when i was fourteen i went on this trip with three different schools to an old ymca that was converted into a country club but at the time of year when the country clubbers were not there

i met a girl who was also fourteen and immediately made me laugh. we learned how to square dance together and when a boy in our discussion group said something strange about women’s bodily autonomy she ran out to the bathroom and i followed her and i pulled out paper towel after paper towel for her from the dispenser as she told me her biggest secrets. i held her and we sat with our backs to the door so no one would come in and she cried until i started crying too. i didn’t know why. i’d never cried without knowing why before. and then she said my soul was beautiful, that i was so kind, that she had only known me for three shitty workshops and one lunch with infinite brownie dessert but she loved me. and i knew i wasn’t really supposed to be sitting on that bathroom floor and this conversation was probably meant for someone else but i said okay. there was a party that night and that was the first time i had been at a party. a real one, not a pep rally or some other attempt at corralling a sense of community, but a celebration. with the teachers doing something else and the lights down low and music shaking you from the feet up. i danced a lot that night. my classmates sat down and came and went and screamed to their favorite songs but i never stopped dancing that night. not like the ballet classes i took as a kid, or dancing when the lights are on. dancing in the dark is just moving your body. shaking something out of it. jumping up and down just to remind the rest of the crowd you’re alive. when i walked to my bunk at the end of the night my legs felt like jell-o.

i wish i could do something like that with everyone online. isn’t it trash that your friendships are sort of determined by geographical location? like if your ideal friend is somewhere else, three states away, in a different time zone, over an ocean, you can never lean your head against her shoulder or laugh in her ear or feel the calluses on her fingertips. you can never know the smell of her hair or how her face looks without the lens of a phone camera. you can tell her that you love her but you can’t really know how she replies. do her hands stiffen? does her breath catch? does she brush lightly against your shoulder? isn’t that cruel?