The Girl in the Pink Dress

She walked into Ms. Carter’s kindergarten class on the first day of school and the room lit up.

She and her family had just moved from California. They were new and so was I. But it was kindergarten so everyone was new. Everyone was jealous of her- her golden hair, her sparkling eyes, and most of all her pink dress. I wanted her looks, I wanted everything about her. During quiet time, she would pass notes to everyone in the class that held compliments or just a friendly hello. When I finally received my first one, I was ecstatic. I wanted to have the confidence she had when she would skip around the playground alone during recess. She was one of the few kindergarteners that I knew who was a true extrovert. I wanted to be her friend. My desire was so strong that the girl in the pink dress and I quickly became friends. We shared lots of common interests and both of our parents were in the military so we had moved a lot already in our five years of life. Even though we were so young, we could talk to each other like we were twelve years old. I liked that about her and she liked that about me. After school we would have playdates. Those playdates were always the light of my day. Baking like the Chopped stars we would never become, being astronauts to the moon that we could never reach, and crafting paintings like the artists we wouldn’t turn into. Despite these truths, we were filled with elation when we would finish a big project. The most special days were when we would spend hours. And hours. And hours. Playing dress-up with her siblings. Our favorite costume was the movie star (that’s what we wanted to be when we grew up of course). Then our ideas changed and so did we. We constantly grew apart until one day in early March, she was gone. Just like that. Her house. Her parents. Her sister. Everything. Gone.

My afternoons had lost their appeal, my class had lost their spark and I hated it. I hated her. She left without a warning. Every memory of her I had to destroy. Tears streaming down my face, I tore through my room. Paintings with her name, clothes that she had worn and possessions that she had left behind began to find themselves in a heap of my floor. My anger kept growing and growing. Her absence was perennial until one day. I remember it so well. It was April fifth of the next year. She returned. With the same parents. With the same sister. Into the same house. We were placed in the same first grade. On the first day of school she walked into the building and the room lit up. “Hello, my name is Kate,” she said to me, “and my best friend’s name is Caroline.”

~ Caroline O.