Gina had orange hair, and it was scratchy, like a doll that I once singed when I left it by the fireplace too long. Her thick glasses perched perfectly on a freckled face, and she always smelled faintly of clothes that had been left in the dryer too long. She wasn’t one of the popular girls with perfectly coifed bangs and Guess jeans, but I liked her because she liked to read and write and ride bikes. I liked her because she let me boss her around and because she didn’t make fun of me for bringing cloth napkins in my lunchbox. I liked her because she laughed really hard at my jokes, and she clapped after I spelled neither ‘kneether’ in the all school spelling bee, making others think just for a second that I had spelled it correctly.
Gina and I tried out for a talent show once in fifth grade. We wore matching outfits, skirts with suspenders and we twirled batons to a Sharon, Lois, and Bram song. While the other kids perfected their New Kids on the Block lip-syncing routine, we boasted that we had real talent, and spent several days honing that talent in her basement.
I’m not entirely sure which one of us came up with the miserable idea, as neither of us had an ounce of athletic ability, and the size of our teeth alone was enough to position us against gravity in our twirling endeavors. But we had a good run at it, and I don’t remember either of us being overly devastated when our name wasn’t on the call back list.
She told me at recess one day toward the end of the school year that she was moving to Kentucky, and I spent the rest of the afternoon ignoring her. The next day I told her that I was mad because she should have told me sooner, but that if she would apologize I would be her friend again and write her letters once a week.
She did, and I didn’t, and that’s how that went.
It’s always seems easier to be the one leaving instead of the one that’s left.
