by Courtney Hunter-Stangler

EXCERPT //

I wanted a picture of myself jumping the divide, wearing a fringe cape that would swing just right as I leapt. On my feet were a pair of Miu Miu boots thrifted from Wasteland on Melrose in Los Angeles. The previous summer, I lived out there to intern, and Hannah and Shauna flew out to bring me and my car home. The week spent together, after more than twelve of them removed, was fight after fight after fight. Constant reminders from Hannah on what I’d missed, songs I wasn’t there to learn the inside meaning of playing on repeat, hearing over and over again how much she didn’t like my new city.

Looking back, it sometimes feels like there was hardly anything redeemable about this friendship we were both too stubborn to give up, but then I remember the laughs, the new jokes, and the memories we wrote together on that cross-country car ride back home. The new language we crafted in the confines of that Honda Accord would serve as the lexicon of our early twenties. Still, when we stopped in the desert for me to take pictures in those Miu Miu boots, months before I’d wear them again on I-83, Hannah made me feel like my want to do so was shallow. But to me, it felt like making art.

I’d end up getting a picture jumping over the I-83 crack, smoke wafting thick, while holding hands with Shauna. It looked exactly how I wanted it to. Most of the time, that was how I lived my life. I was relentless until I got what I wanted, and I can see how that might seem aggressive or bratty. Maybe sometimes it was. But looking back, I don’t think that’s something I’d change about myself, even with all the flak it got me. Most of the day, Hannah was frustrated. Maybe it was the side-swiped car, her younger sisters wearing thin her nerves, or a million other things, but there was always a marked difference in our dynamic on the days that I got something I wanted.

When we were young, Hannah’s parents always did their best to level the playing field. I suppose this was when the fire began to burn. I remember having things withheld from me at parties: the toy I wanted, a set of crutches for a hospital-themed seventh birthday, or the song I wanted to sing at karaoke given to someone else entirely, not even Hannah. I remember being excluded from activities, made to feel less important than other friends of Hannah’s even though I was blood. Although our own steamy, superficial crack didn’t begin to form in our friendship until she figured out how to do this on her own.

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ESSAY // ALL THE WHILE THE FIRE BURNED