Mementos

The other day I was looking for something, and as is my way, I turned the entirety of my focus on to finding it. It wasn't in the bedroom; wasn't in the guest bedroom, either, up in the closet. And at that point I was out of good ideas, but knew I wouldn't have thrown it away, so I went to my last resort, the big plastic tote we keep under the stairs in the basement, with the empty boxes for packing Christmas presents and the potatoes we dug up last fall.

And I found what I was looking for, and also something that I wasn't. I was looking for a little ticket stub I'd kept from years ago, wanting to confirm a date that had been floating around in my mind. But in there, behind a grade twelve picture of a friend (on the reverse: "keep in touch!" - whoops), was another picture, of another friend, a picture I had forgotten, and if I'm being honest, don't remember ever receiving.

But I must have. We were friends, sort of, in that complicated way that boys and girls can be in high school, when you're starting to figure things out. About yourself, about others. And in contrast to the scrawled-off, easily ignored message of the other photo, this one had what I could only be described as a small letter written on the back, in thin, black ink, in her characteristic, hard-to-read scrawl.

I won't print it here. Some things are just for me. But I can't help but admit it tugged at my heart again, and brought back all sorts of weird, conflicting memories. How she dated almost everyone in my group of friends but me. How she seemed to tug for my attention only to ignore me or seemingly push me away. That's a game you can only play so long, and I found my limit quickly: that summer, though we were writing to each other (actual letters! in the late 90s!), I was almost hooking up with one friend (who was refreshingly honest about the terms of the arrangement), and proceeding to fall for her red-headed friend. What a mess. What a summer. The kind that comes once, and never again.

But it reminded me of how she'd kept me close with messages like that for, what, at least a year? At least. For most of high school, I wasn't in anything resembling a relationship. I hung out with my friends, I called BBSs and went on the net, I learned C (badly) from the K&R, I wrote my shitty poems and tried to keep up with my flute (some things never change). But at some point, something went pop. She and I kept talking - we've always been friends, and I get the odd update from her on Facebook when I think to check my account - but the game was over. The summer after she gave me the photo, I was falling for someone I'd met online. We'd eventually meet up, hook up, give it a try, and slowly fall apart. I'd have other crushes, other relationships. But never her, never again. At some point, I tucked the photo into one of those cheap little photo albums you could get at the drug store, along with that picture of the other friend, a movie receipt from a first date, a restaurant receipt from another. A picture of me, my dad, my brother at the end of grade twelve. I'm wearing a suit: it must have been for grad. And at that point, we were done. I wouldn't think about that little letter again for another 25 years.