Hive Ave Fall2024 - Flipbook - Page 19
Hive Avenue Literary Journal
Breaking Up With My Best
Friend
E.P. Linner
I knew everything about her.
How she ghostwrote poetry on Tumblr. How she wanted
to appear cool and reckless, but tried so hard to be the Mexican
History teacher’s favorite student all semester long. The way
she held her cigarette and the elusive half-smirk of her heartshaped lips. Her wavy, raven-dark hair, tumbling down her
shoulders like wings. How she loved history - especially Russian
and Austrian history. It’s funny, looking back now, how we both
used to say we were like Princess Sissi, the Empress of AustriaHungary; manic, maladaptive daydreamers, and true rebels in a
court full of vipers and liars. But there could only be one quirky
Empress who thought she was better than everyone else, right?
Two would be one too many.
I came back to Mexico after three years of living in
Germany, and made it into a new school where no one knew
me. Sure, I joined musical theater, I made friends at the library,
I joined human rights and environmental clubs. But that didn’t
change the fact that I was lonely during the actual classes. I
couldn’t connect with these people my age, all loud and entitled and talking back at the teachers after three years of standing straight and saying “Yes, Professor” and “Yes, sir/madam”. I
didn’t recognize myself in them.
Then I met her. It was in a mandatory and inconsequential class, of all places, where no one paid attention except us. I
remember bonding over Wicked - the book, not the musical and thinking wow, she reads more than she exists. She’s just like
me. She invited me to my 昀椀rst slumber party. I felt myself relax
Non-Fiction
into the idea of 昀椀nally belonging somewhere.
Over the next three years of high school, we were
unstoppable. We took AP World History together and exactly
昀椀ve shots of tequila at every party. We drew portraits of each
other. Our Mexican History professor would grin as we entered
his classroom. “Here comes the dynamic duo,” he would say,
referencing the fact that we were the only willing participants
during his lectures. We made essay-level analyses of Net昀氀ix
shows and discussed poems by Latin American women authors.
Always, we told each other this: we were de昀椀nitely above the
dumb and unthinking sentients who shared classes with us,
who could barely lift a book or write a coherent sentence.
We were special.
“I drew this for you,” she once told me, and showed me
a drawing of myself, so beautiful and princess-like. I felt my
stomach blooming. Did she really see me that way? No one ever
had.
She became my world.
*
*
*
I never thought I’d have a female best friend, nor did I
think it was important to have one. I thought of myself as
someone too boyish, too lanky, too awkward for any of the girls
my age to even glance my way. I didn’t learn to do eyeliner until
I was twenty, and I never wore make-up to school, more often
than not looking like a baby bird that just fell out of its nest.
When I lived in Germany, I had a best friend. Her name
was Jessie. She liked the same geeky things I did, and we bonded
over Phantom of the Opera fan昀椀cs and went to drawing classes
together. But soon I moved back to Mexico, back to where I
started. And again I thought I wasn’t destined for female friendships. The prophecy had already been foretold.
This perspective stayed with me for more than I care to
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