Friends When You're 15 Years Old

At age 15 my best friend was Linda Donaldson, and we did everything together. 
We met in 7th grade, that tumultuous age when girls turn on each other. It’s an ugly phase, but Linda and I found each other and held on tight. At least for a while.


When she turned 16, she got a red Firebird with a T-top. We used to drive around at night with the windows rolled down, the radio blaring. Singing every word. Laughing till we cried. Linda was that friend.

I recently read a book called “Beartown” (thank you, Leslie), and it had a recurring line in it:

“You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again.”

Sweet Jesus, that struck home. Linda.

I immediately thought of Linda.We would drive that Firebird all over the Palos Verdes Peninsula. By the house of the boy she liked. Then by the house of the boy I liked. Neither boy knew, of course. 

At least as far we knew.Then we’d drive up to the Swensen’s ice cream shop at the top of the peninsula where we lived. We’d get one scoop of Swiss orange chocolate chip and one scoop of coconut, and we’d share. Sometimes we’d swing by the cliffs and look out over the ocean. Then Linda would drive me home. I could have driven, but I drove the hand-me-down banana yellow station wagon. She had the red Firebird with the T-top.

We’d sing at the top of our lungs in that car, warm night air swooping in on us.

Linda and I spent every day together between our freshman and sophomore years in high school, when I made it onto the high school drill team. Linda had been on the team for a year. I didn’t get on that first year, but that didn’t stop me from trying out again. 

That summer, Linda and I hung out constantly. After drill team practice, we’d go to my house and watch “General Hospital.” That was the year that Rick Springfield was on it, the year “Jessie’s Girl” played nonstop on 93-KHJ Radio. In my mom’s art studio, we created a little black wood sculpture that we dubbed the “Ice Princess.” I really can’t explain this to anyone, but if you watched “General Hospital” in the early 1980s, maybe it will make sense. 

Sometimes we’d bring home a large Borrelli’s pizza and devour it. Other times, we’d cook up what we dubbed “Noodles Noodles Noodles and a Little Bit of Soup,” which was exactly what the name so creatively implies.  We ate chocolate-chip cookie dough all the time. I mean ALL the time.

Later that summer, I finally got my first job, at the local McDonalds. It was embarrassing, because all the cool kids who had to have a job worked at Marineland. I interviewed there, and even though my older sister had worked there for two years, I didn’t get the job. So I had to settle for McDonalds. A friend of the guy I liked came in one day; I still can picture him there at the counter, me in my polyester yellow uniform and dorky cap, asking him, “Do you want fries with that?”

The job cut into my time with Linda, but by October, I had quit, and Linda and I were thick as thieves again, driving by those boys’ homes. Linda was tall, with thick brown hair. That year, she always parted it straight down the middle, with her bangs pulled back in barrettes. The tips of her hair were fried from the curling iron, a curse of the ’80s.

Damn, we laughed so hard. 

“You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again.”

There’s another part to that quote from “Beartown,” by author Frederick Backman.

“You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.”

I suspect he’s right, but I didn’t keep any friends from that time. Even Linda.

By junior year, I had a boyfriend, and so did she. I can’t remember who started dating first. And I can’t remember why we’d stopped seeing each other. I left the drill team to become a cheerleader; maybe that was it.  We also probably spent every moment thinking about boys. And my boyfriend’s friends became my friends. Kinda. Sort of. But not really. Not like Linda.

Then came college, when people drift even farther apart. I was in Oregon, Linda was in Arizona. I’m not sure why we didn’t write or call; maybe we did. My parents moved overseas when I left for college, so I never had a reason to return “home” during school breaks. I never went back to Borrelli’s or Swensen’s. 

Sometimes you just go where the current takes you. I always just kept moving forward, not looking back. But I won’t apologize for this moment of looking back.

If I remember right, Linda got married right out of college. I can’t even remember if I went to the wedding. Maybe I wasn’t even invited. I hate losing my memory.

But it wasn’t too much later, I remember, that she and her husband were having troubles. If I knew this, maybe we did talk now and then. 

I do remember that, when I was 28, I learned that Linda had stomach cancer. I only learned this because I ran into a mutual friend, Aimee, who had stayed in touch with Linda. Why hadn’t I stayed in touch?

I wrote Linda a poem; it was probably awful, but I know it reminisced about that summer, those Firebird drives. I called her and apologized for the awful poem and told her I loved her. She died sometime soon after.

“Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.”

Maybe that’s true for most of us. I’m jealous of my husband. He’s still good friends with his running mate from age 15 — well as good of friends as 68-year-old men might have. Men are different about friends, right? 

Still, every year we go back to Texas and spend an evening or two with Chuck, running through the old stories, wondering how they both survived the 1960s and ’70s, and learning which other friends had not. I love hearing Mason and Chuck howl about those old days, tears welling in their eyes with uncontrollable laughter, recounting old nights of just riding around in cars, just like Linda and me.

If I remember right — there’s that memory thing again — yesterday would have been Linda’s 54th birthday. I meant to post my memories about her yesterday. I’m late, and I hope she forgives me. For forgetting. For letting her go. Maybe even for remembering. For everything.