An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
Buddha
I look back on it now with only sorrow; the passing of time has worn down the sharp edges of bitterness that plagued me for so long. I switch the bracelet from hand to hand, first yanking at it, then soothingly stroking the well-formed stitches, and admiring the skill and precision of the intricately woven strands. Each tightly pulled knot lends the bracelet a nice shape, but does not destroy its delicate softness. I finger the cheap plastic beads, but I don’t think scornfully of the inferior material anymore; I can only cherish the way the beads catch the light, reflecting a deep aquamarine, like the shimmering sea before me. In the imitation crystal surface of each little bead I see myself, I see a precious friendship lost, and I wonder for the thousandth time how it could possibly be that I didn’t see it coming.
The sunlight streamed in the French windows of the colonial cottage, an odd location to house ninety middle-schoolers during the daytime hours. I knelt on the rough, maroon carpeting and spun the dial of my combination lock. Clockwise to sixteen, opposite to twenty-four, around and back again to eight. I tossed my American history test into my neat and tidy locker, smiling again in satisfaction at the scarlet “A” scrawled on top. I hastily removed the books that I would need over the weekend and stuffed them into my backpack. As I slammed my locker door shut, I caught a glimpse of the pictures and magazine clippings adorning the inside, and, for a split-second, thought of nothing but the happy times shared with friends and captured for posterity in those photographs. Just then, I noticed a small, white envelope flutter to the ground. Stooping, I picked it up. My name was printed on the front in plain block letters, but the generic envelope and handwriting gave no indication of its author. Consumed with curiosity, I tore it open.
“Dear Molly,” it began, “I’m sorry, but we can’t be friends anymore.”
It went on, but my eyes cut quickly to the bottom, searching for a signature. Katie. Katie wrote it? My best friend wrote me a hate letter? Why in the world . . . ? I took a deep breath and started again from the beginning.
“Look, it’s nothing you did, I just don’t want to be friends anymore, okay?”
Nothing I did?! Why couldn’t we be friends if it’s nothing I did?!
The letter continued nebulously, a lot of wishy-washy garbage that skirted around any real issues that should have been addressed (not that I could think of any). Nowhere did she state any reason for writing such a thing to me. We hadn’t fought in a long time, not really fought, anyway, just the kind of teasing and bantering that are part of healthy friendship. Out of the blue, my best friend hated me? How could she have put up such a casual veneer if all the while her mind was filled with hatred toward me?
A honk from outside jarred me out of my trance. My ride had arrived. Still contemplating the bizarre and unsettling occurrence, I picked up my bag (which suddenly felt like it was filled with bricks) and, with an even heavier heart, headed outside.
Someone was entering as I was leaving, and I started to brush past until I lifted my eyes from the floor and saw who it was. The crumpled note fell from my dangling palm and tumbled down the gray staircase. The tall, gangly blond started to apologize for running into me, but stopped short when she saw the open confusion and horror that creased my dramatic features. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but she was lost for words, much like I was at the moment. She knew that I had read it. The anxiety was apparent on her ghostly pale face.
She broke the stare first as her eyes looked to the bottom of the staircase, where her note lay in a wrinkled ball. I heard a cough, and at once realized that we were not alone to do battle. Two piercing orbs behind wire-rim glasses and boy-cut bangs approached when Bev stepped forward, as if to shield Katie from the tongue-lashing she mistakenly thought I was prepared to give.
“Look, Molly, Katie doesn’t want to be friends with you anymore, okay? She’s my friend now.”
If I were good at giving retorts on the spur of the moment, I would have unleashed every bit of antipathy within my petite body towards the controlling witch standing before me. If I had, maybe it would have given my former friend the courage she needed to stand up against her new “leader.” However, my mind was unable to process what was happening that quickly, and the hundreds of verbally abusive comments that would flash before me in neon lights five minutes later did me no good. I stood, empty inside, as Bev grabbed Katie’s sleeve and pulled her up the stairs. My ex-friend shot me one last helpless look, then straightened her mouth into a grim line and marched up the stairs behind her new friend, leaving her old one lost and powerless at the bottom, left to toy with a simple bracelet of beads and string. I had worn her handiwork from the emergence of our friendship through to its demise at that very moment.
Years later, I fiddle with the very same bracelet as I did on that very afternoon. I ask myself the same questions that tormented me then, and I wonder if fighting back would have saved a friendship that was worth fighting for. Katie was weak; she followed Bev as a sheep follows a herder, without question, without fail. I knew that the two of them had grown dependent on each other over the previous couple of years, widening the swiftly growing chasm between Katie and me, but I never dreamt of such a sudden end to our friendship. It shook me to learn that Bev’s jealousy of my relationship with “her” friend would surface so spontaneously and drive her to such cruel and desperate measures. I later learned that she had given Katie an ultimatum: Break off her friendship with me or Bev would stop being friends with her. Bev was clever and conniving; she knew whom Katie would choose. I ask myself for the last time why I didn’t see it coming. Then I lift the unwieldy and troublesome burden off my shoulders, and heave it into the ocean in the form of a small, string bracelet. Friendships rise and fall like the tide. I cannot stop the tide; I cannot stop what is beyond my control. We swore to be friends forever, but was it right for us to make that promise?
As the beaded trinket sails through the air, another question for the first time enters my thoughts: Does she still have the bracelet that I made for her?
Molly Karlin