braids like a pattern

Tonight, I washed my hair before bed.

I know, I know I’m not supposed to, I know it’ll lead to breakage, it’s not good, it’s not good to go to bed with wet hair, I know these things. But I’ve spent the past few days grimy and filthy in the middle of a move, hauling big boxes through two houses, packing in rooms where the air is still because the only A/C is in the living room, my hair stuck in a perpetual bun, and good God I wanted to wash it.

It felt glorious. Truly, there’s few feelings better than taking a shower in a bathroom you’ve just scrubbed within an inch of its life—and then decorated all cute.

As I stood under the water, working suds through my hair, I wondered if I should braid it before bed.

And then I thought about you.

---

I was fourteen and waiting in the wings, sawdust from fresh sets and old dust from the old stage both thick in air that was already laden with anticipation. My feet were in someone else’s character shoes, but I was in leggings and a shirt, because this was still rehearsal, and I was waiting for my cue.

In front of me were two dancers. One sat on a stool, the other hunched over her, carefully braiding her hair into two dutch braids that shone like silk down her back, gold neatly contrasted against the red of her sweater.

In the time it took for the director to set the staging, her braids were done, they giggled, and ran onstage.

I wondered if that wasn’t what friendship was all about.

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In friendships, there are the braiders and then there are the people who want braids but cannot braid their hair.

You were the former, I was the latter.

You happily braided mine into a crown mid-rehearsal, twisted it into something when we were supposed to be singing and tutted when I didn’t have a hair tie, always let me coo over your own braids, so neatly and intricately and gorgeously woven in, magical even when you said they were easy they were nothing.

---

I texted you that my hair was wet and I was frustrated about twenty-five minutes before homeroom and ten minutes before, you met me in front of the dividers on the third floor, the midpoint of both our classes, and I related the morning’s events to you while you braided my hair into a neat french braid, long down my back. You laughed and I laughed and it was funny, it was stupid, and my teacher called from one side, yours shook her head on the other, and you promised my hair would dry in waves—trust me, it’ll look so good, just wait until fourth to take it out—before we parted.

And I figured that, yeah, that was what friendship was all about.

---

My hair was too short to braid the last time I feel like I saw you—really saw you.

We bought more than we should have at the home goods store, loaded up my old Honda Civic—remember her? the one with the CD player and the marks on the roof from when a pop can rolled under the seat and my dad forgot about it and it exploded once all over the car? and the wheel that veered ever so slightly to the right so I had to drive always pulling to the left and then whenever I had to drive a car with normal steering it was weird? and the brakes were so shitty I had to slam on them to even stop at a stop sign? the car was janky but it had character and it was a near-copy of an old Toyota we’d had in Dubai that we’d left behind in the move and I was four and way too attached to it and cried and cried over the fact that we’d have to leave the car oceans away and so my parents got a car that looked exactly like it in an effort to make me feel a little less like I’d moved oceans and oceans away? and you understood that, you understood the importance of having a shitty janky car all your own with character and a way-too-intense backstory that made you think about your childhood?—and driven back to your house.

“God, you sure you can’t come for dinner?” You asked.

“No,” I said. “Gotta do dinner with my family.”

“I get it,” You said. “I’ll swing by after dinner to say goodbye.”

“Do,” I said.

“Okay,” You said. “I have to go.”

We sat in my car for two and a half hours and talked until the sun was setting and it really was time for dinner and we’d shifted into odd positions in our seats as we talked, crawling towards each other, creeping onto one another like sunflowers and sun, but we were sunflowers and sun both, laughing and then not laughing and talking and wondering.

Summer had once stretched before us like a promise and now it was gone and we’d be gone with it.

We parted with a hug over the console but you never did come and say goodbye.

---

Now, I go to bed with my hair wet without a braid, both because I’m terrible at them and because I took the time it might take me to braid to write this instead.

My janky Honda with character is gone. You’re gone, too.

I don’t know if there’s even a hair on my head left that’s known you, that’s been tucked snugly and safely by competent, loving fingers into a braid like a pattern down my back.

I wonder if you heard that line in folklore. I wonder if you thought about me. I wonder if you look back and think that, yeah, for all it was and all it wasn’t, that was what friendship was all about.