"TYLER! OH MY GOD! Waiting for you is like waiting for death," Pfiefer exhausted as Tyler rounded the corner of his lawn and met her on the sidewalk. “Ty? Do you hear that?”
He stared at her that morning, in this exact spot, like he has done almost every morning since they were twelve, when their mothers mutually agreed it was safe to walk to school together, like wolves, so other, more human, predators would feel threatened by their pack of two. This was the part of the day he treasured most. When the morning sun would slip between her light brown ringlets and bathe his chest. He loved when she would look up at him through those coiled strands. Her angel kisses she always called them, reminding him of half of a masquerade mask, since her freckles only appeared around one light brown eye, which in fact was her most complimented feature. They were brown in the shade, but in the sun tiny flecks of green could be seen in them. They reminded him of a garden his mother took him to once after the awakening. Brown death that became green life with sunlight. Daily, through this precise order of ringlets, freckles, and eyes like gardens, he would arrive at this place, where the explanation behind her nickname lays, and of course, his most favorite part of the day.
In seventh grade, he told her the meaning behind Uni, to which only he was allowed to call her. He had always told her it was short for unique and he snickered as she ate up his lies with mustard and relish. Because to her, not being like everyone else was a thing to relish in, in Junior High School. Then once in English class, he overheard her crush-of-the-day laughing with his friends over why the shy girl was always mad-dogging everyone. And although Tyler’s joke was regards her permanent scowl and not a permanent patch of hair, he thought it best to tell her Uni was short for unibrow.
Tyler loved her permanent frown because no matter how hard anyone else tried, on most days, he was the only one who knew how to make her wrinkle disappear, and on most days, he didn’t even have to make her laugh in order to do it. He has stared at her every morning since they were twelve, at this very spot, in this precise order of: ringlets, freckles, eyes like gardens and permanent scowls. And although her crush of the day had a few choice words regarding Tyler in that conversation as well, choice words that only stirred up a bit of bitterness because it was true, somehow, she continued coming around and Tyler could only help but hope she had a few rituals of her own to work through.
So, she did keep coming around, except for the solid week after the “Uni” incident in which he was forced to ride with his mother to school. This would’ve been fine if his mother wasn’t the no-shame-in-her-game kind of mother. Husband dies, let’s wear a tight, short, red dress to his funeral, no-shame-in-her-game. Keeping rollers in her hair while she drops her highly impressionable teen off at school, no-shame-in-her-game.
So, she kept coming around, but only after Tyler had agreed to never call her that again. Plus, he had to buy her lunch for a whole week, carry her book bag to and from each class, and he owed her 3 favors to be cashed in at her bequest with no expiration. She had used up one favor already. Eighth grade, party, crush-of-the-day; enough said.
Tyler loved everything about her. He wanted her, well, he wanted to be her. Not in the creepy, cut off your skin, wear it as a suit, Buffalo Bill kind of way. But in an: if-I-could-trade-places-with-anyone-it would-be-Pfiefer, kind of way. When he first told her he was gay, that quiet day underneath the ash tree, it scared him. He didn’t think he could ever lose her as a friend over it. But the truth was he was going to lose her in another, much harder to understand, kind of way.
“Seriously Ty, you don’t hear that?” Pfiefer interrupted. “Ty? TY!”
“What?”
“What is with you today? You are really on one.” She yelled back to him from 20 feet interrupting his listless dreaming once more. “Did you seriously not hear me talking right now?” She sighed. “Now I have to start all over.”
“Listen Cruella, I am not the one who decided on taking the early shift this year. It is severely cutting into my beauty rest,” he exaggerated in between breaths as he jogged the short distance to catch up.
“And Lord knows you need every minute.” Pfiefer said laughingly.
When he finally did, he finished, “Ok. I see you. But when I start calling yo’ ass Uni again then we are gonna be crying.”
“STFU! You know, I can’t help it!” She exclaimed smoothing the wrinkle in between her brows with one freshly painted purple finger. “It’s a natural tick,” she grumbled before breaking into full laughter.
Pfiefer and Tyler continued on in this way, as they made their short trek to school. “As I was saying,” Pfiefer repeated, “another year is here, and I really want to make a change. In 7th grade I was shy and scared girl. I ate lunch everyday behind the yellow arc on the outskirts of grounds to avoid being made fun of. By my own people nonetheless.”
“Um, hello?” Tyler interrupted, “My pasty self was there too, cracking jokes with the best of ‘em,” he kidded.
