Saint Holly

The sky is a lovely shade of pink, and the way it mixes with the blue makes it look like cotton candy. I can almost taste the sugar on my lips. I stare at the sky to keep my eyes busy. To keep myself from staring at a moment lost to the past.

The rectangle feels heavy in my hand. I tap my thumb on one sharp corner before running it over the smooth surface. For a moment, I can pretend that I can touch the image trapped forever on paper.

Pans bang together downstairs. My mother is undoubtedly working overtime, desperate to create a diner that everyone will rave about when she has the skill set better suited to instant mashed potatoes and blue box mac and cheese. Bless her heart, she never stops trying.

It's exhausting.

Coming home is something I prepare myself for. I hide away all the traces of Holland and revert back to Holly, the quiet, silly girl my parents tell their friends about. They prefer the old version of me the best. The gap tooth smile. The face full of freckles. To them, I'm still skinning my knees and refusing to eat my vegetables. When I moved away after high school, I ditched that life and became a woman with a job, an apartment, and a concerning amount of credit card debt.

Sometimes, I miss Holly.

She lived carefree and happy, never worrying one bit about what anyone said about her behind her back. Heartbreak changed her.

I think that's why my mom hid this photo in my room. She wanted me to remember. To see myself like I used to be. Back before I forced myself into a mold that made others happy.

Mom took this picture on the beach. It had been an impromptu trip after visiting a family friend. Saint and I wanted to stop to eat, but my dad ignored us. My best friend was always at my side back then. Inseparable is how people refer to us—one entity. Saint Holly. I always thought it was cute.

We stood in the sand in matching black gaucho pants, layered shirts, and arms around each other. Saints blond hair had one black streak. My black hair had one streak of blond.

A tear drops onto my hand. Simpler times.

"Holly," my mom yells up the stairs. "Holly, your cousins are here."

I memorize the photograph—the dark blue sky, the waves in the lake, and two girls who didn't know that everything they'd gone through would soon mean nothing.

Someone bangs on the door. "Holly, come down. Your mom needs some help." My dad doesn't say anything else. The moment he finishes speaking, I can hear his retreating footsteps.

I carefully place the picture on my nightstand.

True to form, my mom made too much food, and none of it was very good. The chicken came out dry, the gravy was too salty, and I think she mixed up the flour and sugar when it came to dessert. All five of my cousins and both aunts ate gleefully despite the offerings and were more than happy to tuck into the glasses of cheap wine that came as an after-meal finisher.

Saint and I used to steal sips of wine when we were teenagers. We'd wait until my parents were asleep and tip-toed down the stairs, giggling under our breath. A few swigs each, and we'd pretend we could barely make it back up the stairs.

My mom catches my eye. She stares at me in a way that tells me she's trying to figure me out. Since I left, I've kept my distance. Our once-a-week phone calls are full of small talk and awkward silences. We've never understood each other. I see her as a woman who tries too hard, and I think she still sees me as a little girl who needs her hand held.

She left that picture for me, though. Has she been able to tell how lonely I've been lately? Does it come across in my quick, undetailed explanations of my week?

Saint is a person I packed away a long, long time ago. Losing her hurt more than losing any of the men I temporarily pledged my heart to over the years. She holds a large chunk of my girlhood in her hands. Hands that hurt me.

Aunt Lois holds her plastic wine glass to her cheek. "Hol, your mom told me you got a new job."

"It's a temp thing," I say, shoving my glass between my legs. The strawberry is too sweet for me right now. "My roommates and I work a food truck at the fairs. I make overpriced, sugary lemonade for people who have been baking in the sun for hours. It's not too bad."

Aunt Lois tries to smile. She's polite like that. "I'm sure it's a great experience."

"All her little jobs have been," my dad mutters. He's still bitter about the fact that I moved away. I don't know how to tell him I'm also bitter about it. "Her friends always seem to have a new little scheme to make rent. At least this one is better than that door-to-door knife thing."

I wave him off. "No one killed me."

"You're lucky," he deadpans, tucking into his beer. "Thought you were reckless as a teen, but these new friends..."

I wasn't the reckless one. I don't need to tell him that. I don't need to tell anyone that. Anyone who ever met Saint knew who was the leader. Everyone knew she was trouble. The fun kind. Or at least that's what I thought back then.

Mom leans forward, swaying a little as she does. "You've always been hard on her. She's finding herself."

