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One day in the first semester of the second grade, my best friend Melody was not at school. That night, I called her house to find out where she had been. I remember the conversation vividly.

"Hey, where were you today? Are you sick?"
"My mom died."
"Uhm, I'm sorry."

(Eons and eons of silence, the like of which has not been seen since.)

"Okay, well I guess I'll talk to you later then."
"Okay, bye."
"Bye."

Thus ended what might have been a promising future for me in psychiatry. I did not understand. Moms didn't just die. I had seen Melody's mom the week before, and she had been fine. Then a blood vessel popped in her head, or something like that. See? I still don't understand.

Melody was back at school the next week, and things continued as usual. I don't remember her ever mentioning her mom or even seeming sad about it, though I was probably not the most perceptive of lasses. We stayed friends all through elementary and middle school, though we kind of faltered when we didn't have classes together. Childhood friendships seem to be based more on location than anything else, so when I called her my second grade best friend, it was probably because our desks were next to each other. We were both in the same clique of girls through middle school, a group in which I was unquestionably accepted but never really felt like I belonged, but then, that was adolescence.

Melody decided to go to a local private school our sophomore year of high school, and I rarely saw her at all after that. Our friendship petered out completely. I think she was still somewhat in touch with the other girls, but our group had started to drift apart once we hit high school and started migrating to our individual social classes. By the end of sophomore year, I was still regularly talking to only one of the other three girls and we were even in the same classes.

I heard at some point that Melody had strayed from the drug-free lifestyle and had dropped out of school. There were a lot of other rumors about some guy and some stuff in an elevator, all of which combined to paint a harrowing picture of what can happen to your former best friends. It was the kind of thing that us public school kids would use an example to tell ourselves that private school wasn't that cool, even if you could afford it. After the stories died down, she faded into the back of my mind only to pop up every once in a while long enough for me to wonder what she was up to.

I ran into Melody one day at a walking park in my hometown during my junior year of college. She looked healthy and more fit than I'd remembered. We talked for a few minutes in a conversation that was awkward but didn't hold a candle to the one we'd had over a decade earlier. She mentioned that she didn't really talk to the other girls either, because they had become "too cheerleadery." That, too, is a direct quote. I nodded wryly, knowing exactly what she meant. She was disappointed, whereas I was not, because I had long ago gotten used to the idea that the friendships you make while you're still growing up don't last. By her dismissal of the other girls, all of which had arguably been much closer to her than I was, I felt approval. Nah, Melody, you can't count on those other girls, but I'm still Sandra, the same, steadfast, can't-think-of-anything-good-to-say-when-your-mom-dies Sandra. It was like we had entered a time warp back in 1998 to emerge and meet here and say, "Ah, so you made it, too."

At the same time, I want to apologize to her for not being a better friend, starting with the second grade and all the way through whatever she went through in high school. I can't really be blamed for not supporting her during her drug problems since we weren't even in contact, but I still feel like I should have somehow reached out to her to let her know that I was still her friend and was in no way cheerleadery. Whether she would have taken advantage of it, I don't know, nor do I care. Being available then would have made the difference to me now.