Courtney
Courney was my best friend in high school and sort of a perennial best friend for life. When I was traveling in Europe with Milly, I was traveling with Courtney. When I lived with Andie, I lived with Courtney. She was always just that person... it is hard to explain.
Courtney and I were inseperable in high school, though I didn't know how many drugs she was doing.
She started at 15 or so, when she was too young to understand what she was doing and too human for it not to matter.
I left our friendship eight years ago when I couldn't handle seeing my friend mumble through words and stumble through life high on dope. I remember her crying and telling me she needed me. And I sort of just couldn't do it.
Over the years I heard very little of her. Courtney was a stripper. Courtney had big boobs now. That was about it. I called her once and her voice sounded like it did when she was on heroin and I was scared and I never called her again.
Until last night.
Courtney got a perfect score on the SAT. She understood all her classes, unlike me, and she was in all the honor courses. She was pretty and oh so goth and cool. The first person in high school with a lip ring. She went to UC Irvine while I went to junior college.
I knocked on her door last night and when she answered, she looked exactly like the Courtney I had known before. But with bigger boobs.
And problems so adult, so big, its hard to innumerate them here.
I am pretty sure it was hard for her to come out in public with me, she seemed so uncomfortable. She may be homeless soon, so I paid for the snacks and the beer.
She was embarrassed to go to the store... earlier this week she had a seizure and wet her pants while shopping.
She chatted about how one of her boobs broke in a recent car accident and now its deflated while the other is still perky.
The conversation was stilted at times, but when it flowed I wanted to dam it up for her. I wanted her life to not have happened that way at all. It was so sad.
I asked if she was happy, and she looked at me like that was the first time anyone had ever asked her that.
And this morning, as I lay under my covers I tried to think.... what day was it that passed, THE DAY, that I could have taken out and just stopped her?
What moment in time changed her life from something that could have been to who she is now.
That's when I wish movies were real. I could stop time and go back and slap needles out of her hand and take her to the very sad apartment she lives in today and show her what she might just be if she keeps on doing this bullshit.
Just stop, rewind, patch things up, fast forward.
I am sure she knows this. I am sure she would like to do this, too.
This year is our ten year high school reunion, and one of the reasons why I got the bug up my ass to see her. She is not planning on going, she said.
"Nothing to reunionize about," she said. "I should be in medical school by now."
"You should be done with medical school by now," I said.