my best friend in elementary school had the same name as me. she lived in the next neighborhood but it was maybe a 10 minute walk away. we roleplayed a lot - what if we secretly unlocked our magical powers? we were on warrior cats forums, and furcadia - where i remember spending new years with her. her home seemed so advanced to me, better tv's, even better faucets (filters that made the water alkaline). though the best part was always theorizing and imagining in her room. we lived by the beach, so of course she had a dolphin necklace. a few years ago i bought a dolphin mood ring and couldnt help but think of that same object.

i'm watching a movie about a girl who turns into a cat (a whisker away). i wasn't thinking of my friend until a scene in the movie comes up, where the protagonist runs away from home and her friends are interrogated by her parents about her whereabouts. my friend's mom called me in a similar fashion. i really didn't know where she was. it was news to me too. by high school we had almost lost completely in touch. we ended up in different middle schools but still kept up our friendship. perhaps if i pulled up my aim emails from 2006 i could find first hand evidence, but to be honest i don't think i can recall it. i just know that, by a force not my own, we drifted apart.

i always wondered what demons she was facing when i came to realize she had completely cut off her old life. we managed to reconnect in high school once, i think we went to secaucus, new jersey just because it was the first stop out of new york city on the new jersey transit. we both had cameras and decided to adventure one winter. turns out there's shit to do in secaucus, new jersey if you don't have a car to immediately exit the area onto a highway. so like any other 15 year olds we (illegally? dangerously?) crossed the highway to climb up the hills next to the train tracks and took pictures there. it reminds me of the time we crawled through a hole in a chainlink fence to a weathered and broken down boardwalk which was closed off to private property. the boardwalk hadn't been in service for many, many years so what's left are some chunks of concrete wiggling on the jagged rocks by the ocean. the waves thrash hard so you need to watch your step - when i was really a kid my brother's friend slipped and gashed his leg and i have the purple wound sealed in my brain.

i can't remember if this was the first or second time we tried to reconnect in high school, but i had plans to meet up with her once before. i was so desperately excited to catch up i went to party city after school on my way to meet her to pick up some birthday balloons, since it was april 15th. i have to mention that, i got off the subway with a friend on 14th street and asked a guy on the street for directions. he asked to borrow my headphones and i somehow did since i would be right back. a few years later he ended up becoming my current partner...! anywho, i went onwards to brooklyn and waited a bit at the station for her. then waited some more. no one was picking up. about an hour or two i realized i had been ditched. she apologized and alluded to seeing me another time, but i hadn't seen her since.