“You have been home for almost a month now, and yet you still have not done anything productive”, my mom sharply tells me as I come upstairs. My head in an aquarium, I pour myself a cup of coffee. Biquette gets up from her cushion, her little paws clicking on the floor at every step she makes towards me. I sit down on the cold kitchen floor next to her, not wanting to acknowledge my mom’s remark. “Why don’t you do like Rachel and find yourself a job?”, she adds as if the first blow wasn’t enough.

I focus on the light dance of the sun through the gently moving trees on the kitchen floor, taking in a deep breath as I hug my dog. Biquette’s tail happily begins to wag, unaware of the tension. Rachie has found herself a job at that new thrift store down the road, and suddenly she is my mom’s new favorite role model for me. What she doesn’t know is that Rachie only took the job for the very part-time schedule and the discounts on already cheap clothes.

My mom sighs, grabs my dad’s newspaper from his hands and flips through its pages before handing it to me. “Can you please try again? I know you could not find an internship, but you also can’t just read and hang out with your friend all summer.” I look up, feigning interest in the postings. It is honestly too early for me to seriously consider any of those, but I can’t let my mom find out.

Dad kisses my mom’s cheek before taking the papers back from my hands, winking at me. “I’ll help you”, he lets me know as mom exits the kitchen. I hug him before heading downstairs to avoid running into my mom again, with Biquette happily trailing behind me.

***

Later on, at the end of her first week at work, Rachie brings a huge garbage bag on my patio filled with a bunch of thrifted clothes she found at the store. The smell attacks me as soon as she opens the bag, and her laugh echoes in the air around me. She pinches my nose in a teasing manner, obviously amused by the face I made. I try my best to give her a death glare, which only makes her smile wider and brightens her already clear eyes. I can't help but to smile with her.

She then proceeds to take the clothes out of the bag one by one, explaining styles we could pull off with them. She twirls with dresses, goofs around with jeans she got for me and proudly shows me a slightly oversized Batman shirt she already knows I’ll love. Gosh, how could I not think she’s adorable?

She separates her findings into two piles, one for each of us to try on. We bring the clothes down to my room, and Biquette makes herself comfortable in them despite the smell.

I spend the rest of the day being Rachie’s doll, laughing and trying out all of the possible styles with every piece she brought. Not so surprisingly, everything she tries on looks amazing on her. She even got us matching silly shirts, which she makes me promise to wear with her once in a while.

We then lay for an hour on my bed, eating pizza while watching videos on how to remove the thrift shop smell. It does not look easy, but together we are determined to save every single one of these previously abandoned clothes and to give them the love they deserve - or at least, that's what Rachie tells me, her hand on her heart and her face falsely serious.

Just like that, everything feels right again. I have forgotten what normal used to be like with my best friend, and maybe this is as close as I will get to it. It’s crazy how much you can miss someone who never really left your side… I don’t even know when she began to feel so out of reach.

She heads home right before the sunset, hugging me and making plans already to disinfect and clean the clothes tomorrow. My smile, almost painful until then, fades as the door closes behind her. Quickly, a feeling of emptiness greets me again as I watch her disappear across the corner.

Unable to withstand the loneliness of my room while still completely unwilling to see my mom, I almost mechanically grab my phone and ask Sarah about her day. The air still has this old hint in it, but I forget it and smile as soon as my phone rings, a silly picture of Sarah lighting up my screen. We talk about our day and  exchange book suggestions until she falls asleep on the call. I plug my almost dead phone, completely confused by how cute her tired voice sounds.