That Friday was the first of many that I would spend with Anne, increasing the distance that had started to grow between me and Angela. She and I really only saw each other at band practice by then, and at the football games where we played halftime shows. I tried, but I couldn’t share her excitement about popularity rankings and homecoming rituals. I was in honors classes that year, and I could see that she thought my new friends were weird and nerdy. My life quickly became Anne, band, obsessive studying, and attempts to avoid Tootsie’s terrible moods.
Anne and I spent most nights in our friend Nick’s run-down classic Mustang as he sped up and down the freeway, outracing his headlights into the desert dark, whipping around the other cars, killing time. I sat in the backseat on the passenger side, pushing my fingers against the melted rings of cigarette burns on the vinyl upholstery, thinking often of Dale’s Firebirds. Anne sat next to me, and I breathed in ribbons of her cigarette smoke as they uncurled from her hand. In front of me was our tall friend John, four years older than me, a country boy with long hair and a quick wit. I mostly let everyone else do the talking while the cool, dark air rushed into my face, leaving me clean and free, floating above the highway until it was time to head home.
When we weren’t riding with Nick, John and Anne and I would hang out at a pool hall called Corner Pocket. It was a gathering place for the happily unpopular: grunge kids in flannels, kickers in Wranglers, and artsy outcasts in black long sleeves. When I think of those nights, the jukebox is on a five-song repeat, and today those songs bring me John’s long fingers in an elegant bridge, his crooked smile; Anne’s warm, thin arm around my shoulders; the weight of her leather jacket when she let me wear it, the snaps and big lapels pressing against my heart.
I was special to them—the youngest among our group of friends—and they were protective of me. When some older men came in and started hitting on me, John and Anne made it clear that I belonged to them. When a mutual friend offered me weed, they seemed glad that I declined. If I lined up a shot that didn’t look quite right, one of them would bend around me and correct the angle of my cue, the pitch of my hand. Or drift to the other side of the table and point at the exact spot I should aim for on the moss-colored bank, fixing squinted eyes on me and giving me the focus I needed to land the ball in the pocket with a satisfying thunk.
At the end of the night, the three of us would emerge into the dark air of the desert, and I’d feel the space stretching out all around us. We’d climb into John’s gray pickup truck, nicknamed Lucky, and make our way into the denser lights of what passed for a downtown. When we reached Anne’s house, she would slide out first and I’d leave the middle seat reluctantly, still a bit awkward even after the closeness of the evening, then John would depart in a loud rattle of loose metal and muffler.
In Anne’s room, we sat cross-legged on her king-size bed, draping the soft old sheets over our laps. Anne was only fifteen, but she had already fit in a few years of partying, chasing chaos that she was now trying to put behind her. Befriending me was, I think, part of moving on, because I had never partied, never sought out additional trouble. She told me stories from that time, usually to demonstrate how foolish it all was, to tell me not to waste my time, and once she even took me to the church parking lot where an older man had assaulted her, perhaps to remind herself she’d gotten through it. We were similar: too old too early. Here, I thought, is someone who gets it, someone who’s been through some shit. She understood my need to sit back for a while and listen, to let others confide in me while I took them in, provided what advice I could. I needed to be of use; I needed a break from myself. And whenever I did feel like talking, I didn’t have to shield her from anything. We said we were putting her “on the couch,” but really the therapy was for me.
We’d stay up late into the early morning, three or four or five o’clock coming on unnoticed. We listened to Anne’s extensive collection of 1980s cassette tapes. We sang, Heaven isn’t too far away. We sang, Sweet child o’ mine. I nervously shared my mother’s Rod Stewart tapes with her, worried she would think they were dorky, and then laughed when she knew all the words. We sang badly, out of tune, but in unison. When we watched TV, Anne put her head in my lap and I combed my fingers through her hair, over and over. We wound down the hours, and when we slept, she took my hand in hers. I could feel her thin fingers and her calluses and the tension she never put down.
These rituals were enacted over months of weekends, each wrested from Tootsie with a meek request for her permission. I loved Anne more than I had any friend before. I wanted us to trade all of our stories, every possible song; I learned a lot from her, and felt she always understood what I told her. But also, I needed to be physically near her, and I was terrified that Tootsie would sense these feelings and confront me about them. I was afraid of what she would do, how she would react, worried that she might throw me out. I also didn’t want her to make me think too deeply about this friendship. I didn’t want to have anything in common with Anne’s neighbor, a girl our age whom Anne had scornfully referred to as a “dyke.” So I pretended to everyone, and to myself, that Anne was merely my best friend.
Her mother kept only half an eye on us, reasoning that teenagers needed some space to find their own way and could have that space, as long as they were smart. Of course, she hadn’t told Tootsie this, and sometimes I’d tell her stories about my aunt’s strictness and we’d all laugh and laugh. Anne’s mother referred to her as “Tootsie Dearest.”
With Anne, I worked on finding my strength again, not feeling so beset by my circumstances. One day, we watched Léon: The Professional, and in Natalie Portman I found my perfect hero: a twelve-year-old girl seeking revenge for the murder of her family, conveniently perpetrated by an enemy cop.