Eva

Eva

Close your eyes. Don't open them, or it won't work. You have to let go of everything. Just be.

         Eva was crazy, always had been, and probably still would be today, but she was my best friend and I needed her.  I can't think of a single memory where Eva wasn't with me. Family parties, vacations, my first day of school, my first date, my first heartbreak, she was there for all of them. She told me never to say this, that it wasn't true, but it is true: Without her, I don't think I would have made it this far. Without Eva, I would have been nothing.

         She  moved in across the street when we were both five. If it was up to me, I never would have even talked to her given my condition, (see: personality). I was so shy that I should have been legally handicapped. It was that bad. I couldn't even look someone in the eye for more than three seconds before having a panic attack, but Eva didn't care.

         Before the movers had even started unloading her family's various floral couches and Victorian Era armoires, she came running over to my front yard. I was perfectly content playing tea party with Rosie my Cabbage Patch doll, Barbie and Teddy my stuffed elephant (when I was three, I wanted a teddy bear more than anything for Christmas, but when my dad went to the store Christmas Eve, all they had was one lonely elephant and he took it. He felt really bad, so he called him Teddy and tried to tell me that it really was an Alaskan Grey Teddy Bear and that I would be special because there was only one known to exist in the entire world and I had it. I believed it too. That's something Eva tried to teach me not to do, to believe everything) but she didn't care if I was busy. She plopped right down knocking Teddy over in the process and said right out, no hesitations, "Why are your only friends toys? Don't worry, I'll be your friend. Come on," and she took my hand and led me inside my own house like she owned the place.

         I didn't even know this girl's name, but I already didn't like her. Well, not so much dislike, but didn't trust; why would she want to be friends with me? I wasn't like her at all; she was loud and confident and had no problem inviting herself into strangers' houses, but she was the first person who said they actually wanted to be my friend and I wasn't going to question it. I figured she'd soon find out what I was like and realize we weren't the kind of people who became friends with one another. But she didn't. She was different, like no one else I've ever met. She could have been friends with all the popular girls and dated all the boys in our school, but she didn't want that. She, for some reason that I still can't understand, chose me.

         So there I was, standing in the middle of the intersection of  Jefferson and Coolidge with my eyes closed (apparently our town had gone through a "Patriotic Revival" in the early sixties during Vietnam and they renamed all the streets in our town with president's names. Main Street was named after JFK, but that was one that people had a problem with. Not that they didn't love the guy, but some thought it was bad luck to name it after him while he was still alive. Despite this opposition, the town council decided to go through with it and on the morning of Friday, November 22, 1963, it was officially named after the president. Just a few hours later, he was assassinated). It was around midnight, and in our little town, no one is out later than ten so I shouldn't have been worried. That was Eva's point. That was how she saw everything. Sometimes you have to make yourself completely and totally vulnerable to see who you really are and what you're made of. I never had the slightest desire to follow that philosophy, yet there I was.

         I knew there wouldn't be any cars coming. I knew it, but I couldn't let go of the fact that I was standing in the middle of an intersection. I knew that with my luck, just my luck, there would be that one car... but no, I wasn't supposed to be thinking about that. I was supposed to forget where I was, because according to Eva, it was irrelevant. If I was going to be comfortable in life, I had to be comfortable everywhere, including standing with my eyes closed in the middle of an intersection. Especially that.

         Eva was comfortable anywhere. I remember one time when we were thirteen at our first school dance. I hadn't wanted to go in the first place, but Eva wouldn't let me stay at home. She put together an outfit for me, did my hair and even put some lipstick on me. That was the first time I ever felt pretty. Eva could do that to you, make you feel pretty, or special or talented, and she really meant it when she complimented you too. Everything she said meant something. She couldn't stand the people who just talked for the sake of talking without ever actually saying anything.

         When we walked into the gym the music was playing but no one was really dancing. A few small groups of girls were self-consciously flipping their hair and giggling as they twisted to the music, but everyone else was just standing in clusters around the edges of the room. Eva liked to dance, she was always dancing when I was with her, and she wasn't going to stop just because there would be people watching her, judging her. She walked up to the D.J. and asked him to play her favorite song from her favorite movie: Footloose by Kenny Loggins. When the music started she had already made her way to the middle of the gym and was ready to go. She started moving her feet the way they do at the beginning of the movie, but as the song built up, she was jumping and twirling and grooving all over the place having the time of her life. I could hear what people were saying and it wasn't good. To do something like that in middle school was suicide.

