And I did. How could I not? She was so cool, so 80
fearless, and she wanted to hang out with me? It was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
“But you became friends?”
I nodded. “Everyone wanted to be her friend, but I was her best friend.” I still remember the first time she said that. Beth had just said, “Julia, you’re totally my best friend,” and Julia shrugged and said, “Amy’s mine.” The look on Beth’s face was about the best thing ever. I still remember it.
“So you met, and you became friends.” Truly, Laurie’s ability to restate what I’d just said was a rare gift. And a fucking annoying one.
“Right,” I said. “Like I just told you.”
“What did you two do?”
“I spent a lot of time at her house. Her room was . . .
it was great.” The truth was, it was everything I wanted mine to be. She had a canopy bed and posters all over her walls. I could never get my posters to look right—
they always got crooked, or curled up at the corners, so I always took them down.
Julia never even noticed stuff like that. If she wanted something on her wall she just stuck it up there, and the first time I went to her house she put in a CD and turned it up loud, sang and danced along with the music. She 81
didn’t tell me I was doing anything wrong when I joined in. She just said, “Isn’t this fun?”
That’s when I knew we would be friends forever.
“And her mother?” And there was Laurie circling in, hoping for whatever it is she hoped for during our sessions. She knew Julia’s mother hated me. It was one of the first things I told her. She’d asked me if anything made me happy, and I’d said, “Julia’s mother hates me for what happened. That makes me happy, because she should.”
“Actually, her mom used to like me,” I told Laurie now.
“Hard to believe, right? But she did. For the fi rst year Julia and I were friends, I think she hoped I’d somehow turn J into the kind of quiet loser I was before we met.
I think Julia had gotten in trouble at her old school or something. I never really knew. Her mom never said, and Julia never talked about anything that happened before she moved to town. It was like before Lawrenceville she didn’t exist.”
“You never asked her about it?”
“No,” I said. Why should I have? Whatever had brought Julia into my life was a good thing. An amazing thing.
“Did you like Julia’s mother?”
82
What an odd question. But then, it was coming from Laurie. “Sure.”
“But Julia fought with her.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t add “And?” but Laurie must have sensed it because she just said, “You didn’t fight with your own parents, right?”
Oh, please. “I didn’t want Julia’s mother to be my mother. We just got along for a little while.”
“Then what happened?”
“Julia didn’t start acting perfect.”
Laurie nodded. “What did you do when you were at her house?”
“Regular stuff. Like, right after Thanksgiving that year, she had a slumber party, and everyone who was invited came. That’s the way Julia was. People just wanted to be around her. We all stayed up talking for hours, but then, when everyone else had fallen asleep, Julia woke Caro up. We went out into the hall, and Julia told her off for all the things she and Beth and Anne Alice had done to me. She made Caro cry and I sort of felt bad for Caro, but not really because finally I wasn’t the one crying.”
“This is the same Caro you’ve mentioned before?”
I nodded, and Laurie scribbled something as I thought 83
about what happened after that. Caro had run off to the bathroom and we’d snuck downstairs and laughed about it. I felt so great. So free. We watched television for a while, and then Julia opened the cabinet where her mom kept her liquor and said, “What do you think?”
I can still remember the bottles. Brown, green, clear.
We dared each other to try something. Julia had rum. I had vodka. It tasted awful, made my mouth and throat feel like they were on fire. But after a while my stomach felt warm, and then I felt warmer all over and everything seemed brighter. Better.
We ended up reading the best bits from her mom’s stash of romance novels out loud to each other, laughing.
It was so much fun. Right before we finally fell asleep Julia made me swear that since we’d be best friends forever and ever, we’d always tell each other everything.
It was an easy promise to make. I couldn’t imagine not telling her everything.
“When did you start drinking together?” Laurie said, and I looked her right in the eye and said, “I don’t remember.”
