By: Hannah Zhang

I met her in China, on that sunny day in mid-October, a month and a half into my first and only school year at my new school. I had friends, but not many. She wasn’t one of them, not yet. It just happened that I was friends with her friends, and we ended up in one corner of the classroom, talking about our test scores.

“What’d you get?” her words were barely fathomable; talking was forbidden while others were still working on their adaptive tests. I don’t remember our scores exactly, but mine must have been much higher.

“Stupid,” I told her rudely, after we had exchanged. She took it quite well, in fact, but we were sent back to our tables for being too loud. Looking back, we laughed about it. I regret that I never got to apologize.

As luck would have it, we lived in the same compound. I started going to her house every day, and we walked our dogs together. She was more well-off than me, and took me to all kinds of fun places that I would’ve never gone to. She was shorter than me, and she was fun to tease. A handful of my first experiences were with her. I walked inside Starbucks for the first time, and I started to explore the area around my new home. During the few months that I knew her, she was more like a sister to me than a friend. All I did was turn around for everything to change.

After summer break started, I went back to America. When the new school year started, we were in the same city, but I had moved and transferred to a new school. I went to visit her one day. It was as if it was yesterday that I still lived here with her.

“Hey,” I said, when she opened the door. We were looking eye to eye. She had moved on, and so had I. We used to be as close as friends could possibly be, but people can go from people you know to people you don’t, and what hurts the most is that people can go from people you know to people you don’t. I should have said something, but I didn’t.

So, Ivy, I know you remember every word I said that day, and I’ll remember it too, because there will be a day we’ll meet again and laugh about it like no time has ever passed.