Mindy's Got a Boyfriend.

"I have something to tell you," Mindy said, her smile wide, her bubblegum breath warm on my cheek.

"Okay, what is it?" I asked, looking up from the crude daisy chain I was trying to make when it became obvious she wanted my full attention.

Mindy was smiling in that smug, slightly crazy way she had when she knew a secret. She leant in towards me; until she was so close I could hear the gum being squelched between her teeth, like a cow chewing its cud. I couldn’t believe it when my mother told me cows had four stomachs- one seemed plenty.

"Jason Farrow gave me a looove letter!" Mindy whisper-shrieked, mocking and gleeful at the same time.

I could only blink in surprise, stunned both by the news and the proximity of her loud voice. I didn't think much of boys, and Jason Farrow was no exception. He had a gap between his teeth and he always had dirt beneath his fingernails. Yet suddenly, he stood out amongst his equally-scruffy peers by doing something shockingly un-boylike, it singled him out to us, both for scrutiny and for future reference.

"Ew, really?" I asked, screwing up my nose, the daisy chain lying forgotten by my knees. "When?"

"Abby Rose gave it to me in Science," Mindy replied, suddenly standing up and brushing grass off her knees. She pirouetted on the spot, her yellow skirt billowing around her like a bell, so fast it made me dizzy.

She suddenly took off down the hill, holding out her arms like an airplane, laughter ringing through the air as I scrambled to my feet and chased after her.

"Jason Farrow loooves me!" she screamed over her shoulder, high off her own giddiness. I laughed too, my shadow growing enormous beside me as we ran.

We were nine.

~

"Do you think Tommy Higgins is cute?"

I rolled my eyes. Mindy was staring at Tommy Higgins from across the canteen, pretending to read the lunch menu next to him. It was a convincing performance, but I'd known Mindy since I was five, I wasn't fooled.

"No," I scowled.

Lunchtimes put me in a bad mood in those days- I was given braces shortly after my eleventh birthday and they had turned eating into quite a production and bubblegum or any sticky candy were off limits to me. I glanced at Tommy Higgins, scratching at his elbow and looking quite unremarkable in the line for dinner.

"Anyway, he never brushes his teeth."

I didn't know if that was true- Tommy Higgins had a yellow tinge to his teeth, but all I cared about was cutting him down to size, returning him to being Just Another Boy. Mindy seemed to get on well with boys, they squabbled for her attention and didn't stick chewing gum in her hair or flick scraps of paper at her when she wasn't looking. She just had the ability to move among them without being singled out for ridicule. I lived with my mother and sisters, so talking to boys for me was like trying to grab something underwater- always just a little out of reach, always further away than I thought.

Mindy pulled a face at me.

"You're so weird, No."

She was the only one who ever called me No- it was just short for Noelle, but Mindy said it was because I said 'no' to everything.

"You're weird," I replied, nudging her with my elbow.

It worked, and she smiled, forgetting to gaze at Tommy Higgins and returning her attention to her lunch. I tried to smile back without showing my braces- I was getting good at that. Mindy poked her food with her plastic fork, scratching her name in the mashed potatoes, dotting the 'i' with a crooked heart.

~

Mindy wasn't her actual first name, it was really Araminta. It apparently went from being Araminta to Minty, then Mindy. What was strange was, she hated being called by her first name, but she still bragged about it being such a rare one, as if it was her idea.

"It's unusual," she'd smirk. She'd try to toss her hair, a gesture perfected by her older sister, but her hair was like wool, fluffy and thick and it didn't co-operate.

In a lot of ways, though, Mindy wasn't unusual. In the year we turned twelve, she started to wear makeup. Every morning, we'd get on the bus to school and she'd inexpertly start applying stolen lip-gloss, the pink sticky stuff still on her fingertips in our first lesson. Her notebooks always were smudged with glittery pink fingerprints. It would always be gone before the end of the school day, but you could see it on the tip of her pen, her fingers, and the zip on her coat.

She got mad when I needed a bra before she did.

"I'm the one who does all the exercises!" she'd scowled, jabbing a finger at my chest and nearly poking me. "You don't even care about how you look, Noelle!"

I'd walked home that day, sans Mindy for once, pondering on what she'd said. It's true I'd never put much thought into how I looked besides keeping clean. I knew that my hair was dark, I was thin in a gawky way and my mouth naturally pulled down at the corners. I wasn't what anybody would have called beautiful, but I didn't think I looked bad. I was just Noelle and I was fine with that. Mindy loved to show off, prancing like a pony when she was little, and I was fine with letting her. We balanced each other out, or so I thought. It didn't occur to me that Mindy would feel jealous of me, even over something as trivial as needing a bra.

~

"But don't you think she's kind of a show off?"

I shrugged and wrote down the latest formula off the board as Stephanie Grants leant towards me. At fourteen, I knew the politics of girls well enough to know I should let the asker answer her own question before I got involved, just in case it would be reported back.

"Mindy, I mean. Didn't you see those heels she wore today?"

I smirked a bit. I couldn't help it- Mindy had dismissed my black shoes as ugly, but watching her awkwardly waddling through the school gates with their chipped green paint in her brand new kitten heels had been satisfying to watch. Even some of the onlooking boys had laughed at her.

