Five Houses Down

I saw a ghost the other day.

I was driving through a nice part of town, a part of town with wide, tree-lined streets and houses set well back on nicely-trimmed lawns. Everyone drives 25 mph and has a car manufactured within the last five years. All the kids go to college and all the dogs get groomed religiously, although few go to church.

A girl was walking down the street. She was probably...ten, maybe twelve. Long hair. Jeans ending at the knee. A blouse with three-quarter sleeves. She looked like she had freckles. She looked like she probably kicked boys in the shins, snuck cigarettes behind the dumpster at school, wore eyeshadow two years before everyone else. She looked like she had an older sister who got into trouble and taught her younger sister everything she knew. She looked like she had a hyperactive younger brother that had to sit in the hallway a lot in school.

In short, she looked like my best friend from 4th grade.

Erin (I won't give her last name in case she Googles herself) lived down the street from me from third grade until 5th or 6th grade, when her parents got divorced and her mom moved away to get remarried. She had an older sister, a younger brother, a parakeet and a wealth of disfunction, much of which she took out on her long-suffering best friend. Me.

Erin was, to put it bluntly, a bitch.

We frequently were a group of three: Erin, me and our friend, Kelly (whose name I really am changing). Kelly lived further away and required a mom to drive her to our houses to play, at least until she got old enough to ride her bike that far. Erin used Kelly in efficient fashion--to put me in my place. If she was mad at me, Kelly was invited over and I was exiled. If she wanted to make me nervous, Kelly would be invited to spend the night, but not me. Kelly frequently got the friendship pins that I was denied. They'd ride bikes together, leaving me at home.

I remember one instance vividly, when Erin kicked me off her canopy bed in the middle of some board game, telling me I was fat and that I should go home. I think I walked home in tears that day. And probably went back the next day for more.

When Kelly and I got into the "gifted" program, notable mostly in our school for getting to take cool trips and learning how to play chess, Erin mocked both of us. With hindsight, I know that's because she wasn't asked to join. When she was, the next year, it automatically became the coolest, most exciting and magical group in the entire world, if not the universe.

As we got older, our worlds expanded a bit. I joined a swim team, which meant I was no longer at her mercy for great swaths of summer. Plus, I could do something physically better than her, which intimidated her a bit, I think. We got into different activities. She did horseback riding, I think, and I started getting more involved in music.

By the time her parents were getting divorced, we weren't as close as we used to be. She moved to a town about twenty minutes away and we rarely saw each other after that. At the time, I seriously wondered if our world was ending--our world of reading books in the den, making forts in the woods, playing in the creek, playing basketball on roller skates in Tommy's driveway, crawling through the sewer system in our subdivision. And it was. But mostly because we were growing up, not because she moved away.

Now, as I look back, I realize that her moving away was one of the best things that ever happened to me. If we'd gone on to high school together, I would have constantly been worrying about what Erin thought. Will she be mean to me if I win this award? Will she hate me if I get the part in the play? Will she speak to me if I beat her grade?

Instead, I have really good memories of growing up, some with her and some without her. I remember getting stuck in the mud in the creek next to her house and our friend Amanda's dad coming to rescue me. I remember waving at Tommy and Andy from beneath the grating in Tommy's yard when we'd run through the maze of tunnels making up the drainage system in the neighborhood. I remember Halloweens and Christmases and Kelly's brother's room, painted to look like Pink Floyd's The Wall album cover.

I don't remember the crying and the fights and the not speaking. At least, not much. And I think of Erin somewhat fondly, at least, for making me into the person I am today. A person who took that kind of treatment. But who won't take it much any more.