Looking Back in Anger

Everything was engulfed in flames. There was no escaping it. The smell of burnt pine, the crumbling, crackling of the dried leaves surrounding it. It singed my nose hairs. There was no going back now; the damage had been done.

I turned my back on the would-be bridge that connected me to my childhood best friend’s home. She would be furious once she found out, but I knew deep down she knew this had to happen—she knew she deserved this.

I’ve never thought of myself as a vengeful person, but for the right reasons I could be. And if I’m being honest with myself, it felt better to ride these emotions out than to let it burn me from within. It wasn’t that I liked this or wanted it to happen—it was a requirement. She had to see how I felt since she clearly wouldn’t listen to me.

Shelly and I had been friends for as long as I could remember. She was the staple of my childhood, and I hers. We met when she was nine, and I was ten when her parents bought the house next to ours. We lived in the heart of Muskoka, so it was rare that someone moved in permanently rather than just a temporary stay. The previous owners never stayed; they always rented it out while they traveled, snowbirded, whatever a retired Canadian couple would do year-round. I never knew why they sold, didn’t know what happened to them. One day they left, a sign went up, and they never returned. Shelly and her family were from somewhere in Texas, looking for a change of pace, and nothing said change like Canadian wilderness.

The first day we met, I was shy, reluctant to converse with a new person after the terror and isolation I felt from that school year. I was a lonely kid; I never had any friends until I met Shelly. I spent most of my time with my parents or by myself. The kids at school were freaked out by my fascination with bugs. You know how it is as a kid: you find one thing that you find interesting and make it your whole personality. The other kids weren’t on board with my passion; they weren’t too fond of bugs despite living in a severely wooded area. Shelly got it, though; she felt the same fascination for poisonous plants.

I didn’t say much to her at first, but our parents wanted me to show Shelly around while they did their adult chit-chat. I was hesitant, but I decided to show her our pollinator garden so that I could point out all the different bees and butterflies. That’s when she pointed out to me the nightshade that was growing nearby. That was the moment I knew she would be my lifelong friend, and I think she knew that too.

It was a few days later, when we decided to play an extensive game of finding the coolest thing in the forest, a game that would become our summer tradition, that we discovered that little bridge that would always connect us. It lay across the tiny creek, connecting our properties. It would become the epitome of our friendship. We would promise to meet there each day after school, even in the winter, to discuss the horrors of our day. It was there that friendship bracelets were made, stars were watched, and scary stories were told. It was our favourite place in the whole world. That was the best part; it was ours, which is why it killed me to see it burn now.

All those late nights, sleepovers, and more gone with the burnt carvings bearing our initials. It was supposed to symbolize to our future children that we were there, not signify the end. But I could never forgive her for what she did to me. She is as dead to me as this bridge is gone.

After slaving away throughout high school, I decided to attend the University of Ottawa to study entomology. A year later, Shelly would follow me to study journalism. Her likes and interests changed many times throughout the years, but mine stayed consistent. It would be in her second year, my third, and our first year of living together that we would meet Dylan—a boy in third year studying biology who I invited to study with us. We shared many of the same classes and slowly formed a friendship over shared notes. He became enamoured with me and I with him. He was my first and only love; he was the man I was going to marry and share my life with. It took us some time to realize our feelings, but it was an easy transition. I don’t know if we were ever truly friends; we just didn’t recognize the difference until we kissed for the first time. It felt like our lives were intertwined. Study dates turned into coffee runs, turned into movie dates, turned into Thursday movie and dinner night. Shelly was always trailing behind; we never wanted her to feel left out. At the time, it felt like we were a trio of friends, just Dylan and I happened to be dating. Now it is all tarnished by greed and jealousy.

By the time Dylan and I were graduating, Shelly had changed. It was subtle enough that only someone who really knew her could notice. She was more moody and quiet; she avoided our weekly girls' night to shut herself in her room to study. At the time, I thought she was stressed with school, or maybe there was secretly a boy she had fallen for, but Shelly never really did that. She had never gone after anyone, ever. Not even in high school to go on silly little double dates with me. She would say she was sick or outright cancel, say she had to watch her dog, Charlie. It never occurred to me why, not truly, and neither of us ever brought it up. I had assumed she was simply not interested and I was okay with that. But that year, she pulled back from us, and even more so when she had to spend her final year alone.

Dylan and I didn’t intend for that to be the case, but we both got jobs at the Toronto Zoo after graduation. It only made sense for us to rent an apartment together in the city, not only for convenience, but we were also ready for the next step in our relationship. We visited Shelly when we could and told her to do the same, but she never did. Barely heard from her unless we went to her or we went back home for holidays.

Both my parents and Shelly’s parents adored Dylan and were so happy and excited for us when we met that he asked for both of their blessings to marry me when he proposed a year and a half ago. I thought by then, whatever Shelly was going through would pass, and for a while it seemed like it. She graduated, moved back home while she worked remotely for a paper in Toronto. She was supposed to be reporting on tourism but always got caught up chasing other stories. She was even ecstatic when I asked her to be my maid of honour. She helped us plan everything, even the picturesque-dream honeymoon we had been saving for.

It was only days before the wedding. Dylan was taking my parents out to dinner before taking them to the house a few neighbourhoods over that we had been eyeing—we had been staying with my parents when we weren’t in Toronto. Shelly and I were having a girls' night, planning and tying up the loose ends before the big day. It was that night that my life blew up. Out of nowhere, Shelly started getting agitated with the details of the wedding. I tried to ask her what was wrong, but she just became more irritated, more angry than I had ever seen her. She started yelling, first about stuff I didn’t even understand, but then her words cut through me like a knife. She had been jealous of Dylan and my relationship from the jump. I tried to tell her that if she had feelings for Dylan back then, she should’ve told me. Nothing would change now, especially not days before our wedding, but she should’ve told me; I would have understood. I thought I had understood her.

She told me that wasn’t it, but wouldn’t tell me further. That’s when she let it slip that she had been trying to break us up since the start and was going to keep trying even once we had married. Every fight we had, she had instigated, egged on. That rumour that Dylan had kissed someone else, she started. The complaint that had been filed and led us to getting evicted from our first apartment, she was the one to complain. All of it was her. She told me he wasn’t good enough for me, that he didn’t understand me, but she didn’t realize that all of that only made us stronger. She raced out with anger; I should’ve stopped her.

Whether it was planned or not, though I doubt that it wasn't, she single-handedly ruined my life. My best friend, the person who understood me, the second love of my life. She left me with a coma-ridden fiancé who may never wake, and left me an orphan. In her anger, she raced into a head-on collision with Dylan’s car, though he wasn’t driving, which is how she survived. My parents were not so lucky. They insisted on Dylan celebrating, insisted he have another glass of wine, insisted they drive instead. A fatal decision. A decision that no matter the outcome, I would lose someone. Shelly, on the other hand, has a few scratches and a broken arm and somehow no arrest warrant.

This is why I stand here in my would-be wedding dress wearing my mother’s scarf and my father’s coat. This is why I burn the bridge to my best friend and wish her misery.