This is a story based on real people and actual events. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.
When I was 16 I was in a car accident. I ended up with a fractured ankle and sprained ligaments in my left knee. When I was taken to the hospital they weren't really sure what was going on in my knee so they just threw a cast on my whole leg and sent me on my way. It wasn't until my ankle healed six weeks later and the cast came off that we found out about the ligaments, since my knee had blown up like a balloon while the rest of my leg atrophied. It would take a lot of long, hard rehabilitation to get the full range of motion back in my knee; only I never went to rehab. It wasn't until after I graduated high school that I took to riding my bike around the neighborhood to strengthen my knee. And that's how I ended up in front of my old friend Jenny's house.
Looking back now it seems so odd that I had a female best friend in high school. I was completely socially awkward. I was interested in girls, but the ones I was interested in had no interest in me. Then I met Jenny. Even though we only lived a couple of miles apart we didn't meet until we got to high school. The way our district was carved up we went to different elementary and middle schools. Even when we got to high school it took us nearly our whole freshman year to get acquainted with each other, even though we were both in the orchestra. I played cello and she played viola. It was only on a class trip late in our freshman year that we were introduced by mutual friends. Ironically our meeting was overshadowed by another girl in our group who decided that I was her soul mate that day, but afterwards we hardly spoke again. I didn't understand it at the time and still have no idea what that was all about.
During our sophomore year we slowly began to gravitate towards each other. You know how these things start in school... recognizing each other in the hallway and saying hello... little conversations before and after orchestra that would slowly get longer and more familiar. Then we would start getting together with our mutual friends after school, my best friend at the time was another cellist named Bill, and hers was a male viola player. As best friends go, Bill left a lot to be desired for me. I was more his choice than he was mine. He smoked, drank, and chased women, and I didn't have any interest in any of those things. I was the quiet type. I enjoyed music and video games, staying in and watching television. When Bill and I would hang out he would play video games with me but I always felt that pressure to be more like him. I know, I know. I was boring. But I was who I was, and I was definitely hoping for a change in my life, and it turned out to be Jenny.
As luck would have it, so was Jenny. Soon after we became friends she had some sort of falling out with her best friend. I heard from Bill that one day she dumped a pitcher of iced tea over his head or something and that was the end of their friendship. Jenny looked to me to fill the void and I was happy to do it.
Having a female friend was different. Having a female best friend was much, much different. For one thing, it meant long phone conversations. We would get home from school in the afternoons and call each other and talk for hours. It wasn't something male friends did with each other. It's hard to even remember now what we talked about through all that time. I think Jenny did a majority of the talking. She had a rare gift of being able to remember whole conversations, or at least be able to pretend that she could remember whole conversations that she could relate to me word for word. Then she would be able to describe what they were wearing to me in perfect detail. I marveled at the way she saw the world. I would start by telling her everything that had happened in my day in 30 seconds and she would go on for an hour. I would just lay on the couch in the living room and listen to her voice.
It took me a while to realize that I was attracted to Jenny. She was 5 foot 3 but well-proportioned. She had a pretty, round face with brown eyes and thick shoulder-length brown hair. By the time my backwards teenage mind had figured it all out, we were too firmly ensconced in 'the friend zone' for me to do anything about it. At least, that was the way I thought. She was the most important thing in my life by then and the fear that making any kind of romantic overture would ruin that kept me from saying anything.
By now we were juniors. Jenny had quit the orchestra. I think a combination of the fact that she felt awkward being around Ralph, her former best friend, and the fact that she wasn't very good anyway helped her to decide to give it up. She was still my closest friend, even though we had nothing in common. We talked on the phone a lot, and she even offered to join a bowling league with me. She was a terrible bowler. Her balls used to wobble slowly down the lane and we would all make fun of her. We would make up silly names for each other to input into the electronic scorekeeper and hers was "Jen-if-ever." You know, as in if the ball would ever get down the lane. It was lame but we were 16-17 years old, and it cracked us up.
Then my car accident happened, ending my bowling career for the time being. Jenny quit along with me. I think she was relieved, because she didn't like bowling much. During my time in a cast Jenny would come and spend time with me but a change had started to come over her. One time while I was hobbling along with my crutches Jenny deliberately knocked me over. She wasn't the sweet, nice girl that I had become friends with anymore, and I didn't understand why. We would still talk on the phone, but she started talking about hating people and the negative things she started saying turned me off a little. Ralph and Bill would warn me that she wasn't a nice person and that I should distance myself from her. Well, they used harsher language than that, but I ignored them. She was my best friend, after all. By that point I was completely taken by her. I was intoxicated by her presence. I couldn't imagine my life without her. You know, all of those crazy romantic things you believe when you're young.
Another thing about Jenny was that she was completely boy crazy. It seemed like every week there was another boy in our school that she was crazy about. She would have to tell me all about it and I hated every minute of it. It made me jealous, and put me in a constant cycle of fear and relief. Fear that she would actually start dating the guy and relief when she quickly lost interest. It also made it even more difficult for me to ever find a way to tell her how I actually felt about her, since she always going on about one boy or another, when was I supposed to turn around and say, hey, what about me?
It was late in our junior year when my worst fears were realized. One of the guys that Jenny had become interested in reciprocated. She now had a boyfriend and didn't have much time for me anymore. We rapidly drifted apart, punctuated by a brief meeting in the hallway after class when I asked her why she was giving me the cold shoulder, and she replied "Nothing's wrong with me." Looking back it seems like such an offhand remark, but at the time something snapped inside of me, and I stormed off. I was determined to never speak to her again.
In our senior year we completely avoided each other. I lost track of her and didn't even know what was going on in her life. I didn't know if she was still with the guy, or if she had gone back to her previous boy craziness. We were in a pretty large school with almost 2,000 kids, so it was easy to lose track of people if you weren't in any classes with them. In the meantime I found a new best friend. A male one with a lot of the same interests as me and we hung out all the time. He knew Jenny years ago and didn't like her, and we would spend a lot of time gleefully verbally abusing her. As for my non-existent romantic life, I spent my senior year pining over two women, one a willowy redhead that I met when I had a small role in one of our school's theater productions, and the other a pretty blonde cellist, neither of which had any interest in me whatsoever. At least the pretty blonde cellist was kind enough to string me along for most of the year. It helped to keep me occupied. But I'm not bitter or anything.
Finally the end of high school came and we graduated. I was accepted to an out-of-state school, and I couldn't wait to leave my hometown. I was looking forward to a fresh start, but my knee was still bothering me. I got the idea to start riding my bike around, first just up and down the block, but as my knee got stronger during the first few weeks of summer, I would range further and further away. One day I rode all the way to Jenny's house. I don't think I consciously set out to go there, but all of a sudden, there it was. The first time I went there I stopped in front of her house and stared at it for a minute. It looked empty, anyway. I turned around and headed home. The next day I rode straight there, and I stayed a little longer. The third day I went there I saw a car in the driveway. I had been all sorts of angry and frustrated with Jenny. Angry that our friendship ended the way it did, and frustrated that nothing had ever happened between us. She had turned out to be my best chance of having some sort of romantic relationship with a girl before I left for college and nothing ever happened. I knew that I would be going away in a couple of months and it felt like nothing that had happened really mattered anymore. I remember sitting in front of her house for the longest time with a weird feeling in my gut. Do I really want to knock on her door? I had no idea what she was up to these days. Was she single? Was she engaged? Who knows what I would walk into. Finally curiously overcame my anxieties and I walked my bike up to the front door.
Jenny answered the door. She was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts. She said she was surprised to see me. I told her I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd stop by.
