You've got a friend

We met in second grade. I was new to Annunciation School, and being new is the worst. Especially when the chubby kid in class pulls up your uniform skirt and shows your underpants to the entire class. At any rate, I met Erin and Cara in 2nd grade. They were part of a tight-knit group of gymnasts who practiced within the Minneapolis parks system. They did cartwheels and back walk-overs on the blacktop during recess. They had Diadora sneakers. They had thick dark hair long enough to wear in ponytails. I was lanky and liked to write in my journal.

We were not friends.

Fast forward to fifth grade. We're now all sufficiently into our awkward stages. Erin and Cara are still gymnasts, but they've expanded their social circle beyond the leotard crowd.

We are still not friends.

I write in my journal about how I despise these girls, with their endless self-confidence, their non-stop laughter, their joie de vivre. Not that I knew that word in fifth grade, but that's what I would have used had I known it. My largest grievance with them is that they hog the rats we are raising in Mrs. Smith's "Science" class. One rat is fed sugar water alone, the other whole milk. I think it was meant to be a lesson on nutrition but it was really just an excuse for us to argue over who was going to get to have their uniform shirt pissed on by a rodent. Erin and Cara hold the rats until the minute before the bell rings, then dumping them off on whatever poor soul is begging to hold them, their faces sinking when they realize whoever is holding the rat when the class ends is responsible for clean-up.

We are still not friends.

But then something happens. My family moves across Lyndale Avenue, to 54th and Humboldt. Suddenly I am an official resident of Southwest Minneapolis. I walk up busy 54th Street to school. And guess who else does?

Cara is the one who remembers all the details, but that was the impetus for our friendship: geography. Cara would walk from Newton to Humboldt, and together we would climb the hill to Dupont, where we would wait until we saw Erin bolting from her front door, racing up the street with her breakfast in hand and her bookbag open.

Today, what brought us together has yet to tear us apart. Three girls in three time zones and three very different careers, communicating through chain e-mails, text messages, and drunken late-night phone calls (guilty).

A month from now, I'll be on a plane back to New York after watching one of my best friends in the world walk down the aisle. It's strange, because I still think of us as children, even when we're talking about jobs and wedding dresses and 401ks.

Erin and Cara are like a time capsule. I can't see them and not instantly feel like I'm in 5th or 7th or 11th grade again, the same way I can't see a can of Diet Coke without thinking of the fact that Cara drinks about 10 cans a day, or smell fresh-cut grass without remembering our escapades on the golf course. These girls are my lifeline, a thread that connects who I used to be to who I am and who I'm becoming.

We're still friends.

(But I'm keeping that journal, bitches).