I could feel her watching me, too. I wondered how my life appeared to her. I wished I could see it through her eyes.
One day, she wrote me a message. It was filled with over-punctuation and extended “hahaha”s, which surprised me because the Sadie I’d known had been aloof and unflappable. Now, she was over-punctuating.
We went back and forth, updating each other on the basics of our lives. She told me she’d run into a boyfriend of mine at a club in LA where a lot of artists hung out. Of course she would be there, I thought. She is still fucking cool after all these years. She explained that she had gone up to him and said hi.
“I was ranting about how we went to high school in a demented beach town and hung out with a lot of skaters,” she said.
I bristled; I didn’t want to reminisce. I was sure that somehow the conversation would lead me back to my fifteen-year-old self, silent and complicit in bed at Mike’s house or uncomfortable and unsure at castings. I was embarrassed by that version of myself. I hated that Sadie had known her.
We’ve now lived in two of the same major cities, New York and Los Angeles, at the same time. She’s an artist. We know some of the same people; our friend groups overlap. It seems that Sadie has real female friends now. Sometimes I wonder if in an alternate universe—one in which we’d become actual friends—we could’ve helped each other navigate these unfamiliar cities and worlds through our twenties. Mostly, I’m just glad to see that she has created a life that, unlike our high school existence, doesn’t appear to exclusively revolve around the attention of boys and men.
I’m sorry we never focused on the right things when they mattered most, but I’m glad to know she’s okay. I only wish I’d told her in high school how strong I thought she was. How I would have liked to have known her better.
Googling “Britney shaved head” now brings up a picture I don’t remember having seen. Britney’s arms are raised as if she’s touching what remains of her hair. There is no clipper in sight. It’s almost peaceful. She’s pulled back from the mirror, not looking at us but past us. Her small button nose and big doll eyes are glossy, her gaze faraway. She seems relieved. It’s almost painterly, this photo, reminiscent of Girl with a Pearl Earring, but whereas the girl in the painting has a turban covering her head, Britney’s hair is gone and in its place is her shockingly naked scalp. It surprises you. It feels violent, a warning.
Bc Hello Halle Berry
IT STARTED RAINING on the island in the morning. We watched the drops form small, perfect circles on the surface of the pool, and S opened the sliding glass door to let in the heavy air and the sound of rain. We were silent as we lay in bed, our minds still fuzzy from sleep and our tanned bodies tucked under the crisp white sheet. My skin smelled like saltwater and expensive sunscreen, tangy and unfamiliar.
I held my coffee on my chest and stared blankly at the giant gray clouds as they inched across the sprawling Indian Ocean. Framed by the edges of the sliding door, the infinity pool bleeding into the ocean looked like a screensaver. The clouds moved so quickly that I was getting a headache trying to follow them. I felt tiny, as if I could be swept away if I wasn’t careful.
Was it our third day here? Time seemed irrelevant. We were truly in the middle of nowhere, floating on an ocean on the other side of the planet. We used our thumbs to check on our lives back home, but no one was awake to deliver news anyway. It was just the two of us and our iPhones, in a room built on thick wooden stilts sunk deep into the ocean floor.
I moved slowly getting out of bed. The soles of my feet were cool against the smooth floors. The tap tap of the rain followed me as I walked to the bathroom. I caught glimpses of my naked body in the mirrors lining the walls. I looked freckled and young, sleepy in a way that people sometimes consider sweet and charming. I washed my face and studied myself, adding mascara to my puffy eyes while sipping my cold coffee.
Now seems like the right time to get a photo out of the way, I thought. S wouldn’t even need to get out of bed to take the shot. I hummed to myself as I quickly ran a dry razor under my arms and squeezed lotion onto my thighs. I rummaged through my suitcase to find a bikini from my own line and began untangling a particularly stringy orange top, remembering that we’d never shot this one before. Kat, my business partner and friend, had reminded me before I left that it was important to get a picture of myself wearing this particular design. The suits generally don’t sell as well if there’s no photo of me in them. I pulled the bottom up and leaned over to make sure my breasts fell into the triangle top correctly.