There's a fight on the horizon. It's palpable. Dad's in a mood. Mom's been hitting the wine longer than we have.

I chug what's left of my overly sweet wine and stand up. "Well, as much as I love listening to people talk about me, I'll let you continue doing so behind my back. I think I'm going to head up for the night."

Mom starts frantically waving her hand. "No, no. You're only here for another day. Stay down here. I promise we will talk about something else."

It's hard to say no to her when she looks so sad. We might not be best friends, but I still love her. Hurting her doesn't bring me any joy. So I sit and listen to everyone try to skirt the topic around me. It's particularly difficult for my dad, who wants to connect some lady's skin cancer to my brief job at a tanning salon. A job where someone robbed me at gunpoint despite me telling the man that my drawer was empty.

Another mistake on my part.

I stay up until it's socially acceptable to hide away in my childhood bedroom, which has been converted into a guest room, though I'm the only guest who has ever slept in it.

The ghost of Saint lingers. It was easy to ignore until the photo showed up. And as soon as I'm back in bed, it's in my hand.

I grab my cell phone and pull up Facebook. I haven't searched her name in years, but my fingers move along the keyboard gracefully. She has the same name and the same face. Her hair is darker. Her makeup is more subtle. She's in a yellow bikini on a boat in her profile picture.

She's still Saint.

The girl I laughed with at three in the morning, too tired to remember what was even funny. She was the girl to whom I told all my secrets. The girl who promised to be my friend forever and then pretended I didn't exist.

The plan was to leave the picture behind. There used to be a pink album bursting at the seams, full of all the evidence of our childhoods: Saint and me as sixth graders with terrible bangs and matching necklaces, us at county fairs and concerts. We captured all of those memories on disposable cameras that my mom religiously developed.

Too young to understand the repercussions, I'd burned or destroyed all of them. Going from linked arms to avoiding eye contact across a crowded room was too much. My teenage heart couldn't bear to see the evidence of the life we once shared.

Part of me must have known that seeing her face would send me spiraling.

I need to get on the road if I plan to get home in time to work tonight. Whenever I stand up with my duffel bag slug over my shoulder, I sit back down on the old mattress and find myself lost in another moment with Saint.

I end up shooting her a message on Facebook.

Any chance you are still in town?

I tell myself she won't respond. I tell myself she's moved away, leaving our boring small town behind to take on the world. She always had those kind of dreams. Saint wanted to be famous. She'd do whatever it took but wanted to live the kind of life people envied.

If any of us were going to make it, I always knew it would be Saint.

My phone vibrates, and I stare. Realistically, it could be anything—an email, a text, a notification that I've used my phone an hour and sixteen minutes more than last week.

But I know.

Unfortunately.

Meet at the park by your old house?

Already there.

My hands shake as I reread her clipped responses. I shouldn't be so nervous to see her. It's been five years, and all that teenage drama is water under the bridge. At least, it should be.

I told my parents I was going home. Like old times, I lie to them about where I'll be. The route between my parents' house and Mary Gilbert Memorial Park is second nature to me. I don't have to think; I make all the right turns and end up in the tiny parking lot for the run-down, out-of-date park where I spent too much time growing up.

Saint's parents lived next door, making it easy to dash out and spend our days climbing all over the graffitied plastic tubes and slides. We made promises on the swings. We snuck our first--and last--cigarette into one of the tunnels. I kissed my first boy at the top of the yellow slide.

A little boy carefully climbs the ramp up to the first level. He stops, looking over his shoulder before taking off down the wobbly bridge. I can't stop looking at the person watching him.

It's her.

She looks different than her profile picture. Her dark blond hair is even darker now, almost brown. There isn't a lick of makeup on her face, and her shirt is stained. That's not very Saint of her.

She shields her eyes from the sun from her spot on the bench. "Holly Alford."

"Saint Rush."

Saint rolls her eyes. Her hatred of her name is still there. "I'm still going to change it eventually."

I walk closer but can't bring myself to sit down. We've shared that bench a million times, shoulders bumping into each other, hair blowing in each other's faces.

She squints up at me, pulling one leg up and wrapping her arms around it. "So why the random message a billion years later? You sick or something?"

The little boy calls out for his mom, and Saint stands. She puts her hands on her hips, eyes still squinted. "Good job, buddy. Go down the slide."

I hitch a thumb over my shoulder. "You have a kid?"

She keeps her eyes on him but nods. "Yeah, Reid. He's almost three."

