The Good Times Are Over

"Kevin and Sharon got a divorce," my next-door-neighbor and best friend Zach deadpans. I set down the ice cube tray.
"Jesus Christ, why?" Zach shrugs.
"Well, Sharon is...Sharon."
"True." Sharon does absolutely nothing for the redhead stereotype.
"Cam and Kelsey are taking it hard."
"Shit. Wow." Kevin, Sharon, Cam, and Kelsey live down the street. Cam and Kelsey are our age. It freaks us out a little. In our minds, our parents' marriages are hard as bedrock. We thought Kevin and Sharon's was too. What if our parents secretly can't stand each other? We erase the thought from our heads and go on with our plans to drink Pepsi, watch Fantasia, and mock it mercilessly. I turn my head away from the Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence and ask Zach, "Isn't this supposed to be about what you'd see in your head if you heard this music? Who listens to an orchestra and visualizes Mickey Mouse?"
"Walt fucking Disney," says Zach. "I saw the moving van."
"I guess that makes sense," I mutter. I think back to last week:

I'm walking home from the bus stop and am just turning onto my street. Cam is standing numbly on the corner. I wonder if maybe the dogs managed to outsmart the invisible fence again. Sharon walks up from the neighboring street and gives Cameron the stiffest hug I've ever seen take place between two human beings. I'm tempted to stand around and find out what's going on, but I don't want them to think I'm some kind of voyeur. ( I am, but that's beside the point.) I keep my head down and walk up to my house.

For the rest of the night, Zach and I keep idly drifting back to the subject. Kelsey was one of our best friends once. We made messes in the kitchen and spied on the crotchety old people in our neighborhood, until they started calling Zach and me geniuses, and we only had time to be geniuses. Kelsey went to the traditional teenage girl wonderland of new boyfriends and lipgloss, while Zach and I read the A.V. Club and laughed when people called us hipster douchebags. We don't hate each other, we just don't have much in common. I remember one of the last times I talked to Kelsey:

It's the end of 7th grade. I've been through some crazy shit and just started on Prozac. I linger by Kelsey's locker after school as I wait for her to ask me whatever she wants to ask me. She hands me a sloppily wrapped bundle. "Happy birthday," she says, "I forgot."
"Oh, Jesus," I croon, "you didn't have to do that!" I never got her a birthday present. I was in the hospital on her birthday. I unwrap my present. It's one of those squishy pillows, shaped like a can of Diet Coke. Cool beans. Kelsey asks her question:

"Do you hate cheerleaders?"
"No!" I snort. "What an outdated social stereotype! Why?"
"I'd like to be one. Next year. I'm going to try out."
"If it's what you wanna do," I say, "go for it. And fuck anyone who gets in your way."
"Do other people hate cheerleaders?"
"I don't see why they would. There's nothing wrong with cheerleaders. They're probably better than emo kids or something." (Two years from now, a cheerleader will beat me within an inch of my life, but I don't know this yet.) I feel her eyes move up and down my left arm. I've just hacked them up like an amateur dipshit because middle school is the worst thing that ever happened to anyone who's been alive for three consecutive years.
"People are talking about you," she says. "They're saying you're pretty screwed up."
"Who isn't? Let's get together sometime soon. Catch up on everything. It's been forever." We keep on saying we'll do this. We don't ever. We don't like to think to ourselves that we used to be best friends. But it probably hasn't ever been more true than it was right then.

The next morning, my mom is trying to teach me to knit. It's very much like trying to teach a pig to sing. We decide to take a break. Good idea. My stomach is killing me, so I decide to run to the corner store and get a Sprite or something. As I reach the end of the street, a smoke ring blows into my eyes. I look up. It's Kelsey and some guy who could easily pass for thirty. She smiles broadly. She looks innocent with her lingering baby fat and her glasses. She drops lowers her hand, but not before I see the cigarette. Now, I'm going to be brutally honest here. I'm just like most people. I don't care as much about the starving children in Africa as I do charity representatives interrupting my shopping. It's the same thing with cigarettes. Seeing Kelsey smoking in plain sight stirs a new emotion within me. For the first time, I actually care about the havoc that tobacco wreaks on the human body, and not just the havoc it wreaks on my dining experience. I want to save her from the nicotine, but I know it's none of my business. As the ashes she flicks into the gutter hit the pavement, I see the beginning of the end. She's already started down this road, and I'm not the one who can stop it.

"Hi," I say hesitantly. I drop my voice a little. "I heard. I'm...sorry."
She takes another drag off her cigarette. "Yeah. You like your new school?"
"It's nice. Sometime we should...I don't know." This time, I don't even want to finish it. I want to say, "Please, quit, while you can," or "Put that fucking thing out right now!" I see little eight-year-old Kelsey in a tutu that matches mine saying, "It's a free country." I extend my hand and leave it hanging there. She raises her left eyebrow. I clench my open palm into a fist and draw it back.
I mumble, "Merry Christmas," and turn around back up the street.