My First Friend

I had a friend; Her name was Barbara Stanley.

Those words have lived inside me for as long as I can remember—warm, steady, familiar. A sentence that felt like a home.

Barbara and I were inseparable. The way we met felt like a small miracle. I still remember that afternoon in kindergarten: I was sitting alone at the sandcastle box, quietly packing sand into a crooked little tower. The other kids played in groups, loud and overflowing with energy, but I stayed by myself, scraping castles out of loneliness.

Until she appeared.

She came out of nowhere—this tiny girl with big brown eyes and a smile too bright for such a small face—and without saying a word, she knelt beside me. She didn’t ask if she could join, didn’t hesitate, didn’t judge. She just started helping me build the castle.

And that was it.

That was the beginning of everything.

From that day forward, we were a pair. From kindergarten to middle school, we stuck together like two matching beads on the same string. She was the sunshine in my small world, the one person who made every moment feel less heavy.

But everything changed near the end of middle school.

Her father’s job relocated him across the country. I still remember the ache in my chest as she told me. We both cried—two kids trying to hold on to something too big for our little hands. We promised to see each other again. We promised to call, to text, to stay best friends even across the miles.

I held on to that promise like a lifeline.

And now, five years later… it was summer again.

The summer she promised she’d finally come back.

We were supposed to meet at the old park—the place where our friendship lived. The place that felt like ours.

So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Hours passed. The sun slid down the sky. The playground shadows stretched like long fingers. My excitement slowly melted into confusion, then worry, then dread. She didn’t answer my texts. She didn’t pick up my calls.

But I refused to believe she forgot.

I knew her.

I knew she would come.

It wasn’t until nearly midnight that my phone buzzed—not with her name, but with my mother’s.

Dean, come home right now. Please.

I took the last train and walked home down familiar streets that felt suddenly foreign. When my father opened the door, his expression wasn’t normal. Something in the air twisted. The world felt wrong.

My mother sat me down. Her hands trembled as she held mine.

“Dean… honey,” she whispered. “I need you to stay calm.”

“Mom, what’s going on?”

Tears slipped down her cheeks before she could speak the words.

“Barbara passed away today.”

That sentence tore something inside me.

“What? No—no, she was on her way. She promised. She said— Mom, she said she’d meet me—she—she promised!”

“She was on a plane,” my mother sobbed. “There was an accident. Her parents called us.”

My world cracked open.

Barbara—my best friend—was gone.

I collapsed into myself, drowning in waves of disbelief and horror. I attended her funeral, feeling like I was trapped in a nightmare I couldn’t wake from. I cried for weeks—silent tears, loud tears, tears that made it hard to breathe.

I didn’t go to school for most of the summer. I couldn’t. Every corner of my house felt wrong. Every memory hurt. My mother begged me to return when the new semester started, and I finally forced myself to go when the school threatened suspension.

But the world outside felt wrong too.

On my way to school, a strange man wearing old-fashioned clothes stepped out of a tiny antique shop. He held out a ring—simple, silver, unassuming.

“This is meant for you,” he said.

I walked faster. I ignored him. He followed. He insisted. I threatened to call the police. Only then did he stop.

What was his problem?

I made it to school, sat through lectures like a ghost, and at the end of the day, I found something in my backpack.

The ring.

The same ring.

I didn’t remember putting it there. I didn’t want it. But for some reason… I kept it.

On my way home, my friend Johnny walked beside me, trying to cheer me up. Out of nowhere, he joked:

“Maybe that ring can save her, dude.”

He laughed, but the world froze around me.

Save her?

That night, after my parents came home, I went to my room, trembling. I stared at the ring for what felt like forever. Finally, with a breath so fragile it almost broke, I slipped it onto my finger.

“Please… Barbara… please,” I whispered.

Nothing happened.

Disappointment crushed my chest. I pulled the ring off, ready to throw it away—

—and my phone buzzed.

I glanced at the screen.