Pfiefer rolled her eyes and continued, “8th grade, I lost the coke bottle glasses and when Jon Garrety, as I was looking for my chapstick in my backpack, decided to sneak up behind me and tap me on my shoulder just so he could catch a glimpse of the ‘new girl’ or so he thought I was. I knew for sure I was finally gonna move on up to the east side. The east side of campus, of course, where all the cool people sit.”
“Where we were going to sit. My being your token white friend and all.” Tyler emphasized.
“Until they realized it was still me and opted to try and convert Reylene into their religion instead,” Pfiefer sighed. “Ah yes, Reylene, AKA Farty McNasty. The girl who presumably dropped a silent bomb one day in class and was dubbed that ever since. Until she dropped a ton of weight, weaved her hair and got contacts. Doesn’t anyone hold a decent grudge anymore?” Pfiefer reasoned. “Oh well, I guess she deserved to be the new it girl, she did lose a ton of weight.”
“Yes, yes she ruined it for both of us.” Tyler uttered with a sigh just as Pfiefer smacked him in the stomach with the back of her hand and continued.
“9th grade was perfect because I had received the best piece of advice ever…”
“Will.” They both said in unison prompting Uni to return and look up at Tyler with the stink eye.
“Go ahead, continue, it’s your story after all.” She returned sarcastically.
Accepting the challenge, Tyler dreamily sighed, “Will,” batting his eyelids for added accent, before continuing. “When after I asked my crush-of-the-quarter, why he comes to class in his pajamas and house slippers and with his curly afro half-braided, when I personally, wake up one hour earlier every morning, just to make sure my hair and outfit are perfect, how is it a football player nonetheless, could come to class looking so…busted?”
“And do you want to know what he said to me?” Pfiefer said resuming his impression of her. “He said, ‘I am only going to be here 4 years, after that I will probably never see these people again. If they are not going to be in my life, why do I care what they think about me?’ And it was then that I truly stopped caring about what others thought. I was completely liberated, and I spent the rest of the ninth grade with a chip on my shoulder. If people didn’t want to accept me for me, I would make them at least respect me. Remember? I almost got into that really big fight and it earned me so much street cred because Vickee was too scared to come face me?”
“Yeah, because Vickee was like 5’1” and negative two pounds. She wasn’t dumb enough to go up against Big Bertha. Now Vickee’s cousin on the other hand, let’s just say you were lucky she caught mono that week.” Tyler interjected with laughter.
“Really Tyler? Big Bertha?” Pfiefer let slip with a brief chuckle before composing herself and finishing. “I am certainly not proud of my behavior in the 9th grade, I treated others how I was treated and perpetuated a vicious cycle and to that there is no excuse. So, this year, 10th grade, a pivotal year in both of our lives, is going to be better. Life will be better because we get out of school at 2:30pm all thanks to me for pushing us to take that extra class in the summer and for signing us up for the early shift so the rest of our very short time in school would be a breeze. Next year is 11th grade, our final year, since we are graduating early. Then one month after graduation, hello New York. Where I will become a Grammy award winning singer and you, my good man, will be a Tony award winning actor on Broadway. So, this year, I really want to do my part and help those poor souls who feel how I’ve felt a very short time ago. When I had no direction and purpose to look forward to until I received the call from above. Literally, above because Will is like 6’4.”
“Okay, Mother Teresa.” Tyler kidded.
“Actually, I prefer Saint Angelina Jolie,” Pfiefer retorted, “I think I will adopt some underprivileged Frosh to take under my wing this year.”
“You are so extra credit right now. Just above and beyond.” Tyler sassed.
“Well greatness was never achieved through mediocrity, Ty. And I am trying to get a street named after me, okay? As well as all my just dues. So, my life can finally begin like I’ve felt for so long.”
“Oh, here we go with the dreams again.”
Tyler scoffed before his quiet, allowing Pfiefer to continue her rant in the way she most preferred, without interruption, while he drifted away to a different place in thought. Superficially, he couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that his best friend was a witch, but her intuition was far more in tune then the average and he had borne witness to strange things happening to her. She knew stuff that she couldn’t possible know and her dreams were unusually true. Plus, if this was a charade, she deserved an Emmy because she has been in character for almost a decade.
Tyler could remember a young Fife, all of 6 years old, as she told him exactly one month before Christmas that she would get a teal Beach Cruiser bike with a white, wicker basket and bell and that his dad would be dead. But she couldn’t remember how, with the teal color, baskets and bells flooding her memory with the important details and all.
For the next month he was consumed, watching his father with this new-found interest, studying his every move, checking on him in that dusty plaid recliner every half hour just to be sure he wasn’t. And when he would leave, Tyler would wait next to the phone. He just sat there, waiting for it to ring with the news. But Christmas came and went, and Fife couldn’t decipher what happened. No bike, no best friend’s dead father.
