Pink Ochre Magazine

Love comes first from the girl you meet in kindergarten, the one with a name that matches the red chalk you use to draw an apple on the sidewalk. Chalk dust in between your fingernails, friends made on the playground, and the hug your teacher gives you when you scrape your knee on the slide–all of it makes love gentle, like the squeeze of a friendship bracelet around your wrist.

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“These friendship bracelets light up when they're near each other,” you say, handing them to the girl who, in terms of kindergarten and playground rules, is your best friend.

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“That way we can always find each other,” she says, delighted. Together, you watch as the bracelets light up in a multitude of rainbow colors.

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Time passes. Soon, you are in middle school. The friendship bracelet–what a bulky thing it was–has been buried somewhere in the back of your closet or tossed in a give-away pile. You're still friends with the girl, but the transition from elementary to middle school is a tricky thing. Everybody wants to grow up, but they're not sure how, you included.

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Love finds you again at the lunch table. With the girl, you find yourselves seated with new friends. A motley crew you all form, all four of you; there is never a shortage of laughs or conversation at that lunch table. You bond over the drudgery of middle school, and bemoan the teacher who you insist has something against you. You talk about your favorite songs and books, and movies, and meet a new girl who has the same interests you do. You begin to write stories with this new girl and share them, exchanging them through a pencil pouch you pass back and forth. The pencil pouch becomes so full that the zipper breaks.

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This is a show of love, this pencil case of yours with its poorly written stories, and you think about it often as you continue to write. That is, until the summer when you go on a ‘hiatus.’ The love to write remains like a toothache, but you ignore it. You don't know why you stopped writing, only that you did.

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Another year goes by. Suddenly, you're in your last year of middle school–seventh grade, because the middle school building has become too small to house all its students. The lunch table has grown. Now there are eight of you, eight of the brightest students in the school, sitting together in front of the window that lets in the most brilliant patches of sunlight. One girl who has the peckishness of a bird and the wits of a fox is your closest friend; together, you two talk about the books you love and enthuse over the shows she watches that you haven't seen. The eight of you plan projects and discuss your classes, and you lament how you'll miss your teachers at the end of the year. You can't help but count down the years till you graduate.

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“Only five more,” you say. You are sitting in band class, a clarinet your parents have begun renting for you sitting in your lap. It is your first year in band. Your love for music has only just begun.

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“That's still five years,” says a girl you convinced to play the clarinet. You have just come from chorus class, where, whenever the teacher's back was turned, the two of you would giggle over passages in the new fantasy series you have begun reading. You are glad to have her as a friend. “That's basically forever.”

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Eighth grade is a year of discovery and new loves. You join the school's marching band in the summer and fall in love with music even more. You meet new people, one, a freshman who becomes your big sister as the school year progresses. The lunch table has only grown over the summer. Eleven of you sit together each day. You are closer than you have ever been to most of the eleven, and learning to love the others the same. You, in every sense of the word, have found a group of friends that feels like a family. A love that grew in branches and spread unabashedly.

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A year later, you no longer all have lunch together, but now there is a sizable group chat. The number glows back at you as you stare at your phone screen. Thirteen people, all brought together. As you scroll through the messages, you imagine what life outside of high school will be like. You only have 4 years left, after all, and in a way, it doesn't feel like enough time. You close the group chat just as you get a text from the girl who has become your big sister.

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She is texting about her book idea. Because of her, you have gotten back into writing and have written a whole book. It, in its purest fashion, is a love letter to music. The dedication is: To the 2023 CHS Marching Eagle Band. Thank you for giving me the love to write this and the music to let it soar. You think about your book, about your band class at the end of the day, and smile. You text back.

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Tenth grade has come. It has been a long time since you first met your friend group of twelve other people, longer since you joined band and fell in love with music, and a decade since you first asked the name of the girl you once had light-up friendship bracelets with. You go to her sixteenth birthday party–she's only twenty-five days older than you, so it's a sweet reminder that both you have grown up together, surrounded by love–and you browse her trinket-filled shelves. She still has the bracelet. It doesn't light up anymore, yet you can see the colors dancing in front of you as if it were yesterday.

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“Do you remember our friendship bracelets? I still have mine,” she says, not realizing you are already looking at it.

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You reply, “Of course,” and feel the twinge of nostalgia in your heart deepen.

Her birthday party ends with a dog pile on her bed with the rest of your friends. A tangle of limbs and hair and perfume, all captured through the lens of your digital camera. The pictures can't record the sound of your friends’ laughter, yet you hold the sound within your heart. It is a beautiful thing, having friends like them.

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You think this thought again on your sixteenth birthday. There they are, seated around your dining table, singing happy birthday to you in the three-part harmony that was taught in chorus class. Love is tangible in that moment. It can be seen in the decorations you set up with your dad the night before, and the colorful plates you picked out with your mom. It's baked into the pie your peckish friend made you. It is in the smiles your friends give you and the cheers they exclaim when you blow out the candles. And when all of you go down to the playground that your neighborhood tries and fails to maintain, singing at the top of your lungs and laughing when you realize the entire group has wandered into the middle of the road, the love that fills you is composed of an entire lifetime.