Soul Sisters

[inspired by true events. names have been changed to prevent perilous cat fights. perhaps in vain.]

               Before I tell the tale of Clara’s wedding, I must reveal three deep secrets I have kept from her – three secrets cut into stone, deeper than sea. The first is that Clara’s soul is forever knotted to mine by silver thread through hundreds of years of friendship and love. In each life, we find each other. Perhaps it is because souls are wont to fall into habit, or perhaps it is because lost shadows in the eldritch plane are drawn like the moon to the twirling earth. I have held her hair as she has vomited from a late Friday night and flu for hundreds of years, though I’m sure that in the Celtic days, it was probably morning sickness and whatever bugs our dirtier selves attracted. We practiced magic together, I know, for when we first opened her novice spell tome together, it felt like we were picking up where we’d left off. We even skipped the first few pages, somehow knowing the techniques and failed results. Our friendship is ancient and eternal.

               The second secret is that I have ruined her love life. I did it intentionally. How couldn’t I? She had fallen in love with a thug and an imbecile. The face she doted over had bruises and permanent bone damage from frequent street brawls, always started by him, and from the cops that had to drag him to jail each time. When she talked of marrying him, I became ill. I had to intervene, and I did. While Clara became more proficient with witchcraft over this current life, mine has turned to a whole new power – the Internet. I hacked and I dug and did everything I could to separate them. When another woman showed up in the street thug’s life without Clara’s knowing, I knew everything from her residence, their dates, their expenditures, and finally, this woman’s unclean STD record. Then I held Clara’s head as she puked and cried. The relationship was over before she could pick up a nasty case of Chlamydia, but Clara was hurt, and I was sorry. I didn’t say a word.

Round Two occurred when a stout, creepy nerd chased Clara about her town. I knew he was bad news when he started texting her – before she gave him her number. Clara, a real sucker and lovesick puppy, thought it was romantic that this stranger doted on her so. Her wounded heart filled right up. I didn’t have a chance to work my newfound magic, though, as Street Thug found Creep and beat the tar out of him in a public park for touching “his girl” as he said. Creep was put off, and when Clara had doubts about the progression of their relationship, I told her she should move on.

Round Three was probably just as disastrous. A Mafia underboss’s nephew who was about as mature as the runts on the playground has somehow won my best friend over. I groaned inside. I was far away by now, living two states away, but he made her happy. He wasn’t in and out of jail, and he wasn’t working on stalking charges. I figured she was content with her love life. I knew she wouldn’t marry him, for this one didn’t understand the meaning of savings or fiscal responsibilities.

Years passed, and I didn’t see much of Clara. Soul sisters don’t need to see each other to know the other is well. We can sense when something is wrong. At least, I always manage to time my phone calls perfectly with some great tragedy. We were going to school and getting lost in progress.

The third secret is that I made this wedding possible. When Clara was a little inebriated and exhausted by another slave-wage-slave-hour day, she broke off her relationship with the single man I could ever approve of her loving, Mister Thomas Fair. He opened doors for her, paid for their dates, loved kids, loved family, shook hands – everything. He was a charmer and a gentleman. All the men she’d dated and cared about combined could not make a better boyfriend than Thomas, and the night devastated him, Clara, and me. She cried for days when he would not take her back. He was thoroughly wounded, and he had every right to be. I asked her over and over why it happened, and each time it was a new reason – fatigue, distance between them, too much irresponsibility. The fact of the matter was that she was not happy, he was not happy, and she was too shy and ashamed to beg him to come back.

I was not. I begged and bribed him. I found his number and I called him. And it worked, and they worked, and they were together again. I didn’t tell her how hard I tried to make them work. I wanted her to feel like it was fate just restitching an old pattern in the quilting threads of fate. Years passed, and I was in the midst of my residencies and training when Clara called with the news – she was getting married in August, and she wanted me to be the maid of honor. I feigned happiness. After all, most couples that are in love, work well together, and intend to marry usually get to the proposal stage, right? We talked briefly of budgets and what she really wanted, and already I knew of some venues that she would love – parks we’d always dreamed of marrying in just a mile or two away from her childhood home. I opened the old wedding book and made some inquiries, told the owners of the date in her mind, and jotted it down.

Between medical rotations, it was hard to keep in touch with the bride-to-be. Her slave hours and wages were of no benefit, either. Then one night as I scrolled through spam emails and important-not-important emails, I found an online conversation that I’d been invited to but only caught the tail end of. The names were of women Clara talked to all of the time on Facebook. They would “like” some statuses and leave emoticon faces on some. Clara had tagged a few when they went out on weekends. Some were listed as sisters and best friends in the relationship section – a section I never made it to – and left her cute messages all the time. To the unknowing wanderer, these women were Clara’s best friends for life. I knew better. I could feel it.

