When You Wish Upon A Sandwich

I remember my first days of junior high well. It was a zoo, and I was the runt—undersized, out of place, and terrified. A classic teen movie tragedy. With my stiff, prep school manner and a wardrobe best described as Costco-core, I stood out like a hen in a cage of peacocks.

My parents couldn’t afford my academy anymore. Thus, I was taken. Marooned in a realm of cliques and chaos, a far cry from the genteel order I’d always known. When lunch finally came, I curled into the farthest corner of the lunchroom and made it my hiding spot.

On one such period, I was busy staring dejectedly into my sandwich, willing it to belch even a crouton of wisdom. I had the whole week ahead of me.

“Hello,” someone said from above.

Had my PB&J sent an angel instead? I lifted my head.

In the sea of unfamiliar faces, I hadn’t noticed her. She was pretty, with big, curious eyes and thick piles of auburn hair. Her shirt had an aggressive amount of sequins, and her wrists and fingers were lined with blinding jewelry. She jingled like a one-man band as she sat across from me.

“Uh…hi,” I fumbled.

Her smile was as bright as morning. “I’m Kara.”

I blinked, still halfway curled over my sandwich, trying to decide whether she was serious or not. Unpacking her lunch bag, Kara took no notice of my staring and began to talk.

Boy, did Kara talk.

Auctioneers envied her talent. She moved at a million miles per hour, educating me on everything from her dog’s allergies to how chemistry teachers were employed witches in a single breath. Kara launched into a tirade about the glares she got at her church (as if “she wore sin itself over her shoulders”) and how lemons are the most evil of the fruits. She told me that when she was bored, she liked to tell her troubles to the pigeons or name passing clouds. Nothing and everything made sense with her.

Once in a while Kara would stop to look expectant at me. I’d offer a question or a raise of the brows in response. Apparently satisfied, she’d start again. Haltingly, so I’d catch a glimpse of insecurity on her face. But soon enough her mouth caught momentum and was running full steam ahead. I didn’t mind Kara’s ramblings. I liked the thoughtful, odd girl before me, and was happy to be her chosen confidant.

After school, Kara thought we should take a walk to the ice cream parlor that evening. I didn’t hesitate. I just followed. She ordered a dazzling pink scoop with thick taffy ribbons they called Strawberry Swirl. I, meanwhile, savored a conservative lump of vanilla.

“Wow,” she said. “You’re a wild one, huh? Not French vanilla. Plain. Were you, like, born eighty or something?”

I couldn’t help laughing. Even then, Kara wasn’t afraid to tease me. And even then, I was charmed.

That was how Kara and I began. Though vastly different flavors, something about us worked. We were like magnets—opposite poles, drawn to each other in a snap. From then on, every Monday, we’d return to that same parlor. It became a ritual. Rain or shine, snow or sleet, we made our pilgrimage to our confectionery Mecca. We were sugar hounds, the both of us.

As our friendship grew, it was the little things Kara did that meant the most. Her waiting for me at lunch. The matching tattoos she doodled on our sneakers. The nickname she bestowed on me, though I would’ve hated it from anyone else. The way Kara looped her arm through mine like it belonged there. How despite her otherwise infallible appearance, she shrank a bit around our other peers, or folded her arms as if bracing for a wind. I’d see myself in her then.

Kara was comfort. She was a gift I didn’t know I wanted.

Of the many things Kara did for me, she also showed me girlhood. She taught me to braid, making me practice on her hair, though I must’ve yanked it a hundred times until I learned. When Kara got lip gloss for her twelfth birthday, she swiped it on every chance she had. I remember once when we were in her bedroom, flipping through tabloids on the floor.

“Do you wanna try?” Kara asked, lathering it over herself.

“No thanks,” I shrugged.

“Oh come on,” she scooted towards me. “You knooow you waaant tooooo!” Kara sung.

She suddenly turned, moving the tiny brush from her lips to mine. It was warm from her pocket and sticky-sweet. Kara leaned in, her face drawn in quiet concentration. I took in her scent, a feminine blend of candy and CVS perfume.

A few seconds passed and it occurred to me I wasn’t resisting enough. So I puckered while she painted it over me, giving as theatrical a protest possible without moving.

“Shush,” she said pointedly, “I’m working.”

When Kara was done she backed and admired her masterpiece.

“Go look,” she nodded to her mirror.

It was bright. Eighties roller skater bright. Maybe I hadn’t noticed on Kara, since she was always iridescent, but it was all sorts of wrong on me.

“See? It’s pretty,” she insisted.

With that, I was the loveliest girl in the world. I shone that afternoon, from Kara’s makeup and my own steely confidence.

