{"id":3872,"date":"2021-12-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/?p=3872"},"modified":"2023-06-28T17:56:58","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T00:56:58","slug":"old-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2021\/old-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Old Friends<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n By<\/span>Lauryn Jones<\/strong>\n \n December 1, 2021<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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You\u2019d meet a kid in class, or on a field trip, or on the block, and hit it off immediately. You would think to yourself, she\u2019s gonna be my bridesmaid when we\u2019re grown<\/em>, and smile all toothy and wide. You\u2019d quickly realize that\u2019s never the case.<\/p>\n

Maya is the furthest I can think back. Running across the parking lot connecting the Westchester library and Westchester Park. Her legs were too short. They never carried her where she wanted to go fast enough. She was the first one in our class to get braces. I remember how the sun reflected in her smile at the airport while she waved goodbye. I had to close my eyes.<\/p>\n

My mom said Raven was fast. Looking back on it now, I guess I\u2019d agree. She was obsessed with boys and practiced kissing on me. She wanted to be perfect for Jared Burchfield\u2019s birthday party. She pinned me down and kept punching me when she found out Triston Ramos liked me and not her. I had to bite down on her arm so hard that I drew blood. I sprinted five blocks home with her blood running down my face. I remember feeling cool, like I was a vampire.<\/p>\n

Katya was always, \u201cWhat\u2019s the worst that can happen?\u201d Before the worst thing that could happen did. I held her baby sister Sophia in my arms as I ran out of the fire. Don\u2019t put metal in the microwave.<\/p>\n

We were cutting up Lily\u2019s grandma\u2019s magazines and gluing the cool stuff to cardboard boxes. Her older brother was playing Kanye West\u2019s 808s & Heartbreak on the surround sound. Lily got up and started dancing and so did I. I\u2019m not sure where she went\u2014maybe to the bathroom or back upstairs to look for some sharper scissors. He came up behind me and put his hands down my underwear. I sprinted to my house and took an hour-long shower.<\/p>\n

Rachel wasn\u2019t long, only about a season or so. The Wilsons were the most picturesque suburban family I could have ever imagined. I didn\u2019t like her as much as the others, but I enjoyed the fantasy. I escaped to a world of soccer games on Saturday mornings, family supper at six p.m., and bed by eight p.m. I got ninety minutes of screen time a day. The thing about worlds like that is you always overstay your welcome and end up running back home in the dark, trying your best not to slip on the ice-covered street.<\/p>\n

I sat next to Alex Miranda on the school bus. He kept telling me I looked like Kelly Rowland in that one music video. When our parents got drunk and argued, we used to meet up at the big park and talk until the sun came up.<\/p>\n

I ran into Alex about eight years later. I had a gig at the library for school credit. I guess his class reserved a study room, and I saw him on my break. We\u2019d both gone through puberty and looked very different from when we were friends. He had a full sleeve of tattoos on his right arm and a half sleeve on his left. He had piercings now and his big diamond studs sparkled under the fluorescent lights. I had childbearing hips and wore thick black eyeliner. We both had less light in our eyes than I remember. We chatted for a while, caught up. He\u2019d gotten adopted finally. I had just gotten into USC.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really good seeing you. Damn, now I feel like I can leave this place knowing you\u2019ll be alright,\u201d He said, \u201cYou were probably the only friend I ever had that I thought was a good person. Good luck out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

I always think about how that conversation would have ended if I was honest.<\/p>\n

\u201cA good person? Me? I became best friends with a girl because she had a car. Really, the whole nine. We\u2019d have sleepovers, she\u2019d confide in me, her mom gave me the family\u2019s secret pot pie recipe\u2014it was written on one of those big sized index cards you can\u2019t really find anymore, written in blue ink in what can be only described as a classic Americana housewife script. I picked a fight with her to get out of the friendship once my dad got his license back.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the thing about friends, I guess. They\u2019re so easy to throw away. People have the inexplicable gift to grow apart. Whatever the hell that means. You compliment a girl\u2019s shirt just to be nice and the next thing you know you feel obligated to keep up with her life. You meet her family, you become one of them, their dad gives you a spare key to their house. You\u2019d leave them behind, hidden under the guise of growing. You\u2019d restart the cycle.<\/p>\n

I met Tyler online. It was a summer program on Zoom. I thought he was fine. We became friends despite my tendencies to ruin things.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you stop being my friend after the program\u2026,\u201d \u201cHurry, before the program ends, and we stop talking\u2026\u201d I\u2019d always say.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do you keep saying that? Why wouldn\u2019t we be friends after this?\u201d<\/p>\n

I think it was then that I realized I was broken. He\u2019s my next Alex, I think\u2014someone I\u2019m always meeting again or saying goodbye to. Some people you just like, you can\u2019t explain it. Sometimes you make friends outside of yourself\u2014you close your eyes and realize that your friend sees someone who isn\u2019t exactly you, but someone just a little bit better. I like friends like that. Those are the friends that you stick by, even against your better judgment. When everything in your past leads you to believe you\u2019ll drift apart soon, you\u2019ll stick around because you can\u2019t outgrow a friend like that. At least I hope that\u2019s the case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Lauryn Jones<\/strong> is a senior English literature major and songwriting minor. Lauryn has been writing stories for as long as she can remember and has been performing spoken word poetry since the seventh grade. If you see her around she’ll most likely be writing. If not, she’ll be stressing about her inability to write. Or she’s on Twitter<\/a> or Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-3872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2021","tag-prose"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOld Friends<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2021\/old-friends\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Old Friends - Palaver Arts Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2021\/old-friends\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Palaver Arts Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/palaver.arts.magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-12-01T08:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-06-29T00:56:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/175\/2023\/06\/palaver-logo.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"710\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"198\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"akcannon\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2021\/old-friends\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2021\/old-friends\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"akcannon\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/live-usc-dornsife.pantheonsite.io\/palaver\/#\/schema\/person\/8ac801b3c8176b6860207b43ecbe9e78\"},\"headline\":\"Old Friends\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-12-01T08:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-06-29T00:56:58+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2021\/old-friends\/\"},\"wordCount\":2,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/live-usc-dornsife.pantheonsite.io\/palaver\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"Prose\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Issue 10: Fall 2021\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2021\/old-friends\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2021\/old-friends\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2021\/old-friends\/\",\"name\":\"Old Friends - 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