One woman commented that it was a good thing “she” was getting “the boot” because “she” always made inappropriate insertions of Skrillex lyrics into conversation. Another laughed that someone could even insert the rare discernable words of a dubstep moron into normal day chatter. Others wondered which horrible nightmare of a “song” would be selected for the wedding so that everyone could stand around awkwardly and not know what to do. The first woman said she looked better in the wedding colors and accented Clara’s wedding dress better anyway, and that Clara’s beautiful brown curls should be accented by her even darker curls. I realized, as I scrolled up, that I had made these remarks that they were picking at on Clara’s social sites. I was the subject of the taunts.

I chuckled and closed my laptop lid, setting my head on my arm. I was being replaced as maid-of-honor by the first woman, this Sarah. How cute, Sarah and Clara. Sarah who was there every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night for bowling and girls’ night out and shoe-shopping. Sarah from work. Sarah in every internet status. Sarah who thought her Clara’s best friend. It seemed Clara thought Sarah to be her best friend and that it would be easier to accommodate a more local maid-of-honor. I moaned. Sarah was fake. I had never met her, but despite what every person has ever said to me, text screams personality and sarcasm. I can feel it. I am an Internet Witch, and I know this woman well enough to know that she is not right for the job.

I said nothing of the news and continued through rotations. When my next mentor ended up in Rochester, I spent hours in the local wedding boutique. Clara had never told me the theme or the colors she decided on, if she decided on one at all, but I had already known for years exactly what she wanted. I could not explain it, even to the young sales lady in the store, but when I saw the perfect shoes, the earrings, the veil, the rings, I knew Clara wanted them – needed them. Clara was a princess, had always been a princess, and would always be a princess. She wanted a wedding fitting a princess even if she said she wanted a modern or financially responsible wedding. Twice a week I visited the shop and made little purchases – the dangling teardrop earrings here, the tall tiara there, always a glittering candle. I spent money straight out of my own wedding savings because I knew John and I would be a while yet with school still dragging between us, and because I loved Clara. I wanted her to have a princess wedding.

When May rolled around and medical school graduation with it, I saw Clara. She had come out in the midst of wedding drama and crazy work hours and everything to see her best friend walk around blinding by the sun in her white coat. I hugged her and told her how much I missed her. That night, she cried into my shoulder. All of her friends had abandoned her. Some secret or another had been spilled, a boy was involved on Sarah’s end, drinks were thrown. I tried to feign surprise, but I wasn’t. Clara and I had fought like lion and hyena in school and tore at each other’s throats, but we’d walked away stronger than ever. A secret couldn’t even dent our relationship – not even my hatred for her ex-boyfriends. She begged my forgiveness and asked me to be her maid-of-honor despite her bridezilla complex. I told her I always anticipated it, and that night, John, Thomas, Clara and I spent the hot night in the hotel pool playing kids’ games like old times.

Clara had relinquished to me her wedding plans as her slave owners cracked the whip. John worked under the same lord and could not help much either. They had only established a venue and a photographer, and the photographer was Sarah’s friend from a bar. I fired him and asked a friend from Los Angeles, a professional friend-of-a-friend, to come up. He owed me a favor from community college and even had connections with the local restaurant chain. I sweetened up a flower vendor that had owed my mother a favor from her insurance days, and when that didn’t work out, I discovered and ex-crush from middle school had actually been crushing on me and tried to sweeten me up with a deal on flowers. I took the deal and denied his date offer. This bridesmaid was spoken for. The flowers, the photographer, the venue, and the food were taken care of, and there was money left to spend. I had already shipped and stored the boxes of candles, silver ribbon, guest book, card box, china, wine glasses, and even the cake ornament – a princess and her prince – to the town. All was ready.

Sarah reconciled later with Clara and threw a bachelorette party. I was not invited. I did not care. I had an internship with the greatest pediatric hospital in the country. Petty squabbles with bored brats couldn’t bother me. I sent Clara a card with a gift certificate to her favorite restaurant and a coupon for a dress refitting if she need it (she did, she lost weight). Come time for the wedding, I was more than available. John and I drove everyone nuts with rehearsals and arrangements, but the show went on.

When Clara finally walked the candle-lit aisle, she was as beautiful and happy as she was supposed to be. She made her vows and kissed her new husband, and everyone rejoiced. He carried her down the aisle to my Cobra – 2012 California special edition in bold red, convertible, lava red seats – and drove her to the reception at the finest restaurant outside of town in an old family winery. Food from the Italian restaurant was already set next to the breads, cheeses, and wines. Everything was set in silvers and blues, mirrors and tiaras. It was a feast fit for a new king and queen, and Clara was happy.

Spirited and happy, everyone waltzed to old tunes and held each other close. John and I gossiped about old town folks that Clara and I disagreed about in high school. Sarah showed up and glared at me before leaving. Then Clara and I danced while John and Thomas laughed. She cried for how happy she was to be marrying her true love. I cried because she cried. Then the DJ threw on the dubstep track I’d asked and provided, and she laughed. Everyone danced like robots as they laughed and shouted, and in the end, everyone had a good time.

If there was one thing everyone learned, it was the power of friendship. Friends don’t need the internet or even phones. We feel each other through time and space, drifting along through the river of time. It is eternal and beautiful. Clara learned to trust me, and when it comes my time to take the bridezilla crown, I know she will be there too.