Barbara Stanley.

My heart stopped.

I blinked. Rubbed my eyes. Pinched myself.

Her name stayed there.

I answered the call with shaking hands.

“Hello?”

“Dean?”

Her voice. Her actual voice.

“Barbara—oh my God, Barbara—you’re alive—I thought—I thought you—”

“I’m okay,” she said softly. “I don’t know what happened, but I’m okay.”

I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe, whispering her name again and again. I told her I had a horrible nightmare about her dying. She comforted me. She told me she was safe. She told me not to worry.

Before hanging up, I begged:

“Please… don’t take the plane here. Please.”

She promised she wouldn’t.

But something was wrong.

The calendar said it was still summer.

The same day as before.

Time reset.

The ring had taken me back.

I didn’t want to believe it. But it happened again. And again. And again.

Each time I warned her.

Each time I tried to save her.

But fate kept hurting her.

A plane crash.

A car accident.

A staircase fall.

An illness.

A fire.

A stray driver.

Over and over, she died.

I kept going back, over and over, until my heart felt like it was tearing itself apart. I lost count of how many times I cried into my pillow, screaming her name.

I tried everything.

Every route.

Every warning.

Every possibility.

And then one day…

It worked.

She lived.

She actually lived.

She called me from the bus station in my city—breathless, excited, alive.

“Dean! I made it! I’m here!”

I ran to the front door when she arrived. When I opened it, she was standing there—real, warm, breathing, smiling. Tears flooded my vision.

“You made it,” I whispered.

“I told you I would,” she said, hugging me.

I held her tighter than I ever had before. I saved her. After everything, after every impossible loop and every heartbreak—I saved her.

We stepped inside together.

My mother walked into the living room, a dish towel in hand. She stopped abruptly when she saw us.

Her face drained of all color.

“Dean…” she whispered. “Honey… who are you talking to?”

I froze.

“What? Mom, what do you mean? This is Barbara. She—she came.”

My mother’s voice trembled.

“Dean… sweetheart… you never had a friend named Barbara.”

My heart thudded violently.

“What? Mom, stop—this isn’t funny.”

She looked at me with a grief deeper than anything I’d ever seen.

“When you were little, you… you made her up. You used to talk to her all the time. We told you she was imaginary years ago. You grew out of it. Dean… there’s nobody there.”

I spun around.

Barbara stood beside me, eyes wide, lips trembling.

“Dean…” she whispered, “why can’t she see me?”

“No,” I choked. “No, you’re real. I saved you. I brought you here. I—”

Barbara looked down at her hands.

Her fingers were turning transparent.

“No,” I gasped. “No—Barbara—don’t—”

Her breath hitched.

“So this is why… all those times…” she whispered. “I was never meant to survive. Because I was never… supposed to be real.”

“Stop,” I cried. “Please stop—don’t say that—”

She reached up and touched my cheek. Her hand was warm—but faint, like a breeze.

“Dean,” she whispered, her voice breaking, “you tried so hard. You loved me enough to break time itself. But your heart created me. And now… now that truth is here…”

Her outline flickered like static.

“I have to go.”

“Please,” I begged. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me again.”

Her eyes filled with shimmering tears.

“You were never alone,” she whispered. “You made me so you wouldn’t be. And you don’t need me anymore.”

“I do,” I sobbed, collapsing. “I do, I do, I do—”

She knelt in front of me, fading like dust lifting into sunlight.

“Thank you for being my friend,” she whispered.

And then, with the saddest smile I’ve ever seen…

“Goodbye, Dean.”

Her form scattered into the air like falling embers.

And she was gone.

My mother held me as I screamed her name. And the world felt smaller. Emptier.

But slowly… painfully… I learned to breathe again.

Sometimes I still swear I feel her hand in mine.

Sometimes I hear her laugh in the back of my mind.

And sometimes, when I’m alone, I whisper the sentence that started it all.

I had a friend; Her name was Barbara Stanley.