It is Christmastime 1998 and Alicia and I are the luckiest ten-year-olds in the world. We are front-row at Rockefeller Center in New York City, in front of the famous Christmas tree, listening to and watching *NSync perform. Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez suddenly pull us up to dance onstage, and we dance our little hearts out. Naturally, after the concert Justin and JC ask Alicia and I, respectively, to be their girlfriends.

It’s a shame that by “Rockefeller Center” I mean my small childhood room, and by “*NSync concert” I mean the band’s holiday CD playing on my crappy small stereo.

I would say that seventy percent of my friendship with Alicia is nostalgia. Our sentences often begin with “Remember when…” and end with something that leaves us doubled over in laughter. Sometimes we’re only remembering a person from our shared childhood whom we haven’t heard from since elementary school—not even anything they did, just their very existence in one part of our lives. We say that these people, “fell off the face of the earth,” but every so often we bring them back in conversation. I wonder if anyone ever does this about us.

I’m often shocked when, after I tell people I have known Alicia since third grade, they are genuinely surprised that our friendship has lasted that long. This is without even knowing the various turbulences we’ve experienced in our twelve-year run. I always thought that everyone has that one best friend with whom they’ve grown up, from grade school all the way up through high school and beyond. If that’s not true, then our friendship is even more unique than I originally thought.

I’m eight years old, on the field for soccer practice. I am lousy at soccer and usually feel pretty lonely, but this is a new year and a new team and on this team there’s a girl with blond hair and brown eyes who is really good at soccer and who told me she liked my bobbed hair cut. The ball comes to me during the scrimmage, and I kick it as hard as I can towards the goal. It flies high into the air. A few minutes later this new friend of mine, Alicia, is jumping up and down for me, saying, “You made an assist! You made an assist!”

I look at her and ask, “What’s an assist?”

Alicia and I never had any classes together, but in fifth and sixth grade we worked out a system to hang out during the day (other than recess). We would agree, either before school started or during recess, to meet in the bathroom at a certain time. We would hang out and talk about the normal eleven-year-old bullshit: the boy in my class she liked, the boy in another class that I liked, the unfair things our teachers did, and how awesome it would be when we finally got to middle school.

After school we would walk home together, and in sixth grade we began stopping at the Rite Aid en route from school to home. We would sit unapologetically on the floor and count out our change to buy candy. Once we pooled our money to buy an eyeliner pencil. It was the first act of defiance I remember being led to by Alicia; my mother was strict about me not wearing makeup until I was “old enough,” a designation I feared would never come. We sat outside on the curb just beyond the Rite Aid’s automatic sliding doors, me trying not to breathe or flinch as Alicia carefully drew black lines on the pale creases just above my lower lashes. When it was finally over, she told me I looked eighteen. As an eleven-year-old, this was all I could really ask for.

It is early September 2000. For the first time I am walking to a bus stop, and I am far too happy about this. Waiting for me is Alicia, and we hug excitedly. We’re about to start middle school.

Our bus is late.

When we finally arrive at Grand Avenue Middle School, we’re giddy. We put our things away in our lockers (lockers!) and then we look for our homeroom, one of two periods we have in common. We get lost trying to find it, but we’re too excited to care. We finally run into the right room, and our homeroom teacher looks annoyed. We’re barely there for five minutes before the bell rings and we have to find yet another classroom, but this time without each other.

Our middle school had separated us by academic abilities: I was in the Honors program while Alicia went to summer school before seventh grade and then took regular classes. I often wished that I could be in “Regulars” with Alicia, if only so we could have the same lunch period. I was and still am shy, while Alicia dove into social situations with enough confidence to not care if people disliked her. I feared that with all the new people she was meeting, she would lose interest and stop being friends with me. I still worry about this with many of my friends because it’s happened to me before.

In February 2001, it’s decided that Alicia will move in with her mother. There are many problems between Alicia and her father and stepmother, and it’s time for a change. As much as I know that she can’t stay, I don’t want her to go.

Her last day at Grand Ave. Middle School is spent gathering phone numbers and AIM screen names. I sit next to her on the bus ride home, quiet while she talks to the other kids around her, making promises to keep in touch. In my hands is my mother’s camera.

When we get off at our stop, I tell Alicia I want a picture of the two of us.

“No.”

I’m confused. “Why not?”

“I don’t want to.”

Now I’m hurt. “Fine!” I yell, pivoting and sprinting off to my house. The camera swings from a strap around my wrist, hitting me in the side as I run, tears stinging at my eyes.

Alicia reaches her house before I reach mine, and the phone in my kitchen is ringing when I burst through the front door. I take the phone off the cradle and slam it back down forcefully. The second time it rings, I hold the phone up to my ear.

Her first concern is that I could have had a heart attack, because I have asthma and I ran. I roll my eyes, even though I am breathing heavily from my emotional sprint. There are more pressing issues. “Why do you want to forget me?”

Alicia is frustrated. “I don’t want to forget you. You’re my best friend.”

“Then why won’t you take the picture?”

“Because if we do, then it’s like our friendship is really over. I don’t want to need that picture.”

It’s the wisest thing I’ve ever heard from a fellow twelve-year-old.

