The Neighbors From Across the Street

For almost as long as I had been alive, Emily had been my favorite playmate. Then, when her little sister Sam was born, she too became a frequent playmate of mine. I can’t even remember meeting them for the first time; they had just always lived across the street from me. Throughout my early childhood, I would wait on weekdays for them to get home at 5:30pm, sometimes 5:15, from after-school daycare. On weekends, I rushed through my chores to meet them outside by 1:00pm. Emily was my true playmate, my partner in crime that always got into glamorous trouble with me, the person who taught me to flip while still swinging on a swing, and the person I taught to cartwheel. We held lemonade stands in front of my house, took snacks without our parents’ permission to have picnics, and ran away from Alex, the boy who lived two houses down and liked to tease us, and, according to Emily, had cooties. I remember when her dad built a swing and we would stay on it for hours, us taking turns with her sister, Sam. I remember us playing pretend, using rock paper scissors to decide who played the “big sister” or the “mom” or the “celebrity” or whatever our imaginations could conjure up. I can vividly recall the time a stray dog chased us in her backyard, the day we learned how to climb a tree, the time she accidentally vomited on my arm.

Then, almost as quick as a snap of the fingers, I grew up and realized that poor Emily was three years younger than me. I didn’t mean to push her away, didn’t even realize it, but soon, homework and extracurricular's consumed the free time that I didn’t spend on my phone, or talking to my more mature friends. All of a sudden, I wasn’t afraid to have male friends, while she was still convinced that all boys were gross. I became too old to “play,” and I began to detest the cold, which stopped me from playing outside with her all day whenever it snowed. Of course I was still cordial to her, but she began to hang out with even younger kids, and I knew that if I were to go out with them, I would have to put up the facade - I would have to still pretend to be a little kid. I had more complex thoughts and feelings, but I couldn’t articulate them to her because she didn’t understand. I tried, but all she wanted to do was talk about things on the surface, to play “pretend.” My parents would tell me to go outside and play, that it looked bad that I stayed inside all day, but it was like I had experienced a teenage rapture, an epiphany that she wasn’t mature enough to reach.

By the end of that year, she turned eleven, old enough to know that we had distanced, but not old enough to put down her dolls and childish aspirations, and try to catch up with me. I wasn’t very hurt or surprised when she told me she was moving; just a little melancholy knowing that the only tie to my childhood was leaving. On the day she left, she, her sister, and her parents cried, but I couldn’t shed a tear. We tried to text after she had left, but there was nothing to say. Now, the neighborhood is quiet, and apart from the kids I babysit every once in a while, there are no more childish shenanigans, no more ball games, no more shrieks of laughter to be heard from day to night. I enjoy my life and my maturity, but I mourn Emily, and what once was, and what could’ve been if I just hadn’t grown up.