Kara and I became best friends. The kind with cheesy bracelets and choreographed handshakes and pinky promises. Oh, and we had sleepovers, ones that reeked of nail polish and giggling. She’d subject me to the corniest rom-coms, where the girl and guy trip into each other, have ten almost-kisses, and give gushing speeches in the torrential rain. I’d roll my eyes and give the same tired protest every time.

“I don’t understand why you get so worked up about all this. These movies are stupid. They’re going to end up together. They always do, it’s the same thing every time.”

She’d just scoff and throw popcorn at my cheek.

Once the movie ended, it gave her a spark. Eyes shining, Kara would fall back onto the sleeping bag beside me and launch into her latest boy saga, a long epic of who she liked, what he said to her in English, whether she should “accidentally” brush against him tomorrow, et cetera. I never knew what advice to give, but she seemed to enjoy asking. Her confidence fizzled by the next day, anyway (not one to admit to fear, Kara preferred to say she’d “moved on”, or was “a different person now”).

But then it was my turn.

“Okay, now yours,” Kara would demand. “Tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me. And don’t say nobody, that’s boring.”

She already knew my response, of course, earning me the second scoff of the night. She’d try again, naming every remotely acceptable male peer I had in search of a tell. Eventually, Kara tired herself out and resigned, and I’d grin like I’d won something.

We finished with my favorite part, when Kara and I would lay together and whisper out our futures. These dreams were closer to fantasies, doubtful even by our standards: movie star jobs, Paris mansions, impossible pets. We’d invent adult lives like they were dresses to be tried on. But that didn’t matter; we had itchy souls.

Kara and I would play that game as long as we could, until our voices slurred and our sentences trailed off into sleep.

We had two perfect years. But something happened during our second summer. Not as obvious as an argument. It wasn’t a sudden, slap-in-the-face change. It was more like a slow, steady overflow. And when Kara looked at me too long, when she excitedly squeezed my hand, or when she leaned into me in laughter, I felt it spill over.

Finally, alone in bed, telling no one but the dark, I said it: I love her.

I was only thirteen when I fell for Kara. Good lord, it scared me. I didn’t know what to do with such a feeling. Being with her filled me with a hot guilt. I sickened myself, truthfully, and began to pull away. I turned from Kara’s hugs before she could reach me. I held my breath when we sat too close. I became choosy with my words, to the point of emptiness.

“Gracie, what’s going on with you?” She confronted me one Monday.

I pushed my ice cream around, avoiding her eyes. “Huh?”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No,” I said, trying to smile.

“Well then what is it?!” She cried, almost angry. Kara took a breath. “Cee-Cee, you can tell me. And if you don’t want to, then just let me help. You’re freaking me out.”

I met her gaze for a moment. Kara’s already big eyes were huge with worry. I dropped my head back down.

“I’m good,” I dismissed.

We said nothing as we finished our treats. But I knew what she thought.

“Why would you lie?”

After that, nothing was the same. I could see that I hurt Kara. But I decided the way she looked at me then, however sadly, couldn’t be worse than how she’d look knowing the truth.

We graduated and went our separate ways. Kara went to high school across town, with the arts program she’d wanted. I’d lost the nerve to follow her.

I was able to go back to the academy, though I didn’t enjoy its hushed formality anymore. I did rekindle some vague friendships I’d made years before, and later, in college, I went through a couple of girlfriends. But no one was Kara. People say nothing sticks with you like first love, and I wished it weren’t true. I thought about Kara until she was almost mythic, ashamed for killing our closeness. I kept everything. The letters she wrote me, our blurry Polaroids, the scrunchies I borrowed. I displayed them as if they were fine art or ancient artifacts. I often imagined we’d meet again, that I’d confess it all and she’d understand and maybe we would build a life together. I never stopped hanging on.

Ten years have passed. I am, for all intents and purposes, an adult now.

One ordinary afternoon, I stopped at the grocery store on my way back from work. I carried enough to make my credit card sweat as I turned into the Grains aisle. That’s when I saw her. Her hair was chopped, her clothes were colorless, and her jewelry didn’t flash. She looked quieted. Mature.

Yet still, it was Kara.

I stood beside her and pretended to inspect bread, my heart thudding.

“Hello,” I blurted.

She considered me. “Uh…hi.”

“So,” my heart was hammering, “how have you been?”

She smiled politely, eyes scanning me. There wasn’t a flicker of recognition.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Do we know each other?”

A lump grew in my throat.

“You know,” I said, “I think I got you confused with someone else. My bad,” I swallowed the moment, the time, the ache.

She laughed and wished me a good day. Then she walked away. Eventually, I did too. I finished my grocery list and went home.

I didn’t know it then, but the day I realized I loved Kara was the day I stopped being a child. The day she forgot me—that’s when I learned what it meant to grow up.