Meghan comes from a good home. Her parents have been married for twenty-two years, and they have the picture-perfect love story. Met at college, started dating, and two and a half years later, they were engaged. Four years after they got married, Meghan was born, and shortly after, her two brothers. She complains about them, but they all love each other. They eat dinner together every night, and go out or order in on Fridays. Meghan might be 18, but she still texts her parents before going out with her friends. It’s not about trust, they trust her, but it’s something they’ve always done. Meghan comes from a good home.
Becky’s life is complicated. Her parents, who never married, live in different states. She goes back and forth but spends more time with her dad. She has a younger half-brother, and she cares for him more than she cares for anyone in the world. Her father is a good man, but all the working and stressing he does doesn’t leave much time for parenting. Money’s usually tight, and most nights she finds herself giving her brother her serving of dinner along with his. Becky’s life is complicated.
Meghan was always a shy girl. She wasn’t good at making friends in elementary school and spent a lot of lunches sitting with her teachers. Becky was the opposite. She commanded a room with her presence from a very young age. She had an infectious laugh, and she was the kind of person who you wanted to like you. Meghan wanted Becky to like her, and she got lucky because Becky did. They had that kind of friendship where you just know. Like two halves of a whole, they fit.
But now they’re 18, seniors in high school. It’s almost the end of March, and neither girl has made her official college decision. They have to, but something is holding them back. Becky was going to commit to Stanford, on the other side of the country, but then she thought of her brother and Meghan… She said that she wanted to leave too. She talked about moving to England to study dance or moving to Canada just to have a change of scenery. But she didn’t apply to any schools in England or Canada; she applied to schools in-state. There was one in Utah that she got accepted to, but she won’t talk about the possibility of going there. Becky tried to talk to her about it one time. She told her that she wouldn’t judge and that she wouldn’t be mad because Meghan’s always worried that people are mad at her. Becky said that there were no wrong answers; that she should do whatever was best for her. Meghan smiled and agreed and then asked for a new song to play from her speaker. Becky didn’t bring it up again.
It’s mid-April now, and the deadline is approaching. Meghan has yet to make any proclamation about where she wants to go. Her parents think she’ll figure it out soon enough, so they don’t push her to talk about it. Becky won’t accept this.
“So.” Becky’s driving her dad’s MINI and Meghan is sitting next to her, playing with her hair absent-mindedly.
“So.” Meghan picks up her phone and skips the song playing.
“College, hmm. You close to making a decision?” She makes a left turn and then glances at Meghan to gauge a reaction. There is none.
“Umm, yeah.”
“Care to share what that decision is?”
Meghan sighs, “ I don’t know, Becky. I’m too tired to talk about this right now.”
“But Meg, we have to commit by the end of the month. You’ve got to know by now.” Meghan doesn’t say anything. They pull up to a red light, and Becky looks up at the overcast sky, “I’m sorry. Take your time and make the decision that’s right for you. It doesn’t matter where you go, I just want you to be happy..” She tries to catch Meghan’s eye, but Meghan seems to have shut down. They drive straight home.
When they were ten, the girls made a promise. Pinky fingers locked, sitting crisscrossed under the playground slide, they promised. To always stay together. To always come back to each other and never turn into grown-ups who choose boys and work over their best friends. They promised with no reservations. No understanding of what the future held or could hold. They just promised, like a lifelong commitment was a short-term thing. Meghan has held onto that. She thinks Becky forgot about it long ago, but she hasn’t. Becky remembers, and that’s why she wants Meghan to go to college in Utah, where she’s a two-hour flight away. Neither girl could imagine being on the opposite coasts of the country. Neither girl wants that. But Becky can’t stay, and Meghan can’t leave. They know this, deep down inside, they both know.
Becky doesn’t ask where Meghan committed. Weeks pass, and it never comes up. They graduate, spend the summer together, and before either girl is ready for it, Becky has to go. Meghan tells her then, through tears, that she’s staying, and Becky isn’t the least bit surprised. Meghan says her parents weren’t comfortable with her being so far, and Becky knows that means she wasn’t comfortable being so far. She doesn’t call her out on it, though. She just says, “Okay. I’ll see you at Thanksgiving.” The girls spend much too long hugging and crying and saying goodbye. Becky knows it was bound to happen. She knows that the promise made between ten-year-olds on the playground wasn’t going to hold up against the test of time, but it doesn’t make saying goodbye any easier. It doesn’t make splitting up any easier. They were two notes in the same chord, two stars in the same constellation, two threads in the same tapestry. They were always meant to be together, and a couple of thousand miles would not change that.
