By that point, I’d known her for almost two-thirds of my life. Our first conversation was at an ice-skating party when we were nine years old. I’d been nervous in the weeks leading up to the party because I couldn’t ice-skate.
Every time the Spice Girls’ 2 Become 1 music video came on, the sight of Victoria Beckham singing on an ice rink filled me with impending doom. I was sure I would disgrace myself at the party. But the party – and I don’t often say this about parties – was a blast.
As it turned out, my in-line skating experience gave me some advantage on the ice, and I met a girl who was easy to talk to. I was a shy child, so I was struck by that sense of ease – how I wasn’t panicking about what to say or lurking awkwardly on the edge of a conversation. I can’t remember what we talked about.
She was kind enough not to mention the fact I’d chosen to wear a dolphin-print sarong. We held hands and at one point she asked: “What’s your name again?” Apparently, we’d had so much to say to each other, we’d skated right over all the usual greetings and pleasantries. My friend and I went to the same high school, where we developed crushes on Orlando Bloom as Legolas in The Lord of the Rings and became obsessed with Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet when we studied it in our year 9 English class.
We loved reading and were into romantasy before it became a global phenomenon. She lent me her box set of Buffy and I made her read my own sexy vampire fan fiction. As a teenager, I’d always believed I would become myself at university but, when I got there, it was harder and lonelier than I expected.
I felt adrift in those first few years and saw less of my friend. We were at different universities, lived further away from each other and life got busy. When I graduated, I started working as a teacher at a large high school and threw myself into the joyous overwhelming chaos of it all.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
