We had been besties for as long as I can remember, Linda and me.
I remember us as little girls, playing with dolls together, Legos, play ovens or even just our imaginations. Our best times, our most fun, came when we let our imaginations take over.
As young teen girls, we were inseparable. We like the same shows, the same music, the same clothes, the same types of boys. And I am proud to say, we never got petty nor jealous of each other.
It was around then, she started acting a little weird. I am not talking "heads on a stake" or "going up north to find the Old Ones" type weird. No...she was just a little stand-offish. Sort of. She was a friendly, sometimes happy stand-offish with this little smile on her face that told me that she knew about something big that I did not, but that she could not tell. I asked her one night if she had lost her virginity, but she told me that she had not. When I tried to press her on what was different about her, she just smiled and shook her head.
She was there when I lost my virginity. Or, at least, in the other room. The guy was forgettable, so the hell with details there, but when I got out of the bedroom, she gave me a smile and a little clap. We left the party shortly after that. Yeah, the guy was that forgettable.
A few months later, she got hers, but with a different guy. This guy, I found out, was a hell of a lot better. Again, I was not in the room, but I could hear them. No, I did not have my ears pressed against the wall. Well, OK, I did, but I would have been able to hear them even if I did not. They were really enjoying themselves, getting loud and into it. He went all quiet for a while and she was groaning - I knew he was giving her head. Then she builds up to this loud grunting, I hear him shout out "What the..."
And it was quiet.
For a long time.
I got nervous.
I peeked into the room.
It was empty.
I went into the room. It was still as empty as empty could be. Nothing under the bed, in the closet, they weren't getting out of THOSE windows...they were simply gone. Her purse was still there, her panties were on the bed, his pants, underwear, shoes, and socks were on the floor. They were gone. Somehow.
My mind got all jumbled and I stumbled out of the room. I had my back turned to the door when there was a swirling flash and a swirling pop behind me. I turned, and there they were, sitting on the bed. He was naked from the waist down, but he was not hard a bit. She was pulling down her dress, looking very rumpled.
"What the hell?" he asked quietly.
She looked at him, opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head, grabbed her purse, got up from the bed and walked to the door. She stopped briefly when she got next to me, opened her mouth again but no sound came out, closed it again, let out a little grunt and walked out the door.
I did not see her for another three years.
By then, I was deep into college studying astrophysics, of all things. I remember getting interested in it when I was young, about the time Sappers announced his big news about the moon. I mean, who would not want to go to the moon and dig up a big diamond, right? I was studying out of state, heading for my masters. Boys did not have time for them. Rarely did I go out for anything at all, no parties, nothing like that. I was aiming for a career.
Then, one day, unexpected, she shows up. It was mid-summer, but I was still at university, doing some telescope work. I had had the night off, but I was still looking at the moon. Sappers and his crew had been up there for a while, and I just stared at that rock, wondering what they were finding up there. Exactly how big were those diamonds, I wondered.
Then, she just showed up unexpectedly.
I mean, as far as I knew, literally unexpected. One moment, I was alone on my balcony, the next, there she was. Smiling at me. But it was a nervous smile. She did not have to tell me it was I knew. Even of those years of not seeing her, I knew her enough to know something was up. Not a "hey, long time, no see" kind of nervousness. It was like a "hey, I know your head is stuck in an alligator's mouth, but I can get you out of this" kind of smile.
But she looked fucking incredible. I mean like super model incredible. After my mind caught up with seeing her again, I could still feel my heart doing that weird thing when it is in lust.
Ok...let me get something straight here. She was a friend. A great friend. A spectacular friend. But I never felt like I had a crush on her or anything. I loved her like a friend. I liked boys for sex. Ok, yeah, there were a couple of times when I saw a girl and wondered what it would be like to swap spit, but that was about it. I never thought anything like that about her. She was too much like a sister.
Not that she was not pretty. But she was my friend, damn it. You don't fantasize about jumping your friend's bones, right?
That night, I sort of did. Like I said, she looked incredible. I swear her body had gotten tighter - she was built perfectly and that little dress she hardly had on was helping that look. The hem was short enough that I could catch a glimpse of butt crack whenever she turned around. The neckline, fuck, it just fell between her breasts. They still were not huge or anything, but good grief they looked good enough to eat in that getup. It was one of those light purple kind of foldy things that hugged her body like I wanted to when I first saw her.
I did give her a hug the moment I saw her before I even said anything to her. How could I not? She was my best friend. Before even saying a word, we were hugging, I think we might have been crying just a little bit. It felt so good to see her again!
Before I even had a chance to ask her where she had been, she knitted her brow.
"What time is it?
Fine way to start a conversation after not seeing each other for years!
"Fine way to start a conversation after not seeing each other for years!" I told her.
She gave me that fake-happy patronizing smile she always gave me when she was pissed at me but didn't want to get into an argument. "Hey? How are you? What have you been up to? How have you been? What time is it, please?"
I rolled my eyes and pulled out my phone. "! 0:23."
She nodded and sat down. "Good," she said. "I had hoped I had planned it right. We have about an hour..."
"Why is the moon flickering?"
"What?" she barely squeaked the word out.
"The moon," I said, staring at it, my hands in my pocket. "It looks like it is flickering." I rubbed my eyes. "I need sleep."
"No!" she said breathlessly. "No no no no no no no!" She grunted in frustration. "This wasn't supposed to happen yet! We were supposed to have an hour!"
"What are you talking about?"
She grabbed her purse and pulled a dildo out.
"Really not what I was expecting," I said.
She looked around, then stuck the dildo onto a clear spot on the wall near the balcony, where it somehow fastened to the wall about waist high.
About that time, the moon began flickering so violently, the landscape flickered along with it.
"Is it breaking apart? I asked. "It looks like it is breaking apart."
She put her hand softly on my shoulder. "Yeah," she said quietly. "It's breaking apart."
