I remember sitting on the front lawn to my home, the grass warm from the summer sun and the saccharine breeze lightly wafting my back. My sister, Tara sat beside me as our next door neighbor, Johnny, sat across from us, forming a triangle that cradled our innocence in the center. Our juvenile fingers grabbed the white clovers and dexterously knotted the stems of another white clover around the bulb, fashioning flower necklaces in the tranquil taciturnity. Perhaps the silence was an understanding that the summer was fading away with the setting sun, which usually meant that the days of playing outside together would come to an end. It never bothered us, though – we knew that once the air was warm again, we’d continue our fun outside in the sun as if we never stopped. Time couldn’t hinder our friendship.
“Girls, it’s dinner time!” My mom shouted from the window, which was always the guillotine to our fun. My sister and I dreadfully stood up and frowned at Johnny, who didn’t want us to go as much as we didn’t want to go, either.
“Aw, man!” He said with disappointment, standing up and wiping the grass off his shorts. “Let’s play again tomorrow!” We smiled at him and agreed before scurrying back into our home, thinking about the adventures we would have tomorrow as we sat and ate dinner. It seemed silly for him to ask, as we played together everyday. If we weren’t sitting outside his door in the morning, he was sitting outside of ours.
But, that was the last time we saw Johnny.
Every morning, my sister and I would take our short, thrilling routine walk to his home, playfully arguing over who would ring the doorbell. I can’t recall exactly who rang the doorbell, but the chimes that filled the white house were so accustomed to us. Tara and I waited, but Johnny never greeted us like he always would. On the second day, my sister and I once again returned to his home and pushed the button that sat beside the white door. We waited longer this time, sitting outside in the drive way and trying to peak through the window to see if we was on his way. When the familiar ding-dong rang again on the third day, Tara and I simply sat outside in his driveway. We sat there for a while, as if the weight of despair from the abandonment of our friend kept us tethered there.
It wasn’t until the next day, as my mother drove my sister and I to elementary school that she shared with us the knowledge that was recently given to her. Her words went something like this: “I spoke to Artie this morning... Johnny moved away the other night. His parent’s are getting a divorce.” The words felt like pliers yanked an embedded part of my sister and I away from us. We didn’t know how to react – our best friend left without even saying goodbye. It was such a agonizing moment that my sister and I were heartbroken the rest of day.
I recently asked my mother how difficult it was to tell us that our best friend, almost our brother, was gone. She said not only was it challenging, but we were too young at the time to know the whole story. Johnny’s older sister, Jen, was secretly suffering from bulimia and her mother was partially to blame. Her mother was giving Jen dieting pills that drove her to bulimia. Artie, the father, found out the night we played with Johnny last, as he found bags of vomit that Jen was hiding in her closet. He went into a rage, which caused mother to pack everything up and take Johnny and Jen with her. Apparently that night, Johnny was inconsolable, too, because he wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to my sister and I.
The days continued on, however, feeling so void compared to what they once were. My sister and I sat on the front lawn, looking at Johnny’s house from a distance. The games we used to play felt so different without him, so we just stopped playing them. Instead, we grew up keeping Johnny still close in our hearts, as if he never truly left. The nights that we played hide-and-seek amongst the fireflies, played “Spud” until we grew tired of it, poked the squishy, rotting pears that fell off the pear tree in his backyard and sat on the curb for hours, waiting for the ice cream truck to come by, remain as vivid in my mind as they ever were.