think about.

            Addison thought she knew everything there was to know about Kaylee until that day when they were walking side by side to nowhere like they sometimes did. The clouds were floating overhead and the sky was blue, and Kaylee, as always, seemed to fit in with the perfect landscape. But as she told Addison about her dad and his gambling problems, the money problems, the fights with her mom, Addison realized that Kaylee might have fit in on the outside, but on the inside she was chipped and cracked and falling apart.

Addison didn’t know when it started, but she knew that after a few months, Kaylee had started to poke fun at her, telling her she was too fat and her skin was too white. Each time, Addison would take a deep breath and the words would be on the tip of her tongue and she would start to shake with that horrible pre-confrontation adrenaline, and then she would stop short and swallow the words back down. And with a toss of her black hair and sweep of her tanned, toned arms, Kaylee would giggle, and Addison would laugh it off but then lie awake at night and wonder if it were true.

 And then there was that one day at school, when they were talking and laughing about nothing, and Kaylee blurted out, “You’re so ugly. There are other girls that are so much prettier than you are.” And when Addison gaped at her in stunned silence, she laughed and said, “No, no, you’re really pretty,” but they both knew what she had really meant. And Addison just laughed along with her and nodded along when she’d said, “God, don’t take everything so personally,” never telling Kaylee that maybe she was the one who needed a few, “God, don’t say things like that”s herself.

            But there was also another time when Addison was stressed and tired and panicky, and Kaylee held her hand and made her laugh and told her everything would be okay and it was. And those times made up for everything else.

            Kaylee had once told her, “Best friends don’t keep secrets,” and it gnawed in the back of Addison’s mind that maybe she didn’t want to be best friends, but once it was out there, you couldn’t take it back. Or at least she didn’t know how.

            But she kept coming back because of days like the one when Kaylee had a cold, and her eyes were brimming with tears as she sniffled and swallowed, and she looked like the whole world was about to collapse onto her shoulders. She looked at Addison and choked out, “I love you. Just tell me you love me.” And Addison thought that sometimes people just need to hear that and Kaylee wasn’t getting it anywhere else, so she hugged Kaylee and didn’t care about getting sick and she whispered “I love you” in her ear.

            And finally there was today, when it all went too far and everything fell apart. And here was Kaylee now, standing in front of her and trying to make things better, acting like you could turn ashes back to flames.

            “Do you want to sit with me?”

            “No,” said Addison, and walked away crying.