i'm trying to remember an adventure that hayley and i had...and it seems like i have a million hayley stories and memories but maybe not of just her and i.

i remember swinging around on the tire swing when sarah g. accosted her for losing her glitter handle silverware. i remember when erich saved rose petals with the unfortunate idea to spread them on my bed, which i immmmediately shut down and was grossly offended by because 1. my bed is not, nor was not some stupid add for a romantic getaway, a honeymoon suite, or a lover's play place 2. i hate roses and was mad and sad that he hadn't figured that out yet and 3. who the fuck does that??

anyways after i had shut down the gesture, because, i am a bitch, erich and hayley giggled and ran around in the yard throwing the petals everywhere, and i stood on the porch laughing and screaming because i had just raked the entire yard and now there were rose petals all over it and i realized that i kind of had kids, though one was my roommate and i was dating the other one. but i guess we were all just kind of kids that summer.

i remember being in the car in canada and hayley found the cookies that rachel had baked and made a huge deal in telling us that we were NOT to eat them, she was saving them for her friend. nonetheless, hayley managed to paw one away, and as we crammed into ali's car to sleep in snowy canada, all drunk beyond repair, hayley lay face down munching ever so quietly her stolen treat, then decides she doesn't want it, grunts, and throws the cookie. i never laughed so hard.

ali and i have a million stories, on the other hand, of things that we've done, trouble we've gotten ourselves into.

i'm trying to remember what it was like, living on haven street, not being able to drive, having to be in at a certain time, living in between the most passive agressive man in the world, and my mother, quickly still becoming the thing that makes me the saddest. anyways, i'm trying to remember what it was like then, when ali threw pinecones at my window to wake me up and show me her haircut, when we forged a path between our houses, when we would slide into the pool naked and giggling because it sounded hilarious, when we would sleep night after night in sleeping bags on the trampoline. i came home once, deflated from hanging out with someone, and there was a note on the door saying, "you had a bad night, i know, meet me on the trampoline."

once, i think on my sixteenth birthday, ali and i were reduced to wandering about and we went into some houses that were being built on our street and stood and explored the hollow skeletons that now have become structures that people will connect to and find refuge, or have a home in. that's a weird thought - being in a house, someone's a home before it was every really formed, when it was just lumber and nails...and then what do houses do when they grow up?

i'm trying to remember what it was like before i ever had sex, how holding hands seemed so much better than
i'm trying to remember what it was like before i ever had a panic attack, a migraine, cried over a friend, cried over a boy, cried about my mom, or what it was like before i ever missed home because i had never left it. what was it like when i lived with no internet no cell phone and couldn't drive or leave the house

what was it like before i had any independence?

i remember not knowing north from south, literally not knowing north from south.


what was it like to be fifteen?