When my parents told me that they were retiring and moving to Florida, I was elated for them. I knew that was their lifelong dream and I was happy to see it finally coming to fruition for them.
What I was less thrilled about was them wanting me to come back home to help them gut the house of the clutter and knick knacks and memories that over forty years of living had amassed.
I agreed, took a week off of work, and flew down to help them move with as little as possible to tow with them. After catching up, and catching them up, I began to take inventory and realized a week would not be nearly enough. It would take me that long just to go through my own personal belongings I had left behind when I moved away to college.
Mom assured me that would be enough. They could handle everything else, they just didn't want to throw out anything I might have wanted to keep.
Which is how I ended up out in the garage, reminiscing nostalgically over long forgotten stuffed animals and art journals and high school year books, where I found that old picture of all of us from the lake tucked between the pages of my freshman chronicles.
I could feel the twinge in my sinuses as tears welled in my eyes. We certainly didn't know it then and it never even occurred to me in the years that followed until just now, but that picture signified the end of me and Tina's childhood.
It was the summer before high school, the summer that we both began adulthood. Albeit different ways and for different reasons.
Tina and I had met in kindergarten and quickly became friends, and just as quickly became inseparable. It was our friendship that had eventually made our parents become friends as well.
Play dates with our moms turned into dinners at each others houses turned into cook-outs with our dads turned into weekend adventures at amusement parks or camping at the lake.
I marveled at how well the photo had turned out, what with me and my family being so dark-skinned and the Matheson's being so white and pale. Usually the photos we all took ended with me shrouded in indecipherable shadow or Tina glowing obscurely. But this photograph captured everyone's smile in perfect detail.
Tina and I had our arms around each other's shoulders and our free hands on our hips. Our faces were cheek to cheek as we stood in front of our parents, me in front of the hers and she in front of mine. It was a beautiful contrast that would have seemed orchestrated had I not known for a fact my dad had just thrown his camera at a stranger at the paddle boat rental and asked him to get us all in the shot.
Our fathers each held their wives about the waist just behind us, all four smiling as big as my best friend and I.
I wondered if that picture was the last time Mr. Matheson had touched his wife. She hired a lawyer and filed for divorce the day after we got back.
Tina was devastated. Hell, I was devastated. It was the first time in my life I realized just how easy a world could shatter. My idealistic perception of life had been ruined, even the most perfect and picturesque all American dream could sometimes be just that, a dream.
Mr. and Mrs. Matheson's divorce was finalized by the time Tina and I began our high school careers. Tina stayed with her dad, stayed with me, stayed clinging to the only life she had known while her mother abandoned her and moved out of the Philly suburb and back upstate.
At least, Tina had felt she had been abandoned. Mr. Matheson too. They both became withdrawn and sullen as they pulled back from everyone, even each other, and retreated inside themselves.
It hurt, to have my best friend distance herself from me. I felt abandoned too.
Tina and I were had been so close that the kids in middle school teased us about being lovers. In full disclosure, we had indeed experimented with each other, but only to the extent to realize that neither of us was gay.
And it hurt hard, to lose her. And the harder I tried to stop it from happening, the further she slipped away from me.
It hit my parents hard as well. They tried everything they could to help and support Tina and her father. They tried to keep the weekend traditions alive but were met with resistance that turned to indifference.
They constantly invited the two over for dinner but the offer was never excepted. They began making dinners and showing up on their front door uninvited. We would all sit around their huge dining table in silence staring down at our plates until Mr. Matheson decided he had been cordial enough and excused himself.
My folks would leave the leftovers, wash the dishes, and return home dejected. I would spend the night with Tina in her room, trying to get through to her, bring her back to me. Usually she would just act like I wasn't even there, sometimes she would throw back the blankets and invite me into her bed and I would hold her while she cried herself to sleep in my arms.
Gradually, my parents efforts became less and less as they slowly gave up. Eventually, they stopped completely. But I would not. I was determined to get my friend back. I was determined to be a happy little kid with a happy little friend again.
Weeks turned to months and so on. Occasionally I would get a glimmer from her, talking about old times or playing certain songs for her. A light would twinkle in her eyes and I would silently rejoice at the return of my friend. But that light would extinguish itself just as quickly as it had sparked, like she had reminded herself that she was supposed to be sad or depressed or angry, and I would lose her again.
We were well into our second semester of our freshman year when she turned to drugs. It started with weed and alcohol, as is usually the case, and I tried to indulge her. I had hoped that partaking with her would help us reconnect on some level.
But the weed made me tired and lazy and the alcohol made me stupid and clumsy. I tried to convince her we should stop, but she ran wild.
She tried ecstasy and from there coke, crack, ketamine and anything else anyone put in front of her. And she fucked anyone and everyone that hooked her up with a little something something.
I was having to rescue her more and more, dragging her kicking and screaming from party after party while the boys who hadn't got a turn on the village bicycle that night tried to stop me.
It got to the point I was carrying pepper spray and knuckle dusters with me everywhere I went. It got to the point where I was doing her homework for her so she wouldn't flunk out of school. It got to the point where it got to be too much.
I was tired. Exhausted. I was malnourished and emaciated. My GPA had dropped nearly to hers. I was constantly fighting with my parents who thought that it was me that was on drugs.
So I went to her father and told on her.
I didn't want to get her in trouble, that wasn't my intention. But I just didn't know what else to do. I couldn't tell my parents, they would put me under lock and key to keep me from the bad influence that Tina had become. Or worse, get the authorities involved.
And I couldn't go to the school counselor because they would definitely get the authorities involved.
So I dumped it in her father's lap in the hopes I could wash my hands of the whole mess, or at the very least he could help me reel her back before she got herself killed.
