A Keepsake?

When I was nineteen, my best friend at the time was pretty magical. She was one of those friends that you connect with on such a weird level of total and utter goofiness. Even now, every once and awhile, I remember stories about her that have me laughing outloud alone in my car. She is part of the 'folklore of my life' in such a way that still, ten years after our falling out (my fault), I find myself talking about her often. We met as virginal teens, both just totally naive & completely carefree. Most of the memories I have of us are so juvenile, and so childlike but its just that - our innocence - that makes them so wonderful. I still tell the story about the guy in a class that would sit behind her no matter where she sat and smell her hair, or the time she was pretending to talk on her cell to avoid a creeper in the school office & it rang, very loudly, while she was supposed to be talking on it. Her reaction: Oh, hold on. My other line is ringing. We once packed up my little red Suburu & took off for Santa Barbara - yet before we left her parents' driveway her mother ran out after us, calling out & waving her arms. Girls! Do you know how to get there?! We did not. We were just going to... Go? We were babysitters, waitresses and shopgirls together. I still talk about when the car she was driving exploded seconds after she jumped out of it.
We were borderline obsessive (as teenaged girls can be) and we were in constant competition with one another (like teenaged girls will also be).
I remember her sadness when she realized we were growing up; and how much she was going to miss being a kid. I was so excited to become an 'adult' while she was essentially grieving the loss of her own childhood.
She was the first person I called when I lost my virginity at 18 and a half.
She held onto hers much much longer.

But my favorite story about her is pretty silly...
So, as teenagers do, she was messing around with the older brother of one of our babysitting charges. (Obviously, not while babysitting.) He was handsome and a bit older than both of us. Late at night, she would sneak into his apartment-style bedroom at his parents' house (yes, we were quite young) and one night he thought she had fallen asleep. He got up from his side of the bed, crept over to where her floral J.Crew underwear lay on the floor, picked them up and...

put. them. in. a. box. on. his. nightstand.

She was not asleep.

She watched him do this and then she waited.

Once she was sure he was out for the count, she crept around to the box,

took her underwear back and left.

A couple days later they were on the phone & she very innocently asked,

Hey! Have you seen my underwear?

He said he had not.

Imeanwhodoesthat?!?