so much of my high school years seemingly locked away, entire years reduced to a few memories. except, every so often, one resurfaces. a year or two ago, while walking the dogs, remembering a startling image of sitting at a kitchen table, laughing, eating sour cream n' onion chips (this memory maybe meaningful only for me); then, today, remembering being invited to this girl's house to study math — which year? high school, again, but the particulars entirely gone — & we were more friends-of then friends-proper. she was cute but maybe not beautiful (still more than most of us get), with shoulder-length brown hair and a kind of shy half-smile i can still remember years later. a horse girl. her family having a bit of money, at least in that can afford to upkeep a horse kind of way.
after high school i remember we hung out one more time. went looking for one of her friends, another peripheral-in-my-circle type, very pale, a goth who has since settled after high school into an office job, a happy domestic life, the kind that everyone who wants it should have.
as for me & the girl, that would've been the last time we talked. life goes ever on, though we became friends on facebook in the years after that, added to each others friends lists in that silent, impersonal way.