Firefly Girls

We plan a sleepover together, a secret between the two of us. We go, to a home neither one of us belong in but one of us inhabits, dreaming of the girlhood that awaits. You imagine a pillow fight, and I, a make-believe scene where it’s the two of us against the world and there we are in the center of it. 

We are much too old for our past loves; the fairies in the yard have packed up and gone, and I’ve misplaced the jar for collecting fireflies at dusk. There’s no need for magic, I say, and after all don’t you feel how time stops every now and then? 

You feel it too, I know, because every morning when the bus arrives at your stop you come towards us like you’re floating, and no one can take their eyes off of you. I love being a girl, you always say as you sit down in front of us, smiling like you know a secret.

We don’t believe in magic anymore, but there’s something close that neither one of us is brave enough to touch. We wrap ourselves in blankets, socked feet sticking out underneath, and we laugh like we’ve never laughed before. No stifled snorts, no polite smiles, just you, me, and the world laughing along with us. 

Your pajamas are pink like mine, and I’m relieved when you turn away to slide them on. I catch sight of your bare shoulder. I have this dream where you turn around and my eyes lock on you, and you, like Medusa, turn me to stone. There I’d stand, frozen, the laughter around me deafening, sucking me down into the floor as I watch you fade away. While you’re turned, I close my eyes, tight enough to see color and tight enough to clear my thoughts. I hold your wants above my own. I’d gladly stay stone if you asked me to. 

As girls, we are storytellers. You tell me you have all the secrets of the world, and I wait patiently for you to let me hear them. This is our purpose, you say, because we share the truth to keep each other safe. I think then, about safety, about the way we feel untouchable in a world we borrow from our brothers. We’re safe, I think, because no one else knows what we know.

We lay on the floor in the dark, and your stories come out like wind, swirling around our heads and pushing us up towards our secret world. Moments play before us like a film reel, our bodies outstretched on the floor, the ceiling our screen. 

You’re in the classroom, our classroom, and you’re walking towards the coat room. In your hand is a n0te, a small, white square folded ten times over. 

I pass you notes sometimes, on pink index cards with my favorite gel ink pen. They contain love letters to our life - a new sticker you took from your sister, a joke from my candy wrapper. Sometimes, you’ll hang one inside your desk and turn back to look at me, and it feels like no one can touch us. 

The film goes on, and you step beside the coats, unfolding, and then I see you read the words Kiss Me, a dare from someone who passes you white notes that you carry in secret. The wind kicks up and it feels like fireflies are whirling around inside my body. My eyes squeeze closed again and I’m glad we’re here like this, in the dark, so you can’t see the way my cheeks flush. When my eyes open you’re still onscreen, turning the paper over and there’s someone else in the room with us, it’s a boy, and he’s exactly what you like, and he’s taking the note back, his note, and he’s kissing you.

You roll over, look over at me, and smile. I smile back, a wildfire in my stomach now, burning hard enough to send bile into my throat. I tell you a secret– I’ve never kissed a boy, and you smile because you know I couldn’t lie to you if I wanted to. It’s easy, you say, and I imagine it is. I look up at the ceiling again. When I close my eyes, it’s me in the coat room. He dares me to kiss him, and I do, and I do it well, and he likes it. 

I turn back to you, and want to reach out and trace the bridge of your nose. What does it feel like? I ask. You hold my gaze for a moment, and then the wind lifts us again into the world you created for us. Look at this, you say, and point up to the ceiling. There we are, the two of us, spinning, each in our own direction, and the fireflies are spinning around with us. Out of our heads come these golden streams of llight and you touch my shoulder, See there? You ask, That’s what it feels like, like all of the light in the world is coming from you. 

I hold onto that light and close my eyes again. I’m back in the coat room, and when I look down I’m holding a pink note. I read it, and the letters take familiar shape. We’re in the coatroom now, together, and I’m looking right at you and I’m not stone anymore but a million fireflies moving together. I step closer and brush your hair back from your eyes. You glow in my light. Everything is warm. We’re moving closer and time has stopped again and you smile at me, always knowing more than I do. This is it, I think, and I wait to feel your breath, but when my eyes open again it’s dark and cold and we’re back on the floor, credits rolling above us. 

I pull the blanket up higher, burying my nose. You yawn and turn to face me, propping your chin up in your palm. What do you think? You ask, Can you imagine it? Almost, I say, and it’s true. 

When the silence feels heavy, we sleep. My bed is big enough for two, and you’ve crawled in under the covers. The way my body feels in the dark, feet away from yours makes me want to rip the sheets off and run. I sweat, counting the inches between our shoulders, fingertips, feet. But when I close my eyes we are so beautiful, fireflies showering light, our fingers interlaced and our hair intertwined, tendrils flicking like wildfire. I’m warm here, beside you, thinking of my hand reaching out and finding yours, and thinking of touching your waist so softly that neither of us knows the truth from a dream. 

The daylight is unkind to us. When we wake up, we aren’t girls anymore. There’s nothing wild left, the light no longer warm but exposing. For a second, laying there as you stretch and sit up, I try to remember what the darkness felt like. Like magic, I think, I know I’m right. Time moves ahead, that I know. We move too, out of bed, out of magic, out of girlhood. We’ll be in the coat room again. I’ll look for the firefly jar when you go.