Alicia’s mother lived in Holbrook when Alicia moved in with her. It’s an hour from our hometown of North Bellmore, and a huge adjustment from the two blocks that lay between my house and her father’s. The first summer we were apart, I spent a week with Alicia at her mother’s house. She was remarried and had a toddler named Mikey and a yappy Pomeranian whose name I couldn’t spell to save my life.

Alicia’s new house had an in-ground pool in the backyard. She dragged her stereo out to the back porch, hooking it up with an extension cord, and we spent our days listening to Blink-182 and lounging in her pool. We spent our nights regretting the fact that we never put on sun block.

I met her new friend Danielle during that visit. I felt jealous of this new friendship, and even though Danielle complimented me on my freakishly long eyelashes, I didn’t think I liked her. Three years later Alicia would hate her too, after Danielle started dating her ex-boyfriend Dane not even a month after they broke up.

Alicia’s mother moved to Farmingdale after eighth grade, and they lived in Farmingdale up to the end of her freshman year of high school. Then Alicia got into a fight with her mom and was sent back to her dad. This wouldn’t be the last time Alicia got bounced between families. I was happy at the prospect of her coming back to North Bellmore, but then I found out her dad was moving to Selden, an hour and fifteen minutes away.

It is the end of tenth grade. Alicia had called me, plastered at eleven in the afternoon, and I had been freaked out enough to get my dad to drive me all the way to Selden. When I get there, she seems fine, until I pull her out of her house to ask her what the hell is going on. She crumbles onto me sobbing outside. She never tells me why. When she goes back inside, her boyfriend Eric and her friend Bridget are also there. Alicia’s swaying all over the place. She grabs at Bridget, who shakes her off, sending Alicia crashing to the kitchen floor. Bridget asks me if her makeup is smeared.

I can only stare.

The rest of the day is an odd blur for me, my first experience with drunkeness. After Alicia passes out for thirty minutes, she wakes up and is surprised to find me there. We walk over to the space behind the Selden Thrift Store. Teenagers are hanging out there, and for a while I relax. People have drawn on the brick of the building with colored chalk. Alicia wipes her hand against the chalk drawings and smears it on my black shirt. I laugh and do it back. Aside from the fact that her memory is severely compromised, Alicia seems like her normal self.

We decide to walk over to the tanning salon. My mother has told me I’m not allowed to go tanning because it’s unhealthy, but there’s an appeal to getting a jump-start on my tan. The booth has music blasting, the speaker right next to the tanning bed. Midway through my session, Alicia runs into my booth. “Your mom called me. She wants to talk to you. I told her you were in the bathroom but she wants to talk to you now.” She holds out the cell phone I’m so jealous of. We’re both panicked.

I scramble out of the tanning bed, but I can’t go out of the booth because I only have my underwear on and I don’t want to get the tanning lotion on my clothes. I stand at the farthest corner of the booth, one hand pressed over my left ear and the other holding the cell phone to my right. My mother is concerned about Alicia being drunk and asks me where I am and why the music is so loud. I manage to tell her that Alicia is fine, we’re at her friend’s house, and I was having stomach issues. I hang up before she can protest. When I turn back to the tanning bed, I see Alicia wedged onto the corner of it, her back against the speaker to muffle the sound. After a few seconds, we burst out laughing. The scene is so absurd, and so uniquely us.

We walk back to her house, wondering out loud why health classes don’t tell you what to do to take care of someone who is drunk.

There was a time when Alicia and I planned to move into the second floor of my house, formerly my grandparents’ apartment, and go to community college together. But my high school had a bulletin board in the guidance office tracking college acceptances. A flag with your name on it went up when you got your first college acceptance letter. Nassau Community College suddenly became too easy. So I filled out applications and visited colleges, telling myself that I would always end up coming back to Long Island. It killed me to tell Alicia that the one I had decided on was the farthest one from home: Washington College, in a tiny little town on the eastern shore of Maryland, two hundred miles from her and our plans to be less than an hour away from each other. The first time she visited, it was Earth Day and we went to the festival the school held at Wilmer Park. There was tie-dying and a bluegrass band. Alicia kept giving me horrified glances.

A month after I’d arrived at college, Alicia kept bugging me about sending her pictures of us. I was busy trying to get adjusted to my new life on my own, and I never emailed her any of the photos I had on my laptop, so she had to make due. She sent me a video file over AOL Instant Message (it took forever to download). It was a slide show of random pictures she found on the internet that represented our memories: inside jokes, old schools, bands we both liked. It was set to the song “Through the Years” by Kenny Rogers. The over-the-top cheesiness only made me miss her more.

We are twenty-one years old. I have been rejected for the millionth time by a crush, and at the last minute I decide to drive out to the Queens apartment Alicia shares with her boyfriend Mike. We drink and play cards and try not to talk about my heartache. The Black Eyed Peas song “I Got A Feeling” comes on the radio though, and we both know it reminds me of my crush.

“No. Leave it,” I tell her abruptly when she goes to change the radio station. “This IS a good night. I’m drinking and playing cards with my best friend.”

Alicia grins and raises her glass. “Hazle-toff!”

“HAZLE-TOFF?!” She’s drunkenly looking for the phrase “Mazel Tov.” We’re laughing too hard to care. We spend the next ten minutes saying wonderful things about each other.

Among other things, she says I’m the one friend who’s never screwed her over.