Handprints

Skipping they tumbled along the trail made hard from years of childhood feet running along. Hand in hand, laughing, vision blurred by heartbreak. Together they slipped under the branch of the big oak tree, bumping heads that never used to reach. They slide into a scene of the past whispering like a call back to a time long forgotten. Here, they sat, like not a moment has passed. Her dress, a beautiful million dollar dress for the happiest day of her life, was torn from the undergrowth and just as dirty as the childhood play clothes caked in mud by the end of the day. Her head spins from the pain of betrayal, the memory of him burned in her mind. 

“Hey..” she whispers in her ear, holding her close, “it’s okay.” Her hand slides over hers as they sit on the branch, smooth from little innocence skidding along it. She lets the white vail fall, laughing from both through the tears. Together they sit in the safest of places, a child’s fort built with walls that still remained inside them both. Best friends since the beginning. 

“You know, I never really liked his hair,” she murmurs. The other glances up, a subtle smile just resting on her lips. Here again, on the worst end to the happiest day. His hands on her, the memory sends pain sparkling along her spine. 

“Right..” she whispers, “he has loser hair.” They giggle together and nothing has changed. They’re back as children, braided pigtails folded over their shoulders. Head full of dreams, heart full of possibilities. 

“You remember where we put it?” she asks. 

Shrugging, the other stands up, her eyes tracing along the trees. 

“You think I should go back?” she mutters.

Rolling her eyes, her friend places her hand on her shoulder, “let him explain why you aren’t there,” she says, “forget him, forget them.” 

When she sighs, her whole body shutters from the pain inside, the realization that a time in her life is forever over. 

“Look, I found it!” the other girl calls back. She turns, her friend’s shuffling through the leaves around the base of an ancient maple tree with life no longer running through its veins. She runs her hand along the bottom until it fits in a little grove. The other girl walks over, curious. Together they pry the bark back and slip out a little wooden box. She laughs, for the moment the darkness is run out by the carefree feelings of childhood wonder. 

“It’s still here,” she says smiling.

“Of course it is,” the other girl scoffs, “We made it to last, did we not?” 

Her friend smiles, “well we did bless it with an absurd amount of glitter glue.”

“Right, I’m sure it was the glitter glue, not the waterproof coating we put on it a few years later.”

She winks, “ever-changing, just like us. Though, I do think you’re greatly underestimating the power of glitter glue.”

They smile and together sinks into the leaves, their backs pressed against the tree that had been here since the beginning. Eagerly she sits peering at the box. The girl folded over her sleeve and gently runs the dust from the surface of the box. Beneath are two little handprints faded from time. She brushes her thumb against the small faded blue one stained in the wood. 

“Well..?” 

“Be patient, I’m getting there.” Together they lift the little latch and pull the box open. The girl inhales a sharp breath. Loopy handwriting drawn in sparkly purple pen lines the cover. Smiling sadly, she pulls out a little scrap of paper. 

Its a picture. 

“Remember..?” she starts.

“Yeah,” she whispers clutching it in her hand. “It’s the day you left for Vancouver; the last time we came here.”

Her friend smiles giving her a quick wink. She sweeps the hair out of her friend’s face, removing a silver flower tangled in her hair. 

She looks at her, “it rained that day.”

“It wasn’t all bad.”

“I guess,” she sighs, “I can’t believe how long ago that was.”

Together they pear at the tiny photo of two girls, so much younger. Laughing and crying swept up in a hug. Pack bags off to the side, university map resting on top. The sky is cloudy but the grass shines bright green. Blurry people stand candid in the background. 

The girl in the white dress begins shuffling through the pictures and paper within the box. 

“What’re you looking for?”

Ignoring her, she continues searching until she pulls a crinkled old photo from the very bottom of the stack. 

“Is that..?” her friend mumbles.

“The first day we ever met.”

The wind blows lightly through the girl’s hair. It ruffles the papers and carries on through the woods. They stare into the past, a vision of what used to be. Two girls, one making faces at her mother for insisting on taking yet another picture of moving day. The other reaching up, bearly aware of the camera. She’s carefully placing a crown of woven dandelions onto her new friend’s head. The flowers are already coming apart, one is flopping out right into her face. Kneeling in the lawn, both covered in the grass stains of youthful innocence and joy.

Out they pull, one from a little girl dreaming of tea parties. Another from a different girl wishing she could play baseball alongside her brothers. One from the years of anger and rebellion after a fight with the parents. A shred from a girl hoping that boy would notice her. A smooth cream picture with the hope of dream schools. A torn corner from two girls heading on different paths. One from the day her best friend moved across the country. Memory after memory of two girls growing up, away, but not apart. Each piece whispering in their ears of different little girls from places almost forgotten buried deep inside. 

Papers scatter the ground around them. Minutes stretch to hours. She hugs her knees close as tears roll down her face. The world seems bigger now, how to find anything in such an immense world?  

“Hey,” her friends whisper placing a hand on her shoulder, “it’s going to be okay, it always was.” 

“Life used to be so much simpler, didn’t it?” she says softly, her voice almost lost in the wind. “Do you ever wish we could go back, back to the little girls who believe anything was possible?” 

“Sometimes.” 

They sit together, leaning in each other as they stare out into the wood. 

“Things aren’t so different now,” she says, “for one, we still have no idea what we’re doing.” Her friend laughs and hand in hand slowly they stand up once more leaving two handprints indented in the soil. 

“And for another, I still have you.”