Jenny

I still wonder where you are. I wondered why you didn’t come to school that day. I kept hoping you took a trip and that I’d show up to school and you’d be back in class or in our shared seat on the bus. I told myself nothing happened—that you probably went back home to Spain, like you mentioned before. Deep down, I knew you wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye. Or so I thought—I’d only known you a short time.

I think back to the day I met you. We rode the bus together, remember? I was new to town and you were the first to say hello. You had uncanny way of not giving a dam what anyone thought about you. But, if your friend was being bullied or treated unfairly you’d take on the whole world for them. I knew the day I met you, you were an incredible person. That you were a spark of light in the dimmest halls of our dreary high school. You were magical. 

Did you know Kerry, and I became friends? Remember how I told you I thought she was uppity? I was wrong. You always understood who was real or fake. You were a stellar judge of character. She and I started talking a couple days after you didn’t come to school. We didn’t understand why we hadn’t heard from you—no one had. Maybe you got pregnant. Maybe you ran away. We went round and round with what-ifs.

We still talk about you. Still wonder where you are and what you’re doing. What you might look like now. Would we recognize you if we saw you? Would you recognize us? I still see your bald head. Remember the time you shaved off your long blond hair on a dare? All the slander and gossip they threw at you, you just laughed it off. Then they came after me—calling me terrible things because I was your friend. You were livid. You stood up for me and told them all to go to hell. I thought you were such a rebel.

Then, there was the time you went off on the girls sitting behind us on the bus for talking trash. They didn’t realize you understood every word of Spanish. Didn’t expect to get told off by a white girl with blue eyes that spoke it fluently. I remember when you sang to me a lullaby in Spanish that your mother used to sing to you. Did you know how much I missed my friends back home? Did you know my world at home was falling apart?

I remember all the advice you gave me. I’ve carried some of that advice with me through life. It’s helped so many times. God, I miss you. Kerry does too. We’re sisters now. That’s what we call each other, because we’ve been through so much together. Loss does that to people. It bonds them for life. We’ve shared a lot of memories, we’re probably starting to forgot some too. But, Jenny, we never forgot you.

I’ve lost so many things over the years. I lost my mom’s wedding ring she gave me when she divorced my dad, dozens of library books, concert tickets, and socks. Over time, I’ve lost touch with friends and neighbors. But, somehow, it seems organic and natural to drift apart from some people in your life. You always know if you really tried, you could reconnect with them. How do you reconnect with someone who completely disappeared?

The day we realized you were gone, really gone, you took a tiny piece of each of us. The things that happen when you’re sixteen shape you—form who you become. A part of me will always wonder and question. And I’m not sure why, but there was a real fear that burrowed inside me for you. Kerry, too. You were wild, Jen. We loved you for it, but deep down we knew somehow that could be a factor. That something crazy could’ve happened to you. I suppose we’ll always fight that fear.

Because of that, I get concerned now when I don’t hear back from a friend. When someone on social media drops off the radar, I reach out. It’s instinctive. When I look back, I feel guilty because maybe we didn’t try hard enough to find you. At the time we didn’t know what to do—we asked around at school and we went to your house. We should’ve done more. Maybe you didn’t want to be found, or you didn’t have a way to reach us. If we could’ve just known you were safe. Even if you were hiding, and you didn’t want to be found. I would’ve kept your secret.

I still wonder, Jenny. After all this time, you remain the one mystery I never solved. I hope if you’re out there, life is treating you well. That in the 26 years since we last saw you, your life has been an amazingly wild journey full of adventure. I hope you went back to your beloved Spain, I hope you soaked up the sun on the Spanish Riviera every day. I hope you lived, laughed and loved as the worn out cliche goes. I know anyone currently in your life is incredibly lucky to know you, to have you as their friend, wife or mother. You were one of a kind. And just know that if it wasn’t everything you hoped it would be, you were and are still, genuinely loved and missed.

Kerry and I have seen our share of adventures in life, too. From graduation to roommates to romances—with guys we thought were “the one.” Then to marriages, babies and currently raising teenagers. No one prepares you for teenagers. I wonder if you have one. We live in different states now, but you’d never know it to hear us talk on the phone. We laugh and cry, remembering how ridiculous we were when we were our kids’ age. We share the local news and talk about politics. We talk about how nice it would be to live next door to each other. 

But every now and then amidst the ambiance of dogs barking and siblings bickering, the line goes quiet and there’s a long pause. Then the question comes up. And, one of us asks, “I wonder what ever happened to Jenny.”