"She just wanted attention," I said.

To me, 'attention' summed up Mindy and I very well. She could never get enough, while I couldn't handle much. I'd grown my dark hair long specifically so I could hide underneath it.

Stephanie chewed on the tip of her pen, obviously satisfied with that. I'd noticed that recently, other girls had started to actively express dislike towards Mindy. Their eyes narrowed when she talked to boys, thrusting out her chest, bosom unnaturally stiff with padding. She'd become harshly critical of girls she deemed 'immature', like it was a contagious disease that needed to be eradicated. Immaturity in boys was never a topic she seemed particularly concerned with.

"God, what is she doing in high school?"

"Cute pigtails...for a three-year-old."

"Ugh, so childish."

It was almost funny that in her hungry desire to be older, her relentless obsession with it, she very much looked like a little girl trying too hard. Even to me, it was obvious. But I knew that it wouldn't last for long- Mindy was good at staying ahead of the pack.

After class, I walked along in a daze, my hair swinging like a curtain around my face, thinking about how many days of school there were left to go until summer came. They somehow seemed more manageable on a calendar or planner, each designated a little square. I obsessively crossed them out with a thick, black marker, the smell sharp and chemical. I loved that smell. As I rounded a corner, I was bombarded with the scent of perfume.

"Hey, No, guess what just happened?"

I knew the news was going to be solely news for Mindy, so I shrugged.

"The world has tilted off its axis, and we are all going to plunge, screaming, into the sun?"

Mindy just rolled her eyes. She was getting better at applying makeup, each eye was coated evenly with mascara, but her eye shadow was a little smudged. I still smiled with my lips closed.

"No- Joshua Michaels totally just bought me a muffin!"

It was hardly front page news, but Mindy was nearly dancing with joy, smiling that slightly crazy smile. A memory suddenly came to me- Jason Farrow, Mindy twirling in her yellow school dress. This was like that, only amplified. Mindy didn't like Jason; his love letter had been a little ego-boost, nothing more. I wondered if this was the same thing, or if Mindy's confusing interactions with boys had too matured.

"Do you like him, then?" I asked.

"He is pretty hot, and he's like, nearly seventeen! I can't believe it, No, he's really popular, too!"

I wanted to ask why he'd buy a fourteen-year-old with a padded bra a muffin, if he was so popular. Most of the older kids at our school acted like everyone younger than them didn't exist, and I liked it that way. They intimidated me, like I was constantly walking amongst predators. I didn't say any of this to Mindy- I knew what she'd say:

"Sometimes, No, you can be so immature."

But the thing is, I wasn’t. I just wasn’t like Mindy. And it wasn’t that I didn’t like boys. I had a long standing crush on Danny Mulligan, but he’d been dating Katherine Pritchard since the dawn of time. I sat in the row behind her in history, jealously gazing at the back of her head and wishing she’d evaporate on the spot. I started copying her for a little while, wearing my hair in the same long, swishy ponytail as her, putting a little perfume on before school each day, little things like that. Katherine Pritchard was utterly ordinary, yet somehow, she’d mastered the secret of being noticeable without trying to. I wanted to see inside her head, as if the clues might be written down neatly for me on the inside of her skull. I hardly paid attention to the Romans as I chewed my pencil, wondering, caught between resentment and admiration.

How are you doing that? How can I be like you? What does Danny like so much about you?

I still haven’t quite figured it out.

~

Somewhere, I don’t know when, exactly, Mindy suddenly stopped being Mindy and became ‘Mints’. Boys would hiss it at her when they were trying to get her attention, other girls would call her it with glee, jumping on the candy-cuteness. She had stopped being my friend Mindy in her yellow dress and fluffy hair, she became Mints, cool, popular and with immaculate makeup.

I wouldn’t let her when she tried to rename me ‘Elle’. She didn’t even make the joke that I’d said no yet again- she just rolled her eyes like it was exhausting trying to reason with me. I was starting to get the impression that Mindy thought she was outgrowing me, like I was an old toy she had vague nostalgic attachment to but felt the need to hide when anybody else was around.

I wondered how long Mindy’s childhood loyalty would last.

But the fact was, we had changed.

We both looked different. Mindy (she’d always be Mindy to me) wore her hair in messy waves that she obsessively fussed over, meticulously styling them so they fell down either side of her face. Her lips shimmered with gloss, nails carefully painted. Her boobs finally came in, though I could tell she wasn’t pleased at her diminutive B-cup. Her hips grew; her face lost any traces of its previous puppy fat. She walked confidently, almost strutting, long legs jutting alarmingly from beneath miniskirts or encased in shiny, glossy tights.

I had no idea where she learnt to be so comfortable with her body. I didn’t feel confident, I felt strange. After spending so much time going by largely unnoticed, suddenly, I was being watched, scrutinised. Mindy, who craved being noticed the way some craved sugar, or caffeine, embraced the changes in her body wholeheartedly.

For me, I had been thrust into the spotlight by my newfound body. I wasn’t admired like the popular girls, but I could feel eyes on me, at school or out in public, as though people had suddenly realised I had gone unnoticed for so long and were making up for lost time.

