Brenda

Brenda was one of my best friends in high school.  She had short black hair and chubby cheeks, and she wore the same hoodie almost every day to school, even though hoodies went against the dress code.  When I was in freshman year I bought a snow globe at Old Navy, the kind that you could put a photograph in yourself.  I put one of my favorite pictures in it, of Brenda, our friend Chrissy, and I.  I stood next to them, wearing the size six green Abercrombie pants that I bought at a thrift store, that were missing a button, that I used to roll them up at the waist.  Brenda was wearing her hoodie, and she had an awkward expression, a smile on her face that did not fit her usual demeanor.

Brenda and I used to walk through the halls talking.  She accepted me and my own awkward conduct; maybe because she was a good person, maybe because she needed someone to talk to, a lot of the time.  Sometimes she just went on and on, talking about things like her friends that didn’t go to our school.  One of her big purchases the summer going into sophomore year was Adidas sandals.  Brenda knew how to dance, to talk. She was a good friend.  One day during homeroom she asked me to write out her math homework for her, to copy it from someone else’s paper.  I did it, and now I feel used.  But no one amazed me like Brenda, because she always had something to say.