The first red flag should have been that her name was fake. I wish I could print it, because it was ridiculous and I have never heard of anyone with her name since. Let’s call her Kitchen because that is about as strange. I was informed that her mother named her this after a “fellow mermaid” because she had been one in a past life. (Later I would meet her mother, who called her a different name.)
She also owned not one single pair of underwear, perhaps because who needs panties when you once owned fins? Now normally, this would be prime friend material. A chick with a made-up name who came from a family of underwater fantasy creatures? That would have been my jam had it not been for the actual events that occurred over the following year.
It was my freshman year of college, and I was determined to get rid of the shyness that plagued me in high school, to say yes to new experiences (*cough* lose my virginity), and to break up with my 16-year-old emo boyfriend as soon as possible. As much as I loved receiving mix CDs that included both the Movielife and Ashlee Simpson tracks and allowing him to borrow my skinny jeans, I wanted EXPERIENCE.
Kitchen was a gorgeous size zero burst of bubbling energy; once our parents had left us to our own devices, she pulled out a huge box of those sugar water Technicolor popsicles and popped them in our tiny dorm freezer. “Once they’re frozen, we will keep our door open and tell boys who walk by that we have treats,” she announced.
Maybe she read this in Cosmo or something, but I sat on my new Target comforter and stared in amazement as football player after indie band kid after science nerd stopped in to ask us where we were from while sucking on a neon orange freezy pop. I decided then and there that she was a genius, and I would follow her everywhere.
As the weeks went on, I made other friends, but she just oozed the excitement that my life had lacked. However, I became aware of her need for attention, specifically her need for attention from boys. I listened to her drone on and on about cars and sports, unsure of whether she actually liked them. We dressed up in strange outfits (hers tinier than mine) and posted photos on MySpace, waiting for boys to contact us. She listened to loud trance music all day, and most weekends she would drive the three hours back to her hometown to go to raves, pop ecstasy, and then come back Monday to brag to everyone who would listen how she vomited out of her car window while driving drunk at 4 a.m.
I never went with her, instead taking this time to make other friends and join the campus newspaper.
Later, she would sit on my bed, do my makeup for me, and encourage me to wear tighter pants to class. I ignored the calls with my mom, who said I was acting strangely and that she “wasn’t sure who I was anymore.” I broke up with said emo boyfriend the night after making out with a professional snowboarder at a frat party.
The more time we spent together, the more jealous Kitchen would become of any attention I got. If a boy liked me, she would roll in one morning exclaiming that she had spent the night in his room. If I was invited somewhere, she had someplace better to go. She would make comments about how bad my skin was, but play it off like it was in my best interest. “Stop touching your face,” she would say, while rolling her eyes and filing her nails.
Midway through the year, I got a serious boyfriend, a boy who lived an hour away, was in a band, and would watch Clerks and Dawn of the Dead with me. I fell hard. He only would visit when she went home for weekends, so she rarely even had to deal with him, but suddenly everything changed.
She disappeared altogether for a while, then returned with this dude from her hometown who she announced was now her boyfriend. He looked exactly like Uncle Kracker, that random one hit wonder pop rock dude from the early '00s.
She would make lewd remarks about how fat he was in front of him, but he was like a bowl of plain pudding and barely spoke or showed any indication of being alive other than walking around our dorm in barely there tighty-whities. She ignored my pleas asking for him to either not sleep over or at least put real-person pants on. They would not so quietly fool around with me in the room, so I started leaving and sleeping in other places, sometimes in the common area.
One night, she asked me if I wanted to join them. This was the early 2000s, and I was almost a virgin who had barely seen one naked body, let alone two at once. This was about the craziest thing I had heard at that point.
When I didn’t respond, she made some cruel remark about my lack of experience. Mouth agape, I briskly pulled on a sweatshirt and walked across the hall where I asked to sleep (for the umpteenth time), telling everyone what had just happened.
Now Kitchen had apparently felt bad for making fun of me, and walked in while I was regaling a group of girls about the propositioned group-sex scenario that had just taken place. My heart and stomach still drop when I think about it, the look of betrayal on her face and the Regina George feeling I had creeping over me.
There was a deadly moment of silence, she turned on her heel, and promptly locked me out of our room for the rest of the night and never spoke another word to me ever again.
The remaining four months of the year were miserable. Her EDM got louder, Uncle Kracker’s stays got longer, and each weekend she trekked home, she would take her 30-something-inch screen television so I couldn’t watch it. This wasn’t a flat screen either; it was heavy. She wanted so badly to punish me that she took away my ability to watch Law and Order: SVU.
I indulged in a few passive aggressive torturings as well, putting one song on repeat then locking my laptop screen, leaving the room for the day. I threw out her toothbrush once. During this time, she also started the (oh so mature rumor) that I had herpes. No one believed it, but still. That was a thing that happened.
Finally, the last day of classes she informed me that she was transferring schools because ours was “too stuck-up.” I tried to have some kind of real conversation with her before she left, apologizing for any part that I had in our dissolution, but she was stone cold.
She left, leaving one mysterious pair of panties, the only pair I ever saw from her the entire year. A few years later, we would pass each other in cars on the highway, make eye contact, then quickly look away, a jolt of electricity between us.
Looking back on it, she was likely in the same position as me. Trying on personalities, feeling hurt when one didn’t work, and when someone didn’t accept it. Craving attention and looking for it in obvious and desperate ways. The way we all are at 18.
Wherever she is, I hope she’s happy and comfortable, and wasn’t too damaged at what we put each other through.
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