I didn’t confess my discomfort to Mindy. What was the point?

“You know, Noelle, if you changed your look a bit, you could look really good.”

I sighed.

“Don’t I look good now?”

Mindy rolled her eyes, winding a long, sticky strand of gum around her finger. The artificial scent of strawberries permeated the air, but I couldn’t stop looking at that sticky strand of gum; it looked like it was her tongue, like a frog catching flies. I kept this unflattering imagery to myself.

“It’s not that you look bad,” Mindy said, and I could just hear the ‘but’ coming, “But you look the same, you know? You wear the same jewelry and have the same look you did when we were fourteen, Noelle! I mean, don’t you want people to notice you?”

She said all this like it was a crime.

I didn’t answer her right away; I just watched her winding that sticky lizard’s tongue around and around her finger. Her eyes skittered across the side as though she was already intending to end the conversation, like the matter had been solved in her mind.

For a second, I wanted to hit her.

Instead, I shrugged, my fists curling in on themselves beneath the table.

“I guess that stuff doesn’t matter to me as much as it does to you.”

Mindy stared at me and for a second, she looked like her old self. Like all the layers of makeup had peeled away to show her real face. Then she shrugged and looked away.

“I guess not.”

~

And then, one day, Mindy started dating. His name was Andy Burton, and I soon became very well acquainted with him, even though I didn’t meet him for weeks after he and Mindy had first exchanged phone numbers. But Mindy made up for his physical absence with a constant deluge of information;

“Andy thinks-

“And it was so funny when Andy-“

“And then Andy and I-“

I started to count the amount of times she said his name in my head, but soon it turned into a never ending stream of AndyAndyAndyAndyAndyAndy.  

I started to tune her out. Maybe it was callous of me- her face was flushed and she was obvious excited about her new boyfriend, but her anecdotes were relentless. I could recite as much information about Andy as she could; probably, only I didn’t find it nearly as fascinating. Mindy used to talk nonstop about what it would be like when we got boyfriend, but now she had one, she seemed to have forgotten anything else in the world existed. Perhaps if my longstanding, unrequited crush on Daniel Mulligan had gone anywhere, we would have still had something in common.

One day, we were walking home together, only it didn’t feel like we were together. It seemed more like we were strangers that just happened to be walking side-by-side, Mindy engrossed in her phone, me pretending not to notice we’d barely exchanged a word all day. I wondered if I stopped walking, would she even notice?

I didn’t stop, though. Mostly because I couldn’t bear it if my suspicions turned out to be correct.

We were nearing my house. I watched Mindy’s fingers moving rapidly as she texted, cherry-red nails glinting in the afternoon sunlight. She was chewing gum- mint, not strawberry.

“Hey, maybe we should do something this weekend?” I said, hating the silence and hating the hopeful note in my voice. “Netflix and popcorn, that kind of thing. Maybe alcohol.”

“I’m seeing Andy,” Mindy said, without even looking up, a ‘well duh’ inflection in her voice, despite the fact she’d seen Andy after school almost every day that week anyway. “His parents are out of town all weekend.”

“Oh.”

The word fall like a stone between us. It spoke volumes despite being just that one syllable. I’d tried so hard not to seem clingy or jealous, but the casual dismissal stung worse than if Mindy had outright insulted me. It was stupid, but I almost felt like crying. There was a canyon opening between us, yawning out further and further and I was the only one who seemed to care. Mindy had always had a vain, egotistical streak, but this callousness that wasn’t even directed at me, most of the time, was growing more and more dominant and unsettling in equal measures.

I could see my house looming into view and was almost relieved that I could finally get away from the oppressive silence, but I didn’t want things to end on such an awkward note. My fingers lingered on the front gate, the chipped paintwork soothing me a little with its familiarity. I turned to Mindy, trying to keep my face relaxed.

“I have to go,” I said. “Talk to you later, okay?”

But Mindy didn’t answer me- she was still busy texting, her glittering nails stabbing the keys with an eagerness that didn’t translate into her bland expression. I watched her face as I shut the door and she didn’t even look up as it slammed, the force making the panes of glass in the top rattle.

It wasn’t the last time I tried to talk to Mindy and reassert myself back into her social life, but it was the last time I thought that she might say yes.

Ironic that I was the one who still got called ‘No’.

~

High school doesn’t last forever, of course.

Thank god.

I had no inclination to stick around in our boring little town, regardless of anybody I might have been leaving behind. Even though I was basically invisible to her by the end of our final year, I knew Mindy felt the same as I did in that regard. We wanted to be off, learning new things, meeting new people. In a way, my isolation from most of my old ‘friends’ made it so much easier to move away. It’s not like I had anyone back home outside of family who would miss me.

Most days, I could even pretend it didn’t bother me anymore.

~

I visited my family after my first semester and they told me that I seemed different, somehow. Clichés like ‘blossomed’ and ‘glowing’ were thrown around. I couldn’t see it, myself, but it was nice that they thought so. My old home seemed so much smaller now that I had seen some more of the world for myself.

I also saw Mindy recently.

She has a new boyfriend.