Chapter 3
1329 Words
The first semester of college felt like holding my breath underwater. I’d chosen a small liberal arts school three states away, a place where the trees wore autumn like a crown and the library smelled of aged paper and loneliness. Jamie picked UCLA—sun-soaked, sprawling, a universe away from our sticky summers and creaking bridges. We promised to call every Sunday.
We didn’t.
At first, her texts were novels. 'The ocean is SO cold but I swam anyway! Met this girl in my art class who does murals with coffee stains. Miss your voice. Call me?'
I’d reply with photos of my dorm’s cracked window, frost etching the glass like lace. 'Looks like Elsa sneezed on it', she’d joke. But by October, her messages dwindled to emojis: a sunset, a frog, a bridge. Mine became essays she never had time to read.
'Psych 101 is brutal. My roommate hums show tunes in her sleep. The dining hall only serves beets on Thursdays, and they taste like regret.'
She’d reply hours later: 'Same lol'.
I traced the red yarn bracelet she’d retied before I left, its fibers fraying like my patience.
---
In November, she missed my birthday.
I waited by my dorm phone until midnight, a cupcake from the vending machine melting in my hand. The wrapper stuck to my fingers, chocolate smearing like a child’s finger-painting. Down the hall, someone blasted Bon Iver, the mournful chords seeping under my door. 'Happy birthday to me' , I thought, licking frosting off my thumb.
When the clock ticked past 12:01, I called her.
“Em! Hey!” Her voice was muffled, drowned by bass and laughter. “Hold on—”
The noise shifted—a door slamming, then silence. “Sorry, some of us went out for Kara’s thing. What’s up?”
“Today’s my birthday.”
A beat. “Oh shit.shit. Em, I’m sorry—”
“Forget it.”
“No, let me fix this. I’ll send a care package! Those cookies you like, the ones with the—”
“Jamie. It’s fine.”
She sighed, static crackling between us. “College is just… a lot, you know?”
I knew. I knew about the all-nighters she pulled for her art classes, the frat parties she “hated but went to anyway,” the new friends whose names I’d stopped trying to memorize. Last week, she’d FaceTimed me at 2 a.m., her pupils wide, a boy’s laughter echoing behind her. “This is Derek! He does spoken word poetry about his ex’s eyeliner!” I’d hung up, claiming bad Wi-Fi.
“Yeah,” I said. “A lot.”
The line went quiet. For a moment, I heard the Pacific—or maybe it was just the rustle of her sheets as she moved. “Remember that time we tried to bake a cake in my Easy-Bake oven?” she said suddenly. “We used gummy worms instead of frosting?”
I smiled despite myself. “You said it was ‘avant-garde.’”
“And you said it looked like roadkill.”
We laughed, the sound fragile, fleeting. Then someone shouted her name, and she gasped. “Gotta go. Love you!”
The dial tone hummed. I ate the cupcake in one bite.
---
At winter break, we collided like mismatched puzzle pieces.
She burst into my house smelling of coconut sunscreen and airport pretzels, her hair streaked with California gold. “Em!” She lunged, hugging me so tight my ribs creaked. “You’re here.”
For a moment, it was okay. We baked cookies shaped like bridges, burning the edges until they tasted like charcoal. We binge-watched The Office, her head in my lap, my fingers absently twisting her curls.
But when I mentioned my poetry workshop—“I wrote a sonnet about the bridge”—she scrolled through t****k, nodding without looking up.
When she raved about her sculpture class—“I’m working with reclaimed wood, it’s so raw!”—I counted the cracks in the ceiling, each fissure a silent scream.
“Let’s go to the bridge,” she said on her last night, tugging my sleeve.
“It’s freezing.”
“So?” She grinned, that old dare in her eyes. “Scared?”
The cold bit through my gloves as we trudged through the woods. Moonlight carved shadows into the snow, our breath hanging in ghosts. The bridge groaned under our weight, frost glazing the ropes like diamond veins. Jamie walked backward, her mittens brushing mine.
“Remember when we thought this thing was gonna collapse?”
“It still might.”
She laughed, but it dissolved into fog. “I miss this. Miss you.”
The words hung, fragile. I wanted to catch them, but my hands were numb. “You didn’t call.”
“You didn’t either.”
A branch snapped in the woods. Somewhere, an owl mourned.
“It’s different out there,” she whispered. “I feel… lost.”
“Then come back.”
She stopped, her boots scraping ice. “It’s not that simple.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re not there!”
The bridge swayed. Or maybe it was me.
She grabbed the railing, knuckles white. “You could visit. Surprise me.”
I thought of empty savings accounts, of midterms, of Mom’s tired smile when I offered to skip spring break. “I can’t.”
“Right.” She turned away. “You never could.”
---
By May, we were strangers with matching bracelets.
I graduated early, a quiet ceremony in a half-empty hall. Mom snapped photos, her hands shaking. “Did Jamie…?”
“She’s busy,” I said, adjusting my cap.
Afterward, I sat on the auditorium steps, my gown pooling around me like ink. The sky bruised purple, and I wondered if she’d remember the pact we’d made at fourteen: “No matter what, we’ll be there for each other’s graduations. Pinky swear!”
My phone buzzed. A text: *Congrats grad!!!* Followed by a selfie of her on a beach, a boy’s arm slung over her shoulder. His fingers dug into her waist, possessive.
I blocked her number.
---
She showed up in August, pounding on my door at midnight.
“You ghosted me,” she slurred, mascara streaking her cheeks like war paint. Behind her, a taxi idled, its radio blaring a pop song about heartbreak.
I crossed my arms. “You forgot.”
“I called ! You changed your number—”
“After six months of silence? Yeah.”
She swayed, clutching the doorframe. “I drove fourteen hours.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m hurting!” Her scream startled the crickets into silence. “Why won’t you fight for us?!”
“Why won’t you stay?!”
The words hung, sharp as shattered glass.
She laughed, bitter. “You’re still stuck on that bridge. But I’m not that girl anymore.”
She turned sharply, her heel catching on the loose gravel of my driveway. For a heartbeat, she wobbled—arms pinwheeling, balance lost—before righting herself with a choked gasp. The taxi driver, impatient and oblivious, leaned on the horn. The blare sliced through the night, a sound as harsh as the words we’d hurled.
“Jamie—” I reached out instinctively, but she was already moving, stumbling toward the car. Her silhouette blurred in the taxi’s headlights, a shadow fraying at the edges. The door slammed. Tires spat gravel as the car peeled away, taillights bleeding red into the dark.
I stood there long after the engine’s growl faded, the silence settling like ash. At my feet, something glinted: her red yarn bracelet, snapped and abandoned in the scuffle. I crouched to retrieve it, the fibers damp with dew or tears, and wondered when we’d started breaking things we swore we’d never lose.
- Writer