Each year, Pfiefer was adamant that this would be the time, and like clockwork, one month before Christmas, Tyler would worry and wait until Christmas went on like it had the years prior. By the time they were 10, Fife had stopped talking about it and even as it loomed closer she didn’t bring it up and neither did he. Although he couldn’t help but wait and worry.
When that Christmas morning arrived, Fife waking up at 7:17am exactly, just as she has described to him only a few times before. Her heart aflutter when she walks into the living room and sees it, a Teal Beach Cruiser bike with a basket and bell. A gift, she had sworn never to ask for, a fact she never failed to mention over and again to him, in those rare moments she could stand to repeat the story.
Fife slowly opening her other presents, hoping time would accelerate the knots in her stomach wrestling with one another as she counts each tick of the clock until finally, 9:59am. The doorbell rings and she immediately opens the door, throws her slender arms around Tyler’s neck, her cheek resting on his shoulder as her eyes affix at the ambulance’s lights whose illumination flicker in the gray skies above them.
“Waiting for you is like waiting for death.” She whispers into his ear and for the first time in four years, a real smile stretches across Tyler’s face. The awakening.
For years Pfiefer had watched over Tyler, just as her mother had watched over his, an unspoken bond. If Ty needed to stay over he was always welcome to. Sleepovers became a regular thing between the two of them and in his mind, he became her twin.
His mother, each time a new bruise and an older excuse, would drop him off and scurry back to the little green house, two houses down, with their manicured lawn and fresh flower beds, not an irregularity to be had on the outside but behind closed doors.
Then one day, a few months after that first Christmas when they were six, Tyler’s bruises began to emerge. He never told her it was because of the dream. Watching his father intently was not without some consequences. The bruises, welts and burns ebbed and flowed from Tyler’s body, until four years later when it all stopped.
Six months after the awakening, at their first sleep over since he came out, but their sixth sleepover hosted at Tyler’s house, he had asked her about that Christmas and how her dreams worked. A believer that his best friend was indeed a witch. Underneath the soft blue florescence that illuminated from the Spiderman light clipped to his headboard, Fife had given it to him one day while underneath the ash tree; when those nights her dreams became too much to bear, it became her most prized possession, to which he, in return, gave her his deepest secret.
He listened intently as she told him how her dreams weren’t an exact science but if she had been smarter, she would have realized a beach cruiser was way too big a bike for a six-year-old. Fife knew a simple sorry could never undo the burden he had to endure for the years following. But Tyler knew that he couldn’t have gotten a better Christmas gift from her, even if it did come four years too late.
Tyler escaped the dream-like trance he was held hostage in, this time before Pfiefer could notice he was gone. He walked alongside her, like he has done almost every morning since he was twelve. But today something felt different, something felt off, and he didn’t have to have magical powers in order to be certain of this. He didn’t have to be her, in order to know for sure.
“I love you Fife.” He blurted, after noticing the air had gone silent. Not knowing exactly how long it had been that way.
“Tyler, seriously, you are scaring me.”
“Just say it back, Pfiefer, G's and P's.”
“I love you too Ty, you know I do.” Pfiefer smiled up at him and after she noticed the answer she gave wasn’t exactly the one he had been looking for, she allowed her freshly painted purple fingers to brush passed his cheek for added reassurance.
“Just tell me what is wrong, Tyler.” She sighed.
“Not yet.”
Tyler mumbled the phrase, and not loudly either, just enough to have been uttered as he swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat for the third time. Today, something felt off and he didn’t have to be her in order to know for sure and he was right.
But all he could do was what he has done, as he resumes his ritual. Helplessly watching the girl he has studied so intently since they were six, in the way he thought only he has. Secretly hoping to get his fill of her. So that when they finally fractured, for good, it wouldn’t hurt quite so much, while at the same time still holding on to the delusion they would never part.
And as they disappeared down the narrow street, someone else watched her, in a way only he could. Particularly aware of what year it was, year 15, and what day it was, day 285, secretly hoping for something else from her entirely before heading off in a different direction.
When he arrived, the shadow ran his shriveled fingers across the trees trunk, tracing the P+T carved in the middle of an indented heart quickly filling up with their happy yet foreign memories. Nauseous with all of the delight, he slips the box into place and replaces his hood following the path of perfection, leaving moon dust in place of his footsteps before he vanishes.
This work is created by, written by and belongs to Aecko and shared here for entertainment.