met Clara* forty years ago in 7th grade Social Studies — a class where the drone of the teacher’s voice and the way he picked relentlessly at his face lingers like a faded photograph in my cerebral cortex.
Clara sat at the desk in front of mine. She was wickedly funny and precociously smart. She noticed everything, including how often I laughed at her jokes which were frequent and brutal and absurd. That’s how our friendship started — with laughter.
We used to duck into the girls’ bathroom after class to refresh our lip gloss and eye liner (a newly acquired skill). Once, she’d tied my shoelaces to my desk right when the bell rang. I’d helplessly watched the class empty out while I tried to untie myself.
Clara had been thorough. She’d made double knots and ultimately had to help me get unstuck. We’d laughed so hard — the kind of laughter that bubbles up from deep inside your gut and makes your body shake. A year later, Clara and I graduated from middle school. She went to a private high school and I went to public school and we lost touch for a while.
Two years later, Clara transferred into my high school in the middle of 10th grade. I’d gone from rarely seeing her to having her front and center in my daily life. This would become a pattern throughout our friendship.
Suddenly, Clara was in the hallways of my school, easily making friends at a place where I always struggled to be seen. Clara was the Earth. The rest of us were moons orbiting her greatness.
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