An interesting thing about butterflies: we watch them with admiration and awe, but as soon as we try & touch a wing, they fall. The scales rub off on your fingers & it can fly no more. One can touch a butterfly’s body without causing harm, but it’s colorless and insectile.
Butterflies are untouchable.

I’m unsure when our friendship began. Creative Writing Club? Some dance that didn’t stick to my memory? A pleasant conversation at lunch? Nothing I can think of fits. We were simply friends.

Maybe we connected because we were so similar. I didn’t see it then, but I was the friend whose jokes would be laughed at, whose confrontational skills were appreciated, but who never stood out to any of our friends in a manner that would garner legitimate friendship. She was the friend who was adored for the way she acted- but in the purest sense. They appreciated her constant positivity, her relentless optimism, and her endearing manner. Yes, she was appreciated for that, and that was why people kept her around.

So perhaps friendship isn’t the right word.

Are cellmates in a high-security prison considered friends?

We held each other’s company quite nicely and each took that as cue to confide in the other.

Friends?

Opportunists, I think.

But that title is only granted in retrospect. At the time, it felt like friendship. Neither of us had previously had close friends. We had been limited by time, personalities, and youth. So, we had nothing to compare it to. Even so, I distinctly remember calling her my best friend merely for the lack of a better one.

We would sit in the library together quite often and exchange what we wrote & thought- but only on the days we didn’t go outside and stroll, or sit on the picnic tables and muse.

We spoke honestly. We spoke of poetry and dreams and religion and stories and truth and rumors and hell.

I think the both of us fell in love with the sensation of being honest without shame. Secrets came more and more quickly. We would tell each other everything, and we were too inexperienced to realize the flaws.

You can imagine the issue, then, that arose from our mutual despair.

We had ghosts, the both of us. Even now I think everyone does. But to some extent these controlled us. Not completely. They simply cast a darkness. We were afflicted with this shadow that the doctors who treat me now call depression.

We shared our secrets, our sickly thoughts, and everything else that occurred to us, and the next class period we would assume our roles as friends of friends. We held our empty positions, and, every now and then, one of us would glance at the other and smile, or shrug, or merely look. We shared indications that we weren’t alone anymore.

Though we went through the mechanics of friendship, there were gaps. We differed greatly in opinion on a number of things, but one of us was always too scared of losing the other to be honest. We often accompanied each other to an odd mix of things because neither of us knew where we should part. But the biggest issue was that neither of us would be so bold as to help another on something we didn’t both agree to in fear of being alone yet again.

I remember one day after school we were walking outside, tracing our old loops around the picnic tables, exchanging stories about family life. I looked at my feet while she was talking. At some point I halted and, when she realized I stopped, she stood next to me and searched the ground to find what I was staring at.

“What’s- oh. Oh, no.” She bent down immediately and picked up a tuft of colorful yellow feathers with splotches of brown and thin claw-like feet. Until she brought it closer, I thought it was a bit of feathers and clay- something simple that an artist had dropped on her way to class.

“What happened to its head?” I asked.

“We should bury it,” she said firmly.

I complied without hesitation. I found a pair of twigs we could use to dig and she led me to the area where the land was soft, and where no one would disturb the bird in its pneumatic rest. We made a small hole and she placed it carefully in the ground.

“That’s so sad,” she said, sounding truly heartbroken. She mourned regularly for innocent things.

“We used to call birds like that butterfly birds, because of all the colors and everything,” I said. “I wonder what happened to its head.”

She nodded. I’d never seen anyone so upset for a bird. I was surprised and somewhat somber but I was more curious of the cause & anxious to discover.

I found no purpose in dwelling on the death of a beautiful thing.

She was obviously upset. I cleared my throat and said, “We can come back later and have a funeral for it.”

She brightened somewhat. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do it,” she said, taking twig in hand & beginning to set the little headless bird to rest.

We never had that funeral.

Weeks later, we were sitting a few yards away on the picnic tables when with tears in her eyes she stumbled over a confession: “I cut myself last night.” I blinked. “Only once, and I immediately regretted it- I cried right afterwards. I wish I hadn’t done it, Emilia. I don’t know why. I just thought about it and felt pain. I regret it so much.”

I didn’t know what to say, much less what to do. Her action was a testament to her profound level of despair, one that had far surpassed mine. This was a spotlight on our differences. It made all the little inequalities stand out. Then I knew the great divorce between us that I had chosen to ignore until I was alone again & she was far away, a blood-stained, smiling woman.

I did not understand.

“Are you okay?” I asked slowly.

“Yes, I’m fine. It was just a one-time thing. I still can’t believe it. I’ll never do it again, never.”

I clung to her words and breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re fine, then. It’s okay.”

We both cried.

Over the next few weeks, our companionship was much the same. We would exist together and brush off each other’s atrocities. We maintained sanity.

Towards the end of the school year, the picnic tables became overcrowded, so we ventured into the library. We always considered ourselves little intellectuals. She liked poetry and I read Oscar Wilde- no one was better suited for the titles.

We strolled in and the librarian called her:

“I didn’t see your name on the list. We’ll miss you next year. What scared you away? It was either Emilia’s jokes or my sarcasm.”

He said it with a satisfied chuckle. When he saw my empty, clueless expression he continued: “She looks horrified. Take her with you. She’s too sensitive for this place.” He punctuated this final statement with a genuine smile and an unbothered laugh. Before I let the information touch me, I noted his innocence. Let there be rest for the innocent. Then I hurt.

I heard her stumble through an excuse- something about stress and load and money. He was satisfied with the response, and we walked away in silence.

The silence was fearful.

Before I said anything, she rushed to answer my thoughts: “I was going to tell you. I’m going to another school next year. The work load is too much. My mom and I think this will be better. Also, the money will be used to pay for more important things, like all my other siblings and their school. I just didn’t want to tell you and make you upset.”

There was another silence louder than the first.

“Is that it?” I said in a quiet, bitter tone.

“I wore a tank top & my mom saw my scars. She saw that I was cutting. There’s not much I can do. She insists. She has me going to the Christian counselor, and she sits and judges and I know she just wants the best for me, and I’m not a brat, I appreciate it. I couldn’t tell you.”

A third, final silence.

“It’s okay,” I said. I had never lied to her before, not like this.

On the last day of school I accompanied her as she said goodbye to all her friends, hugged them, and told them where she was going. I stayed with her until the end, until her mom forced her home. She turned to me and gave me a long, silent hug. She whispered some of our dreams as a goodbye and a promise.

That was the last time I saw her.

The next year, I got friends, real friends, and medication, and in empty time people would reminisce about her. They would talk about her joy, her beauty, how happy she made the,. I would stay silent, and when the pain stopped I would nod. She cut off contact with everyone else, but every now and then I’ll get a message:

“Hello, Emilia, and greetings from Disney World! I miss you! Call me soon!”

Or New York, or North Carolina for Christmas, or Tennessee.

It is merely an obligation.

Sometimes I think of her, but it seems like blasphemy. Every time I think, all that occurs to me are pieces of a picture that replace the image people painted of her. Maybe that’s why she did it: she was so used to what people made her into that the reality broke her heart.