15

For most of my second-grade year, I believed that the patch of light on the wall of the hallway just outside my classroom was a portal to Narnia, because my best friend told me so. My best friend tended to know about things like these when we were eight, things like Aslan and Middle Earth and how many licks it took to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

As we grew up, my wholehearted faith in the ability of science fiction to enter the real world diminished, but the knowledge of my best friend on the things that mattered did not.

She could tell at a glance whether or not a bone was broken with perfect accuracy, and could judge a book by its cover--she only read good books. She could knit and purl, she could juggle up to four balls or three bowling pins, because she'd once made friends with a clown.



Making friends with clowns was completely typical of Julia, to be frank. Completely typical.

She was unusual in ways that were actually very usual, under closer inspection. But everyone sort of assumed she was fantastic, and sometimes that made it a little hard to be her best friend. Admittedly she did crazy things like make friends with clowns and spend three weeks not speaking in preparation for her career as a mime, but most of her really truly extraordinary talents didn't require much in the way of talent.

The thing was, most people only had one cutsey nuancey talent. She had hundreds.

I hated her. I hated her. I loved her, though, because she was my best friend and what other choice did I have?