{Originally published on The Sister Project.}

Winter 2008—five years after we donned our white caps and gowns at Tanglewood—four out of my six best friends from high school are finding themselves in the same sleepy Berkshire town where we grew up.

In honor of this momentous homecoming, I’d like to share an essay I wrote shortly after we graduated. I haven’t touched it since then (except to change some names), and it is a strong representation of the kinds of reflections I was having about my high school experience at that time. Meet me after Bio to get high in the parking lot…

‘Picking at Scabs’

WHEN WE HEARD Brooke throwing up on Katelyn’s 18th birthday, the seven of us skipped a beat. Our spoons, heaped with chocolate sauce and ice cream, paused in midair before reluctantly arriving at our lips. Gator’s hand ticked for a split second as she sliced through creamy frosting and into birthday cake. No one said anything. We just listened. My mind wandered up the air vent to the cool blue tiled floor where I know Brooke knelt with watering eyes and a runny nose—her bony fingers brushing the back of her throat, coaxing and begging for release.

These girls are the closest things that I have to sisters. We are not fused with blood but with bruises and Band-Aids—our mutual growing pains. Our insecurities have bonded us together with can’t-live-without-you love. I watched the girls shift uncomfortably eyeing the caloric catastrophe that lay before us, sprawled across the kitchen counter. Our throats began to close around the clumps of cake and ice cream. We ate fast. We ate to get rid of it. Behind us, Justin sang Senorita through the kitchen speakers. Above us, Brooke coughed and spat. It was an eternity cruelly crammed into a split second.