Wendy, a mousy unpretentious schoolgirl, befriends outgoing and popular Janey--and learns the value of friendship.
The Fate of Friendship
WHEN I WAS FIVE YEARS OLD, my mother told me I was born with a caul. “It’s what makes you special, Wendy,” she said. “You’re unique.”
My mother was a child of the New Age, and, seeing omens of good and evil in everything, had alternative explanations for my homely appearance. My wandering eye, for example, would give me extraordinary powers of insight, wisdom and prophecy. My gimpy left leg symbolized hidden strengths and talents. That I was a southpaw meant I would become a creative genius. And my harelip—incompetent suturing leaving a terrible scar on my upper lip—would reveal a gift for words. That caul somehow gave meaning to all of my physical shortcomings. I sometimes wondered if, without it, would I simply have been my mother’s unfortunate little girl—ugly, friendless, an anomaly—and nothing more?
As a child, I wore thick glasses, and braces on my legs. In spite of my exemplary grades, my teachers seemed to find fault with everything I did, and often criticized the messiness of my smeared, hand-written homework. As far as I could tell, I wasn’t special, just different and ungainly. My classmates did not see me as special, either—just ‘specially ugly—and I was the center of their cruelty. Whether I truly possessed any of those austere and time-honored talents my mother tirelessly described, they remained hidden behind another, invisible, sheath: one of loneliness, self-pity, and humiliation.
Then I met Janey.
At ten years old, Janey was a quiet, reserved girl, wan and mousy, neither hated nor revered by our classmates. She wasn’t special, or different. She merely… was. In school, her existence was marked by the few occasions she was called to the blackboard to work out a math equation, or to read a passage in our social studies book.
One day, we were assigned projects to do in groups of two. After everyone else had chosen partners—some had even huddled together in groups of three just to avoid getting stuck with me—Janey and I were paired together. But I didn’t mind, because she had always seemed nice. She had never laughed at me, no matter what the other kids said or did to me.
Our friendship developed easily as we worked together gluing soldiers and columns in a diorama of ancient Rome, and it wasn’t long before we were telling each other everything. I discovered that not only had I secrets, but someone to share them with. For the first time, I was able to forget my physical shortcomings, and as far I could tell, Janey wasn’t even aware of them. We spent hours together as I tried to teach her to write with her left hand—a fruitless endeavor, but one that provided endless entertainment as we giggled over shaky letters inexpertly drawn across the pages of our early friendship. Janey tried to teach me to French braid my own hair, a skill I never completely developed. But something else she taught me was a much more important lesson, one I was not to learn until much later in life.
As our friendship progressed over games of pretend and Barbies, I one day realized that I was happy, and the jeers and jibes of my classmates had become unimportant. No longer did I have to sit alone in the corner of the cafeteria at lunchtime. No longer was I relegated to the front of the bus behind the driver, while the cool kids claimed the back seats. Now, I walked proudly, with my new best friend, somehow protected by her sedate anonymity.
AS WE GREW OLDER and entered high school, Janey blossomed into a pale, mousy-but-pretty young woman. I was not so fortunate: hormones and growth spurts made me even clumsier, greasy hair and acne now a further insult to my appearance.
After our freshman year, Janey started dating boys from school. At first, I felt a terrible sense of loss. I felt replaced by boys I knew would never take an interest in me. When I shared my feelings with her, she took my hand and promised no one could replace our friendship. I believed her, because after every date she always called me, and we’d whisper and giggle into the phone through the wee hours of the morning, the receivers warm and sweaty against our ears. After we hung up, I’d fall asleep comforted by a sense of trust and companionship.
The summer before our senior year, the carnival had come to town, as it did every summer. I was allowed to go for the first time without one of our parents in attendance. My parents were loving, if over-protective, convinced such places as the carnival were dens of iniquity to lure the innocent into a life of squalor and immorality. My new liberty caused great excitement for us, and we held hands breathlessly as my father dropped us off at the entrance. “Be careful,” he warned us. “Don’t talk to strangers.” We rolled our eyes and told him not to worry, then turned toward the ticket booths to buy passage within.
