Do you know what this means?

I came into the house, my right middle finger pointed skyward, face lined in anger as I screamed to my mother "do you know what this means?"

My memory says she answered "it means hi" - probably with a tight little smile.

It was summer, I was 11, we'd just moved and I had no friends. I was curious what the boys were doing in the park across the street from my house. When I walked up I was stopped by their hand signal, and the dirt clods they followed it up with. And my mother told me, "they were waving at you!"

I was sure it was NOT a friendly sign, holding up that lone finger, but I really had no clue. I spent a year not knowing and yet pretending I did. When I was sent the signal, I returned it. Seemed logical. I added a smile for good measure.

I was the focus of quite a bit of negative attention. A month after we moved in someone covered the sidewalk and driveway with dirty, mean words. I knew the words, but not the meaning. I met you when I walked next door to ask if anyone at your house had seen anything. You became my first friend in Lamar.

I was instantly in awe of you. It was summer and you had managed to save your Halloween candy in a shoe box under your bed. You allowed yourself a piece a day so it would last all year. Unimaginable.

We played basketball on your driveway. We swam on the swim team. We rode bikes. We talked and talked and it was you that taught me what my parents had not.

I was holding up both hands, middle fingers raised screaming at my my mother "it means FUCK! it means FUCK!" Course I'd just learned a lot more than the word, I'd learned what the word stood for, which was the real reason I was angry. It seems that FUCK is what happens when a man puts his thing into a woman's thing.... blah blah blah... what a HORRID thought! I could not IMAGINE this happening to me. It made the women have a baby. And you said, "women like it!" You got the info from your sister who was in High School, so it must be true.

The next step for you was a boyfriend. He was on the swim team too. There were 3 girls and 3 boys in our age group on the team. I got stuck with the lesser of the three, and well, he did too. You were into making out, I was into wishing I was you.

At our 20 year high school reunion I found myself talking with you and I was in awe of you all over again. You lived in Las Vegas. You and I had both been married at 19 and divorced soon after. You were beautiful and stylish and soft spoken and real. I remember the way the gold lamé gown hung on your frame. You seemed so thin, too thin. We spent the time in Lamar laughing and promising to keep in touch. Then we didn't.

I recently found your first boyfriend online. He became a banker who rides motorcycles. He married his high school sweetheart and they are now grandparents together. He remembers you fondly as his first crush. He remembers you.

I wrote him of your passing, not that I know much.
Drugs, illness, or eating disorder could be the cause - or just the underlying sadness I read in your eyes at that reunion. It was profoundly sad that I could not get anyone to tell me what really happened to you to cause your death.

When I see you again, fill me in ok?
And wear the gold lamé dress.

I felt beautiful in that dress.