![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
When I walked into the D.A.'s office today to pick up some discovery the receptionist tells me, "Someone called here for you today. She said she's your best friend from high schoool."
She didn't leave a name or a number after she was told that I no longer worked there. I wondered who it was and had that creeping twinge of suspicion that something might be wrong.
We were at lunch, all the old crew from my former office. The occasion was a visit from a friend/coworker who'd moved to New Orleans a few months before I left. I was just telling her about my high school girlfriends and telling her that she needed to meet Sandie, who lives in New Orleans.
Just as I said her name, the phone rang. It was my new office, calling to tell me that Sandie from New Orleans had called and left her numbers. I haven't seen her since the reunion almost two years ago.
I called her back immediately, knowing that it was going to be bad news. She's the one who always calls with the bad news, the one who remembers in the midst of pain and heartache to bring us all back together.
She answered the phone and I said her name. She said mine. "I was just telling someone about you and you called this very second! Weird, huh?"
It's always been like that, though. We always are woven together on these days, even before we realize why.
"I know you know it's bad news," she says almost apologetically.
I know.
I get ready for it and I can't even bear to hear it because our bad news is always so bad, so excruciating. It's losing parents too soon. It's watching our lover die over a painfully long period of time, leaving us to mark the anniversary of his death rather than our wedding day. It's having the people we love leave us in horrible, unspeakable ways. I sit without breathing and steady myself for the blow.
One of the three. The dark blackbird of a girl with an infectious laugh and the only girl in school with a nasty wit to match my own. I hear her name and I get ready to hear that she's gone, but I can't quite make myself believe that. But it's not her. It's her sister. Her beautiful, popular sister, younger than us with three little girls, married to her high school sweetheart. Gone. Taken away in a ridiculously short time by a vicious pebble in her breast that grew into a monster she couldn't fight anymore.
I call and weep into the phone. I know she'll know it was Sandie that tracked me down and led me to her. I tell her all those things that we never say often enough. I know she will hear even those things I am not saying. And then there is the beep and I hang up the phone and wait.
She didn't leave a name or a number after she was told that I no longer worked there. I wondered who it was and had that creeping twinge of suspicion that something might be wrong.
We were at lunch, all the old crew from my former office. The occasion was a visit from a friend/coworker who'd moved to New Orleans a few months before I left. I was just telling her about my high school girlfriends and telling her that she needed to meet Sandie, who lives in New Orleans.
Just as I said her name, the phone rang. It was my new office, calling to tell me that Sandie from New Orleans had called and left her numbers. I haven't seen her since the reunion almost two years ago.
I called her back immediately, knowing that it was going to be bad news. She's the one who always calls with the bad news, the one who remembers in the midst of pain and heartache to bring us all back together.
She answered the phone and I said her name. She said mine. "I was just telling someone about you and you called this very second! Weird, huh?"
It's always been like that, though. We always are woven together on these days, even before we realize why.
"I know you know it's bad news," she says almost apologetically.
I know.
I get ready for it and I can't even bear to hear it because our bad news is always so bad, so excruciating. It's losing parents too soon. It's watching our lover die over a painfully long period of time, leaving us to mark the anniversary of his death rather than our wedding day. It's having the people we love leave us in horrible, unspeakable ways. I sit without breathing and steady myself for the blow.
One of the three. The dark blackbird of a girl with an infectious laugh and the only girl in school with a nasty wit to match my own. I hear her name and I get ready to hear that she's gone, but I can't quite make myself believe that. But it's not her. It's her sister. Her beautiful, popular sister, younger than us with three little girls, married to her high school sweetheart. Gone. Taken away in a ridiculously short time by a vicious pebble in her breast that grew into a monster she couldn't fight anymore.
I call and weep into the phone. I know she'll know it was Sandie that tracked me down and led me to her. I tell her all those things that we never say often enough. I know she will hear even those things I am not saying. And then there is the beep and I hang up the phone and wait.