We didn’t speak to strangers, that night. Not really. Not unless you call a fellow classmate a stranger. We noticed John following us around from ride to ride, and from game to game. He was the star of our high school wrestling team, and he clearly had his sights set on Janey. At the duck shoot, we turned back to watch him bead on the ducks flying back and forth across the back of the tent, and stood amazed as he shot the things one after the other, missing only once. He won a large, garish-colored teddy bear, which he grandly presented to Janey. She blushed and accepted it, linking her arm in his.
The rest of the evening, John stayed close to Janey’s side, barely registering my presence. He had eyes only for her, hungry and glittering. He made me uneasy. When they decided to come back the next evening, I was afraid for her, though I could not have said why.
Later that night, after her father dropped me off at my house, the phone rang. Knowing it was Janey, I answered it on the first ring.
“Hey, what is it?”
“I wanted to ask you something, but I didn’t want to do it with my dad around…” She hesitated a moment.
“What is it, Janey? Just spit it out.”
“It’s not a big deal, really. I was just wondering… I was kinda hoping you would come with us tomorrow night.”
Now it was my turn to pause. It seemed Janey felt a whisper of unease about John, too. “You want me to go with you on your date? Why?”
She didn’t answer.
“Look, if you’re uncomfortable, why are you going?”
“’Cause I like him,” she said with a sigh.
I didn’t like where this was going, but I couldn’t stop her. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Oh, that’s really great. Thanks, Wendy!”
And I could hear the smile in her voice.
THE NEXT EVENING, instead of walking to the door and ringing the bell, John sat in the car—on the street—honking the horn impatiently.
“Who the hell is that?” I heard Janey’s father shout from the living room.
“That’s my date, Dad,” Janey shouted back from the foyer.
He padded down the hallway, a book in his hand. “I don’t want you going out with anyone I haven’t met. Next time, make sure he comes to the door.”
“Okay. If it makes you feel any better, Wendy’s coming, too.”
Her father looked at me briefly and nodded, a smile touching the corners of his lips. I’d always had a crush on him, though I would never have admitted it to Janey. “That’s alright, then. Have a good time.”
We ran out to the car, and when we both slid into the front seat, John looked at me with contempt and disgust.
“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded.
Janey met his gaze levelly. “This is Wendy, remember? She was with me last night. She’s coming with us. Do you have a problem with that?”
John’s mouth pressed into a thin white line. He looked both handsome and cruel. I imagined it would hurt to kiss him, but the desire for him would be strong, all the same. I could understand Janey’s attraction to him.
“No,” he said. “I guess not.”
Janey smiled at me and squeezed my hand.
Not surprisingly, John was terrible to me at the carnival. I was an outsider, and an outcast. On the Ferris wheel, he looked back at me, leering; those thin lips stretching back to show small white teeth, sharp and mean. On the midway, he shoved me out of his way, or tripped me as I walked past. His laugh was ugly and girlish.
Once, after John cruelly mimicked my loping gait, Janey came to my defense.
“John, don’t,” she said. “You’re being really mean.”
John turned on her with such ferocity, I was sure he would hit her. “What did you say?” he hissed.
Janey seemed to shrink inside herself. “I… I said stop. You’re being mean…” she stammered.
John’s face turned an alarming shade of red. “Don’t ever tell me what to do, you hear me?” He raised an open hand and shook it near her jaw, as if to hit her. “I’ll do whatever I damn well feel like.” To illustrate, he turned around and flicked his finger painfully against my forehead.
Stunned by the entire scene, I blinked back sudden tears and rubbed the little spot of pain between my eyes.
“Now, let’s go on the Tilt-A-Whirl,” he said.
Janey smiled meekly at me and followed.
SOME WEEKS LATER, Janey and I were in my room, when she asked me to go on another date with her and John.
“Just don’t go with him, anymore,” I suggested. “He’s a jerk, and you know it.”
“But he won’t go away. He won’t leave me alone. …And I kinda don’t want him to, either…” she added in a small voice.
I felt as if I were looking at a stranger. “I don’t know, Janey… I think you’re crazy to keep seeing him. He’s dangerous. I don’t trust him.”
“Please?” She pleaded with me from beneath her lashes, knowing I’d cave in.
Something nagged at me from the back of my mind; something I couldn’t quite identify. I pushed it away and sighed in resignation. “Okay, fine,” I said, “I’ll go.”
