Dead To You

03. spellbound

It wasn't like I thought I wouldn't have classes without any of my old friends there, but there was still a nagging undercurrent of disappointment that kept settling in deeper with each classroom threshold I walked through, trying not to stumble over my feet as I looked for an unoccupied desk and a familiar face underneath three years of change.

I spotted students I vaguely remembered from freshman year, aspiring football players who dominated the varsity team now, the girl with the locker right beside mine and I wondered if the polaroids of her with sister were still stuck to her mirror on the door. I waved at her in Spanish class, and I was so distracted with her hesitation, how her eyes squinted and she offered me a wary sort of half-wave back, that when the teacher called on me to introduce myself, in Spanish, my words were spaced apart with embarrassingly long pauses.

I wasn't sure what terrified me more. The thought that in the three years since I had left, they might have left too. I knew that obviously Dylan was still here, but she wasn't in any of my classes that morning and I didn't see her in the hallways again either. I kept glancing over my shoulder at my locker, blindly reaching for textbooks inside while trying to figure out if that girl with the braided blond hair was Bridgette or if Jun was the one with her back turned to me at the water fountain, refilling a scratched Hydro Flask.

I listened carefully, waiting for the moment I heard laughter echoing down the hallway and I just knew it was one of them. But that never happened. And that was starting to feel like it meant something, like maybe Jun left town too, or Bridgette hired a private tutor instead of attending private school. I knew enough from reading Wikipedia articles about my childhood crushes to know that it was preferable for younger celebrities, and she was definitely becoming one. Even in freshman year, she would occasionally be recognized in shopping malls and fast-food places just from the success of her mother's YouTube channel, Our Blended Blooms.

It was a family vlog channel, dedicated to their blended family and uploading all of the real moments as her mother often phrased it on her channel. Moments like Bridgette crying on the edge of her bathtub after a sophomore winter formal and her date paid more attention to his ex-girlfriend than her, or even Noel—her stepson—at the dining room table during dinner and she asked him over and over again if he thought he had social anxiety or just normal teenage stuff. She wanted him to know how important it was to talk about mental health, right before she brought up how that day's sponsor was an app that let people text certified therapists 24/7.

I used to watch the vlogs every day after I left for Pennsylvania, the only little piece I still had of Bridgette and sometimes Dylan and Jun with her in the background, but after almost a year it felt like that little piece was embedded in my skin, a bleeding and aching wound I exhausted myself to tear open again the next day. Bridgette would smile into the camera as her mother wrapped an arm around her just before she headed out the door to go hang out with some friends. The birthday parties I wasn't invited to anymore, the school dances I never went to, even just her mentioning that she was going to the movies or doing some back to school shopping with her friends, knowing that I wasn't one of them anymore. It stung, more than I wanted it to because it was when I watched those fourteen-minute-long videos that our friendship really felt over, not just paused, but it wasn't just that.