         Claire Danes was laughing way too loudly with her friends, that kind of obnoxious laugh that bitchy girls do to show how much cooler they are than everyone else. The kind they make even more loud and more obnoxious when there are boys around too. Yeah, well when the song finished, Eva came running towards me and gave me a huge hug. "How was I? I was great right? You should have come out there with me, it would have been so much more fun." Then she heard Claire say in her high-pitched bitchy voice exactly what Eva had just said. Before Claire could laugh and before I knew what was going on, Eva had whipped around and punched her in the nose full force and broken it. Then she grabbed my arm and stormed out to the parking lot where we sat and waited for her mom to pick us up. I had never seen her mad before and it was scary. After pacing back and forth furiously for what seemed like forever, she stopped and jabbed her finger into my chest, hard, and puffed, "Don't. Ever. Let. Anyone. Make. You. Feel. Less. Than. Who. You. Are. You. Are. Perfect. They. Suck. Don't. Forget. It." Maybe Eva could live like that, but for us mere mortals, it's a bit hard not to care what other people think.

         So while I had my eyes closed, I was supposed to let go of everything. I had a lot that I was holding onto and I really didn't know how to let it go. But according to Eva, that was just because I wasn't trying hard enough.

         It was the summer after graduation and I had no idea what I was going to do.  Nothing. Nada. Eva of course had gotten accepted to Bentley where she was determined to learn how to become the most successful businesswoman ever, and me? Well, I didn't have Eva's grades or her go-getter attitude, so I was just going to community college until I figured out what I really wanted to do. I wouldn't tell anyone, but that really bothered me. I was smart, smarter than a lot of people, but I just didn't "apply myself" as one teacher put it. I don't know why I didn't try, I guess I just didn't want to stand out too much. Eva on the other hand was number one in our class where she was most comfortable.

         As I was standing there, I thought a lot about everything, and pretty soon there was nothing. I had forgotten that I was standing in the middle of the intersection of Jefferson and Coolidge. I had forgotten about Claire Danes and President Kennedy. I had forgotten about my miserable high school career and my fears about my future. I was just...being. So much so that I couldn't hear the blaring horn or Eva's screaming or see the bright lights until it was too late and I froze. This was it, I was going to die, and you know what? I was okay with it. But Eva wasn't.

         The next thing I knew I was shoved to the side with such force that I skidded all the way to the sidewalk. I felt my face and then the rest of my body. I was alive! Then wait, what had--and then I saw her. Heaped in the middle of the intersection of Jefferson and Coolidge was Eva. I won't go into the details, out of respect and because I couldn't handle reliving it, but I will say that she wasn't waking up.

         I let out a scream I never knew I could make and I ran over to her. She was dead and I had killed her. I had killed her. Why did she do that? I wanted to die! I wanted to die! She was going to do so much, she was so much better at living than me, why did she do that?

         I don't really remember much else from that night, or the next day. I don't remember who came to get her. The car hadn't stopped, but I think someone must have heard something and called the police. I want to remember the details, but I don't feel bad that I don't. Eva would say they were irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was my best friend was dead.

         I was inconsolable for the majority of the summer. I wouldn't leave my room and I had seriously thought about ending it all more than once. But then one day in late August, I decided I couldn't take the silence of my room anymore and I turned on the radio. It was Footloose. I immediately started crying, and then laughing. Laughing like a madwoman and then I started dancing, dancing like Eva danced when we were thirteen in the middle school gym. I wanted the song to last forever, but when it ended, I realized, "why me." With Eva always there, she knew I would always want to hide in her shadow. She saw who I was, but no one else did because she was always in the limelight. Her last message to me was a literal push in the right direction. It was time to start my life, she had already lived the part that she wanted to of hers and now it was my turn to live.

         She wouldn't let me admit it, she'd hit me for saying this if she was still here, but I did need Eva. Without her, I would have been nothing, but now I know how to, for the first time, be something on my own. I am Macy, I am not somebody's shadow and I never will be.