Janey squeaked and jumped up, clapping her hands. “Oh, goody! Come by my house at 8:00. We’re going to Wilson Park.”
LATER THAT EVENING, John rolled his eyes as I climbed into the car. “Jesus, Jane. I thought I told you to leave the re-tard at home.”
I cringed inside, stung, though I pretended not to hear. That kind of treatment was old hat for me.
Janey was curled up on the seat beside him. His arm was wrapped possessively around her shoulders, absently twirling a lock of her mouse-brown hair between his thick, callused fingers.
“Wendy’s not a re-tard, John. She gets better grades than me. And she’s my best friend. “
“Well, why in hell is she right here in the car with us? I thought you said you were mature for your age. After last night, I didn’t think you needed anyone to hold your hand.”
Janey shrugged, not looking at him, and then comprehension registered on his handsome-mean face, a nasty smile curled around his mouth.
“What’s wrong, baby? Don’t you trust me?”
Janey remained silent.
“You don’t, do you?” Then, addressing me through the rear-view mirror, he said, “Imagine that, Dumb-shit, she don’t trust me. Now why would that be? You sayin’ bad things about me behind my back, smart-ass?” He laughed and pulled Janey closer.
I didn’t bother to answer, but turned away to look out the window, watching the streets fly by as we passed them with alarming speed. I found myself gripping the door handle as we skidded around the corners, and wondering exactly what had happened the night before. Whatever it was, Janey hadn’t told me when she called after she got home.
At the park, John and Janey walked ahead, holding hands while I gimped along behind them, throwing grains of corn to the ducks on the footpath. When they stopped to kiss, I watched with a kind of troubled fascination—their mouths closing on each other, tongues darting in and around, teasing and tasting, pulling each other closer by virtue of spit and passion—I wondered how kissing like that could even be appealing. Nonetheless, I felt a pull in my belly, strange, but not unpleasant. I turned away to study the ducks now gathered around my feet, squawking for more corn.
“Hey, mush-head!” John’s voice pulled me from my reverie, and I looked at them again. His sharp little teeth gleamed at me in the light of the setting sun. “You want a kiss like that, stumpy?” He laughter was cruel.
I gaped at him, knowing his remark hit close to home. I could feel my face flushing furiously.
He turned suddenly, pulling Janey off the path. “It’s time to play hide-n-seek. You girls hide, and I’ll come after you.”
A small chill ran through me that was more than the cool evening air, and I felt that niggling again at the base of my neck.
Janey and I held hands and walked toward the edge of the wood. It was already dark in there. We glanced at each other before warily stepping across the boarder between safety and the unknown.
Behind us, John began counting. Looking back, I saw him lean against a tree, face obscured by his hands. “One…! Two…! Three…! Four…!” I remember being vaguely impressed that the goon could count at all. But the thought was chased away as we crossed the threshold from the relative safety of the fading light into the darkened shadows of the forest.
Janey was the first to speak, wrenching her hand out of mine. “You go that way,” she said, pointing to the left, “and I’ll go the other.” Her face was drawn and pale, but excitement colored her voice.
“Janey, I don’t think that’s such a great idea—“
She waved her hands impatiently, like a small child. “Just do it. Please.”
“Okay,” I said, reluctantly, “but don’t go far.”
I watched as she turned away from me and headed down a deer path, disappearing from view, then I slowly picked my own way through the underbrush in the opposite direction. It wasn’t long before I heard branches snapping not far behind me, and I dimly noted that John had already stopped counting. He cheated, I thought. I looked over my shoulder and glimpsed the sleeve of his red-and-white letterman-wrestling jacket as he darted through the trees. He was moving quickly, and angling toward me. I wondered if he knew that Janey had gone the other way. I hobbled a few more paces to crouch behind a large tree.
Soon, I heard him draw closer and I froze, my breath caught in my throat. At that moment, something awakened within me—something strong and potent. It yawned and stretched, rising sleepily to the surface of my consciousness. I realized then that things were very, very wrong.
“I can see you, you retarded little rabbit. Did you really think you could hide from me?”
