Friends Without Benefits

“Well, no wonder you weren’t paying attention to high school dynamics or creating spank tanks. You were dealing with real life issues. I can’t fathom what it was like for you, losing your mom then your first love like that.”

I shrugged, but her words made an impact.

“Is that why you decided to become a doctor?”

“It’s one of the reasons, yes. But also I really like it, like the work.”

“Why emergency medicine? Why not oncology?”

“Because both my mom and Garrett were misdiagnosed in an emergency room. If they’d been diagnosed correctly. . .”

“Ah.” She nodded her understanding. “After Garrett’s death, did you get some help? Did you go to therapy after?”

I shook my head. “Afterward, that summer, I just kind of floated through stuff, not really noticing or paying attention. My dad decided to take me to Ireland at the end of the summer, and I completed the first half of my senior year there—which helped.”

“He probably wanted to remove you from a place filled with reminders.”

I nodded. “Yeah. He took an adjunct teaching position at Trinity—or their version of an adjunct position—and I discovered an abiding passion for Guinness since the place we stayed was basically down the road from the Guinness factory. I think I did that brewery tour seventy times.”

“Guinness is good.”

Our apparent shared love for Guinness warmed my heart, and I glanced over at Sandra. She was watching me with a look that I could only define as restrained.

“What? What is it?”

“Do you—” She catapulted the words at me, paused, scratched her chin then turned as far in her seat as the seatbelt would allow. “Did you two—before he—did you . . .?”

“You’re asking me if we had sex?”

She nodded.

“No. Garrett and I never had sex. I was only fifteen when he was diagnosed and almost sixteen when he died. Besides, we wanted to wait until we were married and—then—when he got sick—I never thought he wouldn’t get well until it was too late.”

She expelled a loud breath. “That sucks.”

“Yeah.” I frowned. “Yeah, it sucks.”

~*~

I soon discovered that Sandra was a badass.

Road trips can either suck monkey balls or, with the right person, they can be awesomesauce with cheesy fries. Sandra was that right person. She regulated the car to make certain a constant comfortable temperature was maintained; her music selection—although not my typical preference—was high quality; she ensured conversation flowed and waned at appropriate intervals.

And she was very skilled in the art of unwrapping my sandwich and arranging my French fries/ketchup such that I could effortlessly eat while driving.

Yes, we’d been knitting together for going on two years, and yes, I infrequently met her for lunch at the hospital. But our interactions until this trip rarely deviated beyond those situations. I’d been operating under, and interacting with Sandra based on, my initial superficial impressions: funny, smart, loud, and opinionated.

I should’ve known better, that a person is never just funny, smart, loud, and opinionated without a whole lot of awesome behind it.

Furthermore, something about being trapped in a car together for five hours—the shared experience of synchronized pit-stop peeing and suffering through roadside fast food—will bond two people for life.

By the time we arrived at my childhood home virtually all of my earlier missing Janie melancholy was replaced with self-recrimination for being so narrow-minded. I was also experiencing newly minted good-friend euphoria.

Sandra noted with a squeal that we were late as we exited the car and rushed into my childhood home. We hurried through showering and dressing; I realized I was excited about going to the reunion, because I was going with Sandra, and Sandra was badass.

I still missed Janie. I still lamented that she wasn’t able to come. But I found I didn’t need to be so diligent and determined about having a good time with Sandra. I was just, simply, having a good time with Sandra.

With Sandra’s insistence and help, I wore my hair down in impressive loose curls over my shoulders which were left bare in my black and white polka-dot strapless dress. I loved this dress even though it wasn’t at all my typical haphazard style. I wore a wicked black petticoat under the full skirt so it flared above the knee. I rounded out the look with red lipstick and borrowed—from Janie—black and white zebra print stilettos.

Sandra—always a bombshell—wore a long, clingy blue and white maxi dress and turquoise sequenced high heels. She left her short red hair down, falling in soft waves to her chin. Her eye shadow was also sparkly blue and I coveted her ability to apply makeup. All my attempts at eye makeup—other than mascara—left me looking like the loser in a bar fight.

