Reconstructing the Trampoline
My best friend was a compulsive liar, her grandparents owned a trampoline. Whenever I describe Heather to other people those are the two essential facts I keep in mind. That is all the information anyone really needs. The rest of the narrative might supply some minor details which only serve to flesh out their overall construction of her. I can now accurately predict the moment, usually early on, when the corner of their mouth curls slightly at the edge in suppressed triumph as they finish building her image in their mind. They may have an exaggerated version of Heather, filtered through my perspective, but at least the point has been made, and my storytelling duties are fulfilled. Paranoid that I might forget, I’m driven to repeat the phrases over and over, as a mantra, as a sort of mnemonic device in the course of conversation. Otherwise, I just might leave those details out. The notion though that I will forget is slightly more than ridiculous because, really, I know I never will.
I don’t believe I’m alone in this. When someone else makes a dramatic impression on us in a relatively short amount of time, we hold on tightly to the shadow we have. Even if our impressions were false, we keep them immutable in our minds for years, sometimes forever. So my best friend was a compulsive liar, her grandparents owned a trampoline. That’s all I can surely remember about her. All the rest is simply auxiliary. No one really needs to know the gruesome details. The trampoline is enough.
We were both sprawled out on the surface, panting from an intense half-hour jumping competition. The black mesh had cooled considerably with the onset of evening. The radio, propped up in the garage window, had horrible reception, bad enough that the songs were often interrupted by strange static-y lines. They sounded like garbled messages from something extraterrestrial, something supernatural.
Heather, victorious, rolled on her side laughing and repeating, “oh my god you suck,”
“Shut up,” I countered, offended, “you’re really mean sometimes, you know that?”
She laughed even harder, but suddenly became a bit cryptic, “oh my god, it’s too much. I need to leave. I just really need to get out of here.”
Ignoring her, I asked, “so what happened with Angela and Danny Ricci? You never actually said”
“Angela blew him in the P.E. supply shed”
“Stop lying”
“I’m not lying,” she said, matter of fact, as she sat upright, and examined her thumbnail.
“Well that’s disgusting.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“No I’m not, that’s gross, he’s way too old for her. What was he doing around our school anyway? Such a creeper.”
“Um…Danny Ricci is the shit, he knows how to party, and, frankly, he has a car. He’s coming to pick me up soon by the way. I’ll send him your love,” she deadpanned.
“You’ve got to be kidding, it’s a school night,” I was suddenly interrupted by the jarring honk from the Jeep pulling up in front of the garage. Heather, vindicated, slid to the edge of the trampoline, bounced off gracefully, and gathered her shoes.
“Don’t be a prude. You really need to lighten up, and stop being so…predictable.”
“Come on, seriously, listen to me. This is a shitty idea.”
“I’m over it,” she said as she reached the edge of the garage and gestured around her with rolling eyes, “I’m over all of this. I have to go.”
“This is so messed up, what if you don’t come back?” I challenged.
“What if I don’t want to?” she threw back a cruel smirk as she walked, measured and regal, toward the driveway.
“Stop lying”
At which she stopped and turned around completely, glaring at me with an expression that has since been emblazoned in my mind, one I’ve never quite been able to completely decipher. Danny honked yet again, lingering on the horn to show his impatience. Then she said, finally, forcefully, “I’m not.”
After she left I stayed for a few minutes, bouncing half-heartedly along the outer ring of the springs. I still believed, even then, that we would spend every day this way, trading gritty tales of our classmates in between minutes spent in motion. She never said to leave, but, eventually, I gave in and went home for dinner.
By this point, the problem of Heather’s story is probably evident. No one may know the exact circumstances at first, but they figured her story out at sentence one. We’ve all heard this morality tale before, right? Bad Girl Goes Off With Older Boy For Reckless Fun And THIS Is What Happens. If I took some license with details, played around with the tenses, maybe Heather would present more of an obstacle to the casual acquaintance, but would that not mark a certain betrayal? My best friend was a compulsive liar, but now she’s dead, and the trampoline is gone.
Or, at least, it should be gone.
Sometimes the ghosts you hear in the static are liars.
On my way home for dinner I felt oddly inclined to look back over her grandparent’s fence at the corner. It was the first time I’d checked in years. From under my hood, which shielded me from the thick rain, I actually saw the trampoline, right in the place it was before. Incredibly difficult to distinguish in the gloom, but it was definitely there, and then I could see a figure atop it as well. I leaned over the fence to determine who it was, and then she looked up.
SM Dec 2010
