It was hard not to imagine time as adjacent to when I met her. Three hours after I met her, two weeks after I met her, a month after I met her. It was easier that way, in a way that could somehow contextualize the transformation that had occurred after she came into my orbit.

The day was hot when I met her, blisteringly so. It was the summer before senior year and I had heard from the neighborhood rumor mill about the family that had taken the Chens’ old house. I was sitting at one of the garish green benches in the neighborhood playground, watching the handful of kids running around the wood-chipped grounds with fluctuating levels of interest, when she caught my eye, walking a golden retriever. 

I was a dog person through and through, so it only took a few minutes before I gave into the temptation and approached her. She was gorgeous, a black-haired bombshell with bright green eyes and an athletic figure. There was a deep dimple on the left side of her mouth when she smiled, as I noticed immediately upon introducing myself and kneeling down to coo over the dog-Cinnamon, as I would soon learn. Later, when I fled the playground for the air-conditioned sanctuary of my house, I would be in awe over what confidence had possessed me to introduce myself to her first, but there was not much time to dwell on that. She had given me her number, and I was soon to fall prey to the spell of Sasha Alonso.

In my room that night, she started an electric conversation. As pathetic as it was, four texts in I was lying there, with my phone pressed between my eager hands and my eyes glued to the blue light of the screen, in spite of the burn. 

It’s been so great talking to you, she texted well past midnight.

Then, would you like to meet up some time?

My fingers flew across the screen, typing out my response before I’d even truly processed it.  

Our first “tea time”, as she dubbed it, came one week after I met her, and offered to take her to the best boba place in town, Cup ‘A Wonders. She ordered some strawberry-mango blend; I got Thai tea. 

“Oh my gosh!” Sasha exclaimed, startling me. We hadn’t really talked much as of yet, as I was still stuck in my awkward silence phase of meeting someone new. It had been easier to talk to her over text, I’d decided early on. That would remain true.

“What?” I asked.

She lifted my wrist and pulled back my sleeve, revealing the multicolored beaded bracelet Auntie Mo had given me after her trip to Nepal.

“Is this a Nepali glass bead bracelet?” she asked, rubbing her thumb over the beads.

“Um, yeah?” 

“Did you go to Nepal? I volunteered there after ninth grade. It was a wonderful experience.” She looked up at me expectantly. 

“Um, no. I didn’t go to Nepal. My aunt did.” Was I imagining the slight dim in her smile? I must have been, for a moment later it was as cheery as it had always been. “She gave this to me.”

“That was awesome of her! Though you really should go one time, to volunteer. It was a really rewarding experience.” She sipped her drink, right before asking me about my travel dreams.

I answered each of her questions-must-see sight? Winchester Abbey; place you must visit before you die? Rome; place you need a picture in front of? The Eiffel Tower-with a strange cocktail of bewilderment and enchantment stirring my chest as the realization hit that I was befriending this oh so brilliant and exciting girl.

I left Cup A’ Wonders completely in the thrall of Sasha, and drove her home in a daze. Joy made me feel light-headed and giddy, and she slid out of my car with grace, right before waving happily at me. I waved back, completely unaware of the storm brewing on the horizon. 

Senior year came before I knew it, and I walked into school the first day by Sasha’s side. I had gone to Merryweather High for three years, and had stayed in the same district with most of the kids there my entire life. And yet, by lunchtime the first day, you could’ve mistaken me for the new kid with how much people flocked to Sasha like moths to a flame. I had never been popular, sure, but I’d never been so unceremoniously shoved into the shadows. We-Sasha, with myself as an annoying, barely tolerated tagalong-got invited to four separate tables at lunch, but she just linked her arm through mine, turned her chin up, and led us to our own table that-in the coming weeks-would become like the mirage of an oasis in the middle of the desert; everyone yearned for it, only to find themselves with nothing at the turn of Sasha’s slender hand.  

At the end of the first week of school, we drove home together.

“This has been so different from my old school,” Sasha said.

“How so?”

“I used to be a complete loner.”

I couldn’t help it; I laughed. The thought of Sasha being a loner produced only one possible thought-no f*cking way. No way had the radiant, magnetic social butterfly that had somehow attached herself to my side ever been a loner. She held a universal appeal to all the cliques and squads and clubs of Merryweather-intelligent, beautiful, athletic, sweet. Not a flaw to be found. Well, minus the flaw I had found in her, which was more of a personal gripe than a flaw: her very existence was a wound to my self-esteem.

“It’s true!” she laughed, the sound high and melodious. 

