ELLE

Even as a child, I was scared of getting close to people. I got in trouble in elementary school for trying to read a chapter book on the playground at recess instead of playing with the other kids. My first memorable friendship was in middle school with Andie on my cross country team. We would ride together in a row near the back of the bus. She would have one earbud and I would have the other as we listened to her brother’s Blink 182 albums on his iPod. She ended up catfishing me on Kik and we never spoke again. I couldn’t even look people in the eye when I spoke to them until 9th grade when I lost points in honors Spanish because I was told I was disrespectful for not maintaining eye contact. That whole experience made me learn to overcompensate and give a disturbing amount of awkward eye contact to try to seem “less rude”. I learned the hard way that as you grow up any amount of perceived shyness or social anxiety is just seen as rudeness.

When I was in my early twenties I met Elle on the rooftop of Pier 17 at a Deftones concert. She had curly black hair and wore real animal bone earrings with a white tank top. Elle grabbed my hand and dragged me close enough to the barrier that we got a better view, but not too close that people who camped at their barrier spot for hours would get mad at us. While eating our slices of pizza near the venue afterwards, she asked me what my plans were for the rest of the night. I reluctantly admitted that I was planning to put on sweatpants and go to bed. She told me that wasn’t good enough to end the night after a show like that. I followed her onto the bus taking us to her favorite Manhattan bar. I flashed my ID to the security guard at the door and tried keeping up with her as I downed several well vodka cranberries sitting in a booth in front of a vibrant graffiti wall in the back. For a year we watched films. We were regulars at the Metrograph, IFC, and Alamo in Brooklyn. She taught me how to play chess. She would pet the turtles that popped up from the murky brown water in Prospect Park. We set up a hammock. We were shoeless, heads to feet, reading our books. We sat outside Duff’s bar around midnight. She would smoke while I told her about my hopes and fears about the future. I thought we would be friends for life.

Elle was fun, loud, and unashamed. Every time I was with her, people flocked to her. It was not always fun. The next trip to the bar, Elle got in a fight on the smoking patio with a man in his mid twenties with a dirty blonde 70s style shag haircut. He tried to throw his lit cigarette at her, but missed. It soared past me instead, less than an inch away from my face. He didn't apologize. We went to a grocery store near her apartment to get supplies to make dinner together. There was one woman with her two small dogs leashed on the ground yelling at another older blonde woman. I walked past them and waited for Elle to meet me at the end of the vegetable aisle but she never came. While I ran from the women fighting, she went towards the grocery store vegetable aisle chaos. The lady with the dogs turned to Elle and began threatening her. Then threatening me just for being attached to Elle. The woman said she would wait for us outside. The grocery store security found us in another aisle, “She’s waiting for you outside. Put down the basket and leave through the entrance right now”. Months later, Elle told me that the woman got banned from that store for pepper spraying someone outside.

We ran four blocks to her fourth floor walk up apartment and continued to her rooftop. On the roof she smoked and gestured to the empty, sun bleached plastic chair that lived up there. I sat and looked at the distant Manhattan skyline while she smoked, cried, and apologized for making me feel unsafe. After she finished her cigarette, we laid down on her cheetah print sheets as she opened her laptop to play Shrek 3. After half an hour, she abruptly shut her laptop, “I think you should probably go”. I was confused but I just zipped up my boots without lacing them and left. I didn’t see her for a few weeks after that. I assumed she was going to cancel our planned trip but when I landed in the Las Vegas airport I received a text asking me to wait for her at baggage claim. I waited for almost an hour before I saw her dragging her suitcase behind her, wearing a bedazzled LAS VEGAS hat. Our quick trip went okay until she left her hat and sunglasses on the grass of the Vegas fairgrounds where a drunk woman fell and accidentally crushed them. Then Elle said we had to leave.

The strangest part of the ending of our friendship was the last time I saw her. We had glasses of white wine with pasta and a huge caprese salad. She told me about the new guy she was seeing in Midtown. We split a slice of cake with blueberries on top sprinkled with powdered sugar and chai at a tiny cafe. Her last text to me was a link to a song and her thanking me for hanging out with her. In the following months, I sent her videos and the movie schedule at the Metrograph and received nothing back in response. After five unread texts, I understood and stopped reaching out. I used to look back through our final conversations and wonder what happened but I know she is okay. I saw that she traveled through Europe with her mother. She takes pictures for a small Brooklyn indie band and still makes beautiful crafts.

Female friendship is the most important aspect of my life. It is strange to me to get so close to someone only to never hear from them again without ever knowing why. Sometimes I think about reaching out to ask why but reopening that door could lead to hurt feelings. I’ve made so many new friends since officially moving to the city. I cherish all the time I spend with them but there’s always that clock in the background ticking. How long are they going to stick around? Is it only a matter of time before it is all over?

Katherine Been has a Bachelors of Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently working towards her masters degree at Teachers College at Columbia University. She has a passion for writing, literature, and education.