We drove through the high school parking lot only one hour late and, despite my obvious bias, felt that we both looked amazing. Even though I returned home with some frequency to visit my dad—less often in recent years due to my crazy schedule at the hospital—I hadn’t visited my high school since graduation.

Everything looked essentially the same except trees were taller, and the main building had recently been painted. I didn’t feel much of anything, no nostalgia or twinge of apprehension, until I stepped through the doors and the smell—of pencils and bread and Glass Plus cleaner—slapped my brain backward in time.

Memories and accompanying thoughts and anxieties assailed me without warning.

I was suddenly thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen all at once. I was short, angry, quiet, and flat chested. I was Skinny Finney trying to blend into the lockers, sitting in the back of the classroom, and avoiding eye contact with all the kids in my class who were older, bigger, and louder.

I was looking at my past self through the one-way interrogation window of my current self; this caused me to experience the strange sadness that accompanies helplessness. If only I could have told teenage Elizabeth that none of it actually mattered. It all seemed to matter so much at the time.

A half laugh, half gasp escaped my chest, and I paused just inside the door of the main entrance to catch up with the onslaught.

“What is it?”

I glanced at Sandra—her red eyebrows raised in confusion, her eyes wide with concern—and shook my head. “It’s—it’s nothing.” I continued to shake my head as I walked a few steps forward and allowed the door to close behind me. “It’s just really weird to be here.”

Sandra smiled wryly. “Yeah. My reunion is this year too. I haven’t decided if I’m going to my high school reunion. I don’t know if I should grace those people with the gift of my presence.”

“Did you have a hard time in high school? Did you hate the prom queen?” I strolled forward feeling a bit easier and acclimated. I glanced at my surroundings; blue lockers lined gray walls. The floor was white-and-blue linoleum, peeling and scuffed.

“Oh heavens no. I was the prom queen.”

This revelation made my steps falter, and Sandra monopolized all my attention; “You were the prom queen?”

She nodded; her grin was immediate. “Yes. I was the prom queen. Don’t look so shocked.”

“I’m not shocked. I’m. . .” I waved my hands through the air trying to locate the words as my feet automatically led the way to the gym. “I’m surprised.”

“You’re a doofus. Shocked and surprised are synonyms.”

“No, not really. Shocked means that something is hard to believe; surprised means something is unexpected.”

Sandra’s eyes narrowed; they were glittery green, the color intensified by her long blue-and-white patterned maxi dress. “You sounded just like Janie when you said that.”

She was right. I did. The thought made me happy-sad.

“She’s rubbed off on me despite my efforts to remain unaffected. I’ve spent all these years trying to wash off the stank of my own social ineptness—and, believe me, I had my own special brand of social incompetency—but I know I’ve adopted some of her mannerisms. She has this thing about words. . .”

Sandra’s expression was plainly skeptical. “In what ways were you socially incompetent?”

“I was really, really shy.”

Sandra pushed my shoulder. “Get out. You? The queen of hospital pranks and hot-man conquests? I call shenanigans.”

“Are you surprised?”

“No. I’m shocked.” She wagged her eyebrows which made me laugh. “Why were you shy?”

“Actually, I don’t know if I was exactly shy. Rather, I just had this overwhelming disdain for the world and everyone in it.”

Before Sandra could respond to this revelation a super-duper cheerful voice interrupted our conversation, “Hi there! How are you!?”

I hadn’t noticed that we’d walked all the way to the entrance of the gym. Early decade dance music pumped through the open doors, specifically “Let’s Get it Started in Here” by the Black Eyed Peas.

I blinked twice at the image in front of me. Stephanie Mayor, our class president, smiled at Sandra and me with extraordinary force as though trying to convey expediency. She stood behind a long, empty, rectangular banquet table covered in a navy blue tablecloth, and she looked exactly the same. Even the length of her hair—cut, color, and style—was identical to how it had been ten years ago.