Our Roots Are Tangled

We met when we were ten, and although the memory is vague, my parents have told me the story so many times that it’s seared itself into my head, and I couldn’t forget it if I tried.

We were in the library at the same time that day, and we were looking at the same section of books. Apparently, you loved fantasy as much as I did, which I found to be quite the shock. We got to talking, and we found that despite the similar taste in genre, we had read few of the same books.

At the time, my favorite book in the whole world was Fablehaven by Brandon Mull, and yours was the famous Harry Potter series. I had never read the books; witches and wizards had always appealed less to me than fairies and dragons, and you felt the opposite way. 

We agreed, that day, to each read one of the other’s favorite books, and we would come back the next weekend to share what we though of it. Neither of us had many friends who liked to read - your parents thought you were strange, and the only reader I knew was my mom, who only read romance novels, and kids just don’t like books - so we thought it would be great to talk about.

We did; by some unseen force of nature, we both remembered to come back to the library on the same day and talk about our books, and I had to admit to you that Harry Potter was “as cool as one could expect” - your mouth had dropped at the statement, according to my parents - and I remember you telling me that Fablehaven was as good as one could expect for something made for girls.

When we went into the seventh grade, I remember that we had entertained the idea of dating before laughing it off. “Friends forever,” we had agreed, and we didn’t want anything more than that. Having a friend of the opposite sex - one you didn’t expect anything more than friendship from and one who expected just as little from you - was a refreshing change in the years where every boy and girl who hung around each other had to be dating or in love.

You and I were different from them, and not in a “we weren’t like other kids” way that made us seem more attractive to others. (That was a cliche we both hated with a passion and made fun of.) We just preferred to read our books together; I was far too in love with too many fictional characters to bother with dating a real boy, and you were already focused on getting into one of the Ivy Leagues at the time.

Kids our age didn’t understand that we weren’t dating; they thought we were lying about it, embarrassed to admit that we were in love with each other or scared that our parents would tear us apart. When we tried to tell them that we weren’t dating, they gave us these knowing looks before walking off, and it continued all the way into freshman year.

By that time, most people had figured out that boys and girls could hang out together, but the friendship you and I had still seemed as if it was extraordinary to our other friends. My friends would joke - “You two are going to get married,” or, “It’s the typical childhood-friend love story,” - and then they would leave us be for the time being, and when they rejoined me in the reality where you and I would never date, they just smiled and said, “I know.”

I think the one thing that really threw them off was how affectionate we were with each other. We had been friends for four years at this point - a good portion of our childhood - and we were comfortable around each other. Walking through the halls, we would hold hands; and when I felt unwell in gym class, you and I would sit against the bleachers with my head lying in your lap while we debated over whether a certain film adaptation we had watched was better than the book.

Our friendship continued like that until we graduated, and as fate would have it, we had to depart. You got into one of the Ivy Leaguesyou had been working towards since middle school  - Harvard, all the way in Massachusetts - and I got into a Christian school near home, where I went in for a journalism degree.

Over the years of college, we grew apart. Our calls started off as nightly, calling just to talk about our days and make fun of the typical college student - “And, oh my God, Jeremy kissed Rebecca in the middle of class,” and “Did I tell you that Lucy caught Dick cheating on her? What more can you expect from a guy named Dick, honestly?” - and slowly, they started to wane off until we got to the point where we only really talked to each other over breaks, when you came home to visit your family.

I always felt bad when you would take a whole day to sit at the library and read a book with me instead of spending that much needed time with your family, but you always insisted that it was worth it and you had a good time when I brought it up, so I eventually let the matter drop, and our time in the library became more and more like when we were two kids who just wanted to know that we were enjoying ourselves.

I suppose that, at the end of the day, some friendships can last from childhood through adulthood, no matter what distance needs to be travelled and how far the colleges you go to are, especially when you have the will and confidence that the two of us always had. In the words of Ally Condie, “Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that.”

With love and sincerity,

Your Favorite Reader Friend