The Sleepover's True Gift

The last rays of the sun were painting the sky in shades of orange and pink when we finally crawled out of the sleeping bags. My neck felt a little stiff, and my hair was definitely not how it was when I’d gone to sleep, but as I looked at Katie, her own hair a tangled mess and a sleepy smile on her face, I didn’t care one bit. The pizza boxes were stacked, the movie remotes were scattered, and the faint scent of popcorn still lingered in the air of my room. It felt like a lifetime ago that we were giggling over a whispered secret, our faces flushed with the shock of discovering we both liked the same boy.

We’d spent so much time that night, and really, the past few weeks, worrying about James. Would he notice me? Would he notice Katie? Was he looking at me when I laughed at his joke? Was he looking at her? It felt like a big, important mission, and one wrong move could ruin everything. I’d spent hours imagining conversations, planning out the perfect thing to say, the perfect way to smile. Katie, with her bolder spirit, had been doing her own version of the same, I was sure of it, even if she hadn’t admitted it at first.

And then, it had all come crashing down. The words, sharp and careless, flying between us like angry birds. The awful silence that followed, thick with hurt and disappointment. I’d thought, in that moment, that our friendship, the one that had been the bedrock of my entire twelve years, was broken. Shattered. Like a dropped glass, impossible to put back together perfectly. I’d felt a knot tighten in my stomach, a cold dread that felt worse than any worry about James.