Faster than I’d ever moved before, or since, I shot up from my nest among the roots and deadfall of the tree and loped deeper into the forest. John gave chase, following me further and further into the woods. It wasn’t long before he caught up with me and tackled me to the ground. I felt a sharp pain in my ribs as the breath was knocked out of me, and I dimly hoped nothing had been broken.
Wresting me around so that I lay beneath him, he pinned down my shoulders and kissed me, fiercely. It wasn’t the kiss I had been anticipating from an unknown lover. It was rough and unpleasant, his wet mouth covering mine with abusive intent. His tongue rudely pried my lips open, invading my mouth and making me gag. I bit his tongue, and he howled, rolling off me, but not before his fist connected hard with my right temple. I lay still, feigning unconsciousness.
“Stupid bitch,” he muttered, kicking my right hip, and wiping the blood from his mouth. “And I was doing you a favor, too. Let’s see if you remember that, next time. And if you tell anyone about this—a single soul—you’re dead, dimwit!” He kicked me again; just to make sure I got the point. Then, he turned away and headed in the other direction, toward Janey. “I only wanted to know what it was like to kiss a re-tard.”
When I thought it was safe to move, I stiffly rose to my feet, still staggered by the blow to my head, nausea threatening to overcome me. It was very dark now and night had fallen, cloaking us in blackness. Overhead, the moon shone—full and silver and sublime—but cast little light through the thickness of the forest. Ignoring the pain in my ribs and my bruising hip, I wove my way sightlessly through the trees. I had to get to Janey; I knew she would soon be in trouble.
As I stumbled through branches that scraped my face and arms, an image seized hold of me, guided by my newly awakened consciousness, blinding in its intensity. In my mind, I saw John hurl himself toward my best friend and throw her to the ground. He fell on top of her, his callused hands groping roughly beneath her short skirt. I could feel the roughness of his fingers, bruising her thighs, parting them ruthlessly, his breath, hot and stinking, on her face. The images threw me off balance, and I landed hard on my knees, trying to clear them from my mind.
Through the darkness, and not far away, I heard John’s real voice, low and menacing as he trampled through the underbrush, a man on a mission. Janey, still thinking it was all a game, shrieked in delight when he soon found her in the glade where she had hidden. But her laughter quickly changed to terror as John’s intent became clear. These sounds were not the visions of a few moments before, and I knew I had to get to Janey. Fast.
I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the sting of pebbles and dirt embe dded in my palms and knees, and stumbled blindly toward the sound of Janey’s voice. I felt led by some immutable instinct I never knew I possessed, one beyond thought and reason. I saw not the silhouette of tree branches in the darkness, but rather the incessant flashing images of John hovering above her, and she struggling to loose herself from his grip.
A scream pierced the air to my left, and I veered in that direction, the sounds of struggle growing louder and more pronounced. I pushed through a tangle of underbrush and was stopped as my foot lodged painfully between a rock and some roots, and nearly tumbled over the struggling bodies in the clearing that had suddenly opened before me. I stooped and pulled up the heavy rock from the ground, freeing my foot. The moon shone down into the clearing, bright and full. It reflected the fear, pain and horror on Janey’s face, and illuminated the sweat that glittered and dripped from John’s, highlighting the rhythmic movement of his body. There was still blood on his mouth and I took grim satisfaction that I had caused him to bleed.
Without thinking, I hefted the rock above my head, barely registering the strain in my biceps and across my shoulders and the pain radiating from my ribs. My arms descended and brought it down, connecting solidly with back of his head.
He uttered a sound of muffled astonishment, almost comical in its questioning tone. His hips continued to thrust convulsively for a moment, before he fell heavily forward, smothering Janey. I could hear the impact of his body push the breath from her lungs.
“Janey?” I ventured after a moment. “Janey? Are you okay?”
“Oh, my god…”
“Janey, sweetie…?”
“Get him off me.” Her voice was muffled and shaky. “Oh Christ, just get him off me!”
She shifted under John’s bulk as I rolled his heavy, inert form off of Janey’s petite frame. I stooped, trying to find the pulsing of his carotid artery—as I’d seen people do on TV—and failed. “I think he’s dead.”
