There’s an old cardboard box in my garage. Inside it are a few notebooks, a faded silk scarf, and a high school pin.
The scarf belonged to Amy. In the summer of our senior year, we were inseparable. She taught me how to skip stones across the lake, and I helped her grind for French tests. We drank cheap beer from the same pack, listened to the same bootleg tape over and over, and sat on her porch talking about things I can’t even remember now. She played guitar and I hummed along. It sounded awful, but the whole neighborhood knew we were best friends.
After graduation, she moved to Chicago. I stayed here. We wrote letters at first, then Christmas cards, then just the occasional social media like. I liked her wedding photos. She liked my new job post. We told ourselves it was fine. Real friends don’t need to talk every day.
Last fall, my mom called and said Amy’s mother had passed away. I opened our chat, typed a few lines, then deleted them one by one. In the end I just wrote, “I’m so sorry.” It took her three days to reply with a simple “Thanks.” It was a formal word. Too formal. Nothing like the Amy I used to know.
That night I found the scarf in the garage. I picked it up and smelled it. Her old perfume was long gone. For a moment I really wanted to call her. I wanted to ask if she remembered that summer when we stole her dad’s beer and sat on the bridge ledge until midnight, with so many so many stars it felt like they might fall on top of us.
But I didn’t call. Not because I didn’t want to. Because I didn’t know what to say. So many years had passed, and our lives no longer touched each other. How old were her kids now? What did she do for work? Was she doing okay? I had no idea. I always thought we had just temporarily lost touch, that we would find our way back eventually. But some friends don’t leave with a fight or a goodbye. They just keep walking, and somewhere down the road, they turn onto a different street.
I folded the scarf and put it back in the box. Maybe one day I’ll make that call. Maybe I won’t. But some friendships, even when faded, leave a permanent mark on our hearts. But I know the lake that summer was real. The out of tune guitar was real. And the fact that we once meant something to each other is real too.