I decided then that her last school had been full of the blind and deaf, for there was no other way for her to be anything but a queen bee. I sucked in a breath at the realization and clutched the steering wheel so tight it hurt. Would Sasha’s popularity and overall perfection continue to rocket her up the social hierarchy? It had only been a week, and yet the entire student body knew who she was, and the teachers adored the attentive and well-mannered student that became a breath of fresh air for them in the midst of classes of heathens. If it did, would I go with her? Or would I be forgotten, left alone in a dark corner as the spotlight landed square on her? Could I live with either option? Being at Sasha’s side and receiving her intoxicating presence even as I was forgotten on her arm? Or losing her to the throngs of fervent worshippers and living without her enchanting smiles and persistent loving?

I smiled then, though it might have been more a grimace. “You’re here now,” I replied. And wasn’t that the truth. 

Sasha occupied every space she entered with a presence so large it was suffocating to stand in her wake. My predictions in the car turned out mostly true-Sasha became a queen bee in every sense of the word, but for some reason, she never branched out. I remained her only real friend in a sea of acquaintances and ‘oh, I know you’. I had to admit: I felt special. Everyone sought to bask in Sasha’s sunlight, yet I was the only one allowed to. It didn’t matter if it burned me to see her become captain of the swim team in less than two weeks while I was shoved to the bench. It didn’t matter if it burned me to see her land in the good graces of every teacher she passed by while I worked my ass off in every class. It didn’t matter that her charisma only increased outside of the school halls-she could get us free boba or bump out a couple with a reservation at any restaurant with little more than a blinding smile and a few charming words.

Sasha, as it turned out, was one of those people who could get straight A’s with little effort. I had to work for five hours every day to maintain my 4.0, but I was happy for her, as every friend needed to be. We both applied to the same college with me in pre-law and Sasha in advertising. We landed in the same dorm.

College would agree with Sasha, as virtually everything did. She would join some sorority whose name I could never pronounce and quickly rise the ranks. “Why don’t you join?” she asked for two weeks straight. I could never find the heart to tell her that I didn’t want to fall into obscurity behind her in yet another capacity.

It had to be at least two a.m. when the pot of our friendship nearly boiled over.

I was curled into bed facing the wall, trying to ignore Sasha’s obvious tossing and turning at the other side of the room.

Eventually, it became impossible to ignore. “Can’t sleep?” I asked, taking deep breaths to control my annoyance. What I wanted to say was that she was interrupting my sleep, and that most of mankind needed a proper REM cycle to function properly. I wanted to scream. It was like hatred and adoration constantly duked it out in my heart for my primary reaction to Sasha. Right now, hatred was winning.

“Not one wink,” she replied.

“Why?” I certainly hoped it was for a good reason. With a sociology lecture in-I grabbed my phone from my nightstand to check the time-six hours, I could not afford to waste any energy on the petty worries Sasha,in her perfect world, took for life-changing emergencies.

“I just… can’t stop thinking about how life will be like after college.”

I flipped around to face her, and saw her staring up at the ceiling, her blanket pulled all the way to her chin. I frowned. This was an oddly reflective mood for my live-in-the-moment best friend who’d once convinced me to go skinny dipping in the hotel pool when our families went to Cabo after senior year. “Sasha,” I said, “we’re sophomores.”

“But doesn’t it feel like, just yesterday, we met at that playground?”

No, I wanted to say. It had felt like a lifetime since that oppressively hot day on the playground when my entire life was shaken. In that time, I had grown so used to shadows that I abandoned my long-standing phobia of sleeping without nightlights, even as I clung so desperately to Sasha’s blinding smiles and golden moods.

“I just keep thinking that after college, I’ll feel like a different person,” she continued. 

“It’s a big change,” I muttered. In the pit of my chest, adoration scraped hard against hatred to come out on top. 

“Will we still be friends?” she asked, her voice soft and almost childish.

I started. “Why would you ask that?” I remembered all the times she unwittingly made me feel like nothing more than a foil to her life, and also all the times she made me feel giddy and, well, alive. I wanted to say that we wouldn’t be friends, because I hated her. I wanted to say that we’d always be friends, because I loved her. I wanted to say that she didn’t need me; she could make friends with a rock if she applied herself. I wanted to beg her to never leave me. 

“I just worry,” she said.

I curled my fingers into the bedsheet. A million nasty thoughts and unspoken words and broken declarations rose up, clogging my throat. I wanted to say so much, and yet with Sasha I often said nothing at all. Right then and there, in the darkness of our dorm, I felt close to confessing all the warring emotions and the long-festering bitterness she brought out in me. I wished she could know, even as I was too cowardly to just tell her. It would be easier if she could just take a bone saw to my head to study whatever mushy remains of my brain lay inside, to see what she had made of me. How could it even be possible to feel this way? To worship and despise a person in equal measure? 

A storm lay on the tip of my tongue, begging to be released. In its place, I breathed out a sunny day, smiled, and said, “Of course we will.”