Friending and Remembering

TW: this piece contains mention of suicide.

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The year is 2008 and I'm standing in my town's ice skating rink in a Tony Hawk hoodie. I can see my breath floating out in front of me and solemnly toward the ceiling with each new exhale. I'm in the long adjoining room beside the main rink and I'm frozen meekly beside a vending machine equipped with Cup O' Noodles. Veronica is standing across the room from me and she looks as nervous to approach me as I do her.

We've been going back and forth on Facebook for weeks but we haven't yet spoken in person. These early days of social media are an odd scramble for connection. We revel in our growing friends lists and we send out barrages of pokes and requests with a wanton disregard. It's a strange new terrain for all of us. We have no idea yet what any of these platforms will turn into, just that we can spill our hearts out to strangers as we shelter behind screens. There's an odd security in the removal.

A powerful authenticity dominates our early digital lives. We can express in chat bubbles the thoughts that go unspoken. We post on caprices with an unrepeatable naivety. We toss into the world the unbridled thoughts of hormone racing minds. It's a Wild West of unrestrained whimsy, and we haven't yet learned to erect the facades of fantasy lives.

There are no social media influencers, and no Instagram models. TikTok is still a slow-rolling train approaching from a distant dawn.

Veronica and I know a lot about each other. We've poured our souls out to one another a hundred different times.

But those evocative talks all fall by the wayside as we compulsively feign distractions. We spend fifteen minutes pretending not to notice each other's sidelong glances before she finally decides to approach me. She's in fifth grade and I'm in sixth. She's wearing a tight black hoodie and a tentative smile. A blue streak of hair teeters from side to side across her forehead as she makes her way past a row of tables toward me.

"Heeeyyy, I think we're friends on Facebook," she pretends to be unsure.

"Yeah… uh… you're Veronica Spector, right?" I return the gesture.

"Yeah!"

The conversation is stilted and the smell of the night's fifteenth Cup o' Noodles hovers faintly through air that's only a few degrees warmer than the floor of hardened ice just outside of view.

I'm even worse off on the ice than I am on a basketball court. But I've been coming here long enough that I've finally at least managed to make it around the rink once or twice without a walker or concussion.

The song "Human" by the Killers is playing over the speaker as we continue to chat awkwardly. After a few minutes, though, a group of my friends swing open the door adjoining the two rooms and make their way toward us, out of breath and clambering to remove serrated skates boisterously unsuited to land travel. They're followed by a few of Veronica's friends as well. With the beginnings of high heel training under their belt, they're a bit more graceful on their feet.

Veronica and I exchange a meaningful glance as we allow ourselves to be whisked off by our friends into separate seas of Friday night madness. Each weekend, A hallowed social hub of angsty kids and teenagers forms around this rink. They spill into the surrounding neighborhood as each separately attempts to spread their wings.

As the year goes on and Veronica and I continue talking online, we continue crossing paths at this social arena and she remains in my orbit. Tumultuous years continue tumbling by.

---

The year is 2010 and I'm standing beside my girlfriend, Jenny, on a blustery January day. There's a thick layer of snow as soft as sand covering the entire world around us. The playground to our left and the wood chips on which it stands are completely buried. The wires, the mailboxes, the buildings, and houses of this tired town are interred in a blanket of pristine snow. The side walk has been plowed, but only narrowly enough for a couple of naive and in love seventh graders to travel through its compacted walls of white.

Jenny's wearing a Yellow hoodie that says Twisters and I'm wearing a pair of falling apart sneakers unsuited to the day before us. School's cancelled today and I'm delighted to have a girlfriend to be snowed in with, and delighted to have a dad willing to drive me as close to her house as the weather will allow.

As we make our way toward her house through this sidewalk-turned-tunnel, gleeful cries of middle-schoolers at play pierce an overbearing silence as they pound through the untamped snow across the street. I see Veronica and she sees me. We both wonder for a second whether to say anything, but neither of us does.

As a couple of years have passed us by, our online talks have faded to dust. Jenny and I continue to walk.

"They're like a different species," she exclaims, an irritated side eye pointed toward the fifth and sixth graders on the playground. Now that we've moved on to junior high, middle school feels like a different world, and Veronica is on the other side of it.

I agree distractedly as I glance back toward the playset again myself. Veronica and a couple of their middle school friends wipe off snow-covered swings with newly purchased mittens as I return my focus to the snowy world ahead.

---

The year is 2021 and it's the final day of the year. I'm at a New Years Eve party hosted by a good friend of mine that I've known since I was only twelve. We're deep enough into the pandemic that we revel in how it feels to be together again and unmasked at last. As the night goes on and alcohol is consumed, the few masks that could be seen upon arrival quietly disappear from sight.

As happy as I am to be here, though, I can't help but feeling like an outsider. Sometimes it's around the friends I've known for the very longest that imposter syndrome feels the most biting.

Conversations and cursory catch ups go drowned out beneath music that continues to crescendo as midnight approaches. I amble from room to room in this unfamiliar Philadelphia home. The talks seem to grow less and less meaningful as a drunken 12:00AM wanders closer.

I find myself on the third floor of the house in the room beside a rooftop deck overlooking the glimmering city. I see a few familiar faces sitting in the gently vibrating room and measure whether to greet them. But I decide against it.

As I make my way toward the door, though, I hear an unfamiliar voice emerge from a familiar face. "Hey Ben, do you remember me?" she asks unsurely. She looks insecure. She looks prepared to be unrecognized. She smiles obliquely toward me.

"I do! You're Veronica Spector."

I'm delighted that she asked and she's delighted to be remembered. She blushes slightly.

"I don't think I've talked to you in 7 or 8 years!"

"I think it's been even longer than that!" She says with a little laugh. "I think the last time I saw you was… Kellie's party?"

But I struggle to recall the instant.

"It was at the Conklin Pool," she clarifies helpfully.

And with that, memories of a forgotten day come flooding warmly back. We continue to talk as the other guests leave the room and the clock continues to tick its way toward midnight. We reminisce about our high school. We talk about our greatest teachers and our most awful ones. We talk about the momentous things that happened in our time under that notorious building's roof. She tells me about how after I graduated, she ended up continuing the rest of her education online, relieved by the isolation before she'd ever even heard the word "Covid."

I ask her about her brother, and she seems flattered to have another detail about her life remembered. She speaks kindly of him. Her explanation is riddled with the maternal pauses of a loving older sister. She tells me about her love life and her boyfriend and how she wishes he'd quit smoking cigarettes. We reflect soberly on the people that drift in and out of our lives with locked eyes as a bass booms through the house beneath us.

After an hour of talking and only ten minutes to go until midnight, we both decide to rejoin the party. As she walks through the door, though, I stop her.

"Veronica?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for asking if I remember you."

---

The year is 2023 and I'm scrolling through social media in bed with a bleary-eyed detachment. A long post suddenly grabs my attention. It says that you're no longer here anymore and a weight sinks suddenly to my stomach. I begin wondering about the words that could have been spoken that night where, maybe, you would still be.

I wonder about the parallel timelines in which we'd remained close over all of those years.

I wonder about that conversation we had in that quiet room on that fateful night and I wonder about the pain riddled within that weighty question. I'm thinking about the look in your eyes, and the way you expected to be forgotten.

I'm thinking about how our talk could have been just a bit more sincere, and how I wish I'd told you what an impression you left on me during those chaotic middle school years. How much those heart to heart conversations mattered in those early digital days. I wish I'd told you what a sweet and loving person you are.

I wish I'd told you, "How could anyone ever forget you, Veronica?"