AFTER THAT NIGHT, Janey and I drifted apart, as people often do after such circumstances. It’s funny how things work out that way. Crisis either brings people together, bonding them more closely than before; or it drives a wedge between them, forcing them further apart, until only the fading memories of misfortune remain. The green, fertile ground of friendship withers and dies, and becomes a hopeless, fallow wasteland. At that point, what else is there to do but to pull up stakes and move on?
John didn’t die when I cracked his skull open with that rock. He was nineteen years old, and tried and convicted of one count of rape, and two counts of assault and battery. He was then sent away to the state penitentiary, with the promise of parole after two years.
He never made it to parole, however. While in jail, his bad attitude managed to make several enemies for him rather quickly, including two of the prison guards. Eight or nine months after his arrival, those very two guards happened to be on duty when a particularly heated argument ensued over stolen cigarettes. John was stabbed in the neck with a shiv made from a stolen cafeteria spoon. According to their own story, the guards were making their rounds just before lockdown when they heard raised voices coming from John’s cellblock. They ran to investigate, but by the time they arrived on the scene, it was too late. John lay facedown on the floor with the sharpened spoon protruding from his neck, and blood pooling around his head.
When questioned, none of the prisoners claimed to have witnessed the deed. There were, however, several smeared fingerprints on the spoon, including a partial that could have belonged to one of the two guards. The case was closed “pending further investigation.”
I suspect the case had been shoved to the back of someone’s file cabinet to be conveniently forgotten. The man was a criminal, after all, and according to popular opinion, he received his just desserts.
I can’t say I disagreed with that consensus.
BY THE TIME JOHN DIED, Janey and I had graduated high school, and passed the summer apart. In fact, we hadn’t spoken since the trial, nearly a year before. When I left for college at the end of the summer, I’d learned that Janey had been willingly checked into a mental health facility. When she’d learned of John’s death, her already inadequate ability to deal with the events over the past year had disintegrated entirely. Her shame and guilt overwhelmed her to the point that she tried to commit suicide.
My heart broke when I heard the news.
I had watched the deterioration of my friend’s mind, of her very soul, with a sort of detached concern. What help and comfort I could offer was rejected out of hand. She refused to see me or to take my calls. She wanted, her mother told me, no reminder of what had happened.
What could I do but concede?
So, alone and miserable, I healed my own wounds. My mother cooed over me, drawing on her timeworn repertoire of maternal comforts, but her words had become empty. Being special, while it had always held a certain dubious esteem for me, was nothing to me now but the reality of faulty genetics. I had no gift of prophecy, and no outstanding creative genius at my disposal. What I did have was an intense bond with another human being who had known me only as her best friend. She didn’t see my wandering eye, or hear my slurred speech, or witness my labored movements. She saw me as I exist within my own mind: intelligent, sensitive, and as a friend who was there to listen and to comfort when needed.
When Janey withdrew from me and willfully shattered that bond between us, I was devastated. Who would again see me as I truly am?
I still mourn that bond we shared. I know, however, that Janey has since picked up and moved on. She lives in my heart as the Janey I once knew—bright, mousy, laughing Janey—and I hope I live in hers with the same affection, somehow. We may one day run into each other again, and perhaps rekindle that old flame of friendship—but most likely not. What’s done is done, and the past simply cannot be reclaimed.
In such circumstances, there are only two roads to be taken: that of bitterness and pain, or to take that pain and use it to understand oneself and to grow from that knowledge. Caul or no, I now know that I truly was special. I was special in the hearts of those who loved me, of my mother and speech therapists, and later professors and colleagues. But most importantly, I was special to Janey, whose friendship had brought me confidence, self-worth and independence. I learned from her what it means to love, and to be loved in return, unconditionally. What could be more special than that?
London: Lashed, Lacerated, Lampooned and Lambasted satirizes 18 popular Jack London novellas with adult content and language and the work is author Jay Dubya's 37th published hardcover/paperback book.
Helios is an award winning novel about a brilliant inventor of new technology, a fallen CEO seeking redemption, and an idealistic youth who comes of age in corporate America.
Celts and Kings: The story behind the mystifying disappearance of the Celtic Earls in 1607. The story of a lost love and Celtic Spirituality.
The story of a forbidden love going back 400 years.
The story steeped in Irish history, Ce