"I can't see you as a mom at all." I didn't mean to say those words out loud. I didn't come here to offend her. By her laugh, I didn't.

She tosses her hair behind her shoulder, but the wind blows it back into her face. "Oh, trust me. I didn't think I could do it, either. Especially after Randy left to live out his rockstar dreams."  

"You have a kid with Randy? Randy-Randy?"

Saint laughs, sitting back down on the bench with her leg up. She tosses her hair back once more. "Girl, you don't even know. I almost married him."

The wind blows my hair back, strands stick to my lips. "He had it so bad for you."

"I went to school in Akron, and when I came back for Christmas, I bumped into him. After feeling so out of place at school, he was so familiar. Too familiar." She shakes her head, her lips pulled tight. "Reid is pretty cool, though. He made it all worth it."

"And he just ditched you for that stupid band? Same one?"

Reid runs up to her, wrapping his arms around her before taking off again. The way she watches him, she loves him. I'm proud of her for that. Saint never wanted kids. She wanted to be on TV or in movies. She wanted a singing career despite not being able to sing. She wanted to live.

"Why are you here, Hol?"

I open my mouth but don't know what to say, so I snap it shut. What is the point? "I was visiting my parents, and my mom found a picture of us."

"And?"

"And...and I couldn't stop thinking about you, about us. We grew up together, and it just, I don't know. What happened?"

Saint looks over at her son as he climbs up the small rock wall that leads to the red racing slides. She's quiet for a long time. Long enough that I don't think she'll say anything. "You still don't get it, do you?"

"Get what?"

She sighs and leans forward, resting her forearms on her thighs. When she looks up at me, she looks exhausted. "Holly, I know that we were young and stupid back then. I've thought about it a lot, and I don't necessarily blame you for what you did, but I still struggle with it."

I cross my arms over my chest. "What did I do?" She was the one who stopped coming around. She was the one who refused to talk to me.

Saint is the one who broke our friendship.

"You always let me take the blame for everything," she says, looking me dead in the eye. "Even if it were your idea, you'd immediately tell everyone it was my fault if we got caught. The time we accidentally broke your bedroom window when you wanted to see if I could throw you in the air, you told your parents I did it. You said I took them when we got busted with the wine coolers. I always took the blame for you. But when you told my parents that I was the one who took that money out of my mom's purse, that was it."

"You did take that money," I grit out.

She smirks. "Five years later, you still can't own up to it. You stole from my family, Holly. I took a dollar or two here or there. You didn't. You took fifty dollars and thought no one would notice."

Fifty dollars is the reason a twelve-year friendship ended. Fifty dollars that we needed for a concert. Fifty dollars that she said her mom had.

Fifty dollars I took.

For us.

For a concert we never made it to.

Saint stands up, shaking her head. She won't look at me. "I thought that you wanted to apologize to me. I thought you finally grew up, but I shouldn't be surprised you're still the same. Selfish. Immature. Incapable of owning up for your behavior. How's life been for you, huh? Still making terrible choices and blaming everyone else? What do your parents think of your friends? If you even have any. I bet you've made them out to be the problem. Just like you did with me."

She doesn't say anything else. She stands up, walking straight toward the playset. The little boy comes right over, happy to see his mom joining him. She doesn't look over at me. Doesn't tell him my name.

She pretends I'm not here. The same way she did back in school.

My drive home takes longer than it should. I'm shaking. Furious. I wanted to see her and find out what went wrong, but I wasn't expecting that. I thought there would be a few moments of awkward silence before we hugged, falling head-first into stories of us growing up.

Her words, her accusations, they hurt. And she's wrong. I didn't always blame her. I didn't make her out to be this terrible influence.

It's all I can think about all the way home. By the time I pull into my apartment's parking lot, I don't have enough time to get change and make my shift. I shoot a message to my boss. So sorry. Can't make it in today. Got held up by an old friend on my way home.

As soon as I hit send, I realize something. Saint is right. I'm blaming her even now. I missed my shift because I decided to see her. I knew I should have gone home.

She's right.

My entire life, I've refused to take responsibility. I've always tried to come out of every situation squeaky clean. Saint is why I drank for the first time, even though I led her to the wine. Saint is the one who drove me to the party, even though I had suggested it.

My teachers didn't hate me, I didn't do the work.

My roommates get blamed for me not having a real job, but I'm the one who won't grow up.

It's me.

Holland.

Holly.

Whoever.

It's my fault.