We shared the same name, antiquated. Mine, after a grandmother. Hers, I never bothered to ask. Probably because they hacked it—changed it to avoid confusion, and so I never knew. In our classroom of ten students, there was no space to call two the same. Mine, my grandmother’s, I got to keep. Suzie’s was erased.

Our friendship existed in spurts of adrenaline.

The first day of kindergarten, Suzie slammed the ball past me in four square and grinned as I walked off the court. That same day, we entered the classroom to find alphabetically adjacent coat hooks, and Suzie hung her backpack from the one labeled for me.

“That’s not yours, dear,” the teacher trilled, and Suzie, newly named, acquiesced one spot over.

I moved in, my own magenta pack replacing hers, fleeting victory replacing the residual shame of four square defeat. She lowered her eyes as we jostled to reconfigure our belongings and, in this moment, it became clear: one of us would always be conceding.

Soon we were growing within a rivalry neither of us would admit to. The small school, limited social pool, limited activities, limited physical space. We couldn’t escape each other, so we became each other’s fuel. Competition came to mold us. We grew to rely on each other for challenge, and the challenge itself became comforting. The antagonism dependable.

It seeped beyond the borders of delineated school day and came to consume entire weeks. By second grade, Suzie was coming over most Friday afternoons and not leaving again until Sunday evening.

We spent those weekends tireless. Bounding. My house was surrounded by trees on all sides and with no neighbors in sight we took to the woods. Our bodies became indistinguishable—from each other, from the landscape. Her dark hair like the bark of the maple and mine the yellow of turning fall leaves. We fell into the forest and pretended we would never have to leave.

We learned to run by keeping up with each other. Losing ourselves in seconds of disappearance, only to watch the other resurface from behind a fallen stone wall or twisted fence.

She taught me to ride a bike. Less taught than told me she already could. She mentioned this one Saturday after returning from the woods, and with that I straddled the two-wheeler propped in our garage and pushed off down the gravel driveway. You’re doing it! she exclaimed as my parents emerged from the house in time to watch me disappear down the curve onto the dirt road.

We shared a bed those nights. Exhausted by the running. Bruised from clambering over fallen stones and scratched by the arms of saplings. In these stupors, we found each other. Together, we explored our different sameness. One name occupied by two un-grown bodies. It felt less intimate than inevitable. The way our limbs asked to fuse, the magnetism of our two small heads—one carved from maple’s trunk and the other its foliage.

Sunday evenings, Suzie would leave, and by Monday, it was like the weekend never happened. Hanging backpacks on adjacent hooks. Taking seats next to each other in the same small classroom of ten students. In the same building of one hundred. It felt less unspoken than unremarkable. Our weekends, like our names, belonged to us and us alone.

Some Fridays, rarer Fridays, I went to Suzie’s. Her mother would cook us mac ‘n’ cheese and grumble about the men outside. They stood circled around flames, hawking phlegm, flicking cigarette butts into the fire. Bottles of twisted tea were routinely tossed to the ground and smashed by the steel toe of a boot.

Those nights, Suzie and I would stay awake in the glow of chat rooms and virtual reality. All the internet I had yet to see, living in a house that intentionally abstained from installing a router. We drowned out noises of the men outside by logging into alternate worlds in which we had cleavage and curves and slick dark ponytails.

We would talk to strangers and they would say things that made us feel grown beyond our years. Suzie knew how to respond using phrases taken from TV or her sixteen-year-old brother. I watched as she manipulated the animated bodies; pixelated avatars writhed against each other and Suzie would say, This is what boys do with girls. I would wonder, What is it we do?

We grew older. Larger.

We entered fourth grade and our running carried us down soccer fields, basketball courts. Our shared name allowed for an easy cheer as we spent elementary school flying. We outshined everyone else, and we knew this. We were asked to play on the boys’ teams, and we outshined them, too.

The boys we beat began to eye us with a curiosity they couldn’t yet explain. By fifth grade, their negligence turned attentive. Their teasing flirtatious. By then, we were regulars on their soccer teams, still outrunning them down the basketball courts. I took this to mean I was better than the boys. Suzie took this as a way to immerse herself in them.

We were slowly learning that we were desirable. Had begun to identify the places that drew attention; tested theories on each other at night in shared beds.

Weekends allowed us to trace our emerging curves, small arms, and strong legs. The thighs that allowed us to run fast, faster than everyone else. We felt compelled to share the places where newness emerged. Silently asking, Is this happening to you too? and showing the other it was.

Our initial explorations had been unsure, hopeful. These movements felt guided. Intentional. They were no longer a naive inquisition of desire, but sure manifestation. Our limbs communicated these needs, and together we satiated the hunger that had been there all along.

Sunday evenings would come. Monday mornings.

The boys became unapologetic. Snickering in classrooms at the sight of a bra strap, the skin of a lower back. They noticed when a tampon fell from my duffel bag during soccer practice and when Suzie’s nipples poked through her jersey. We watched them watch us and in doing so learned a new way to watch each other.

Weekend nights became tainted, memories of the boys’ laughter drowning out our own whispered inquiries. Our own hunger indistinguishable from theirs.

We entered middle school. Still the same hundred-person building, coat hooks still side by side. Objectively, little had changed other than my ass—recently grown due to puberty and 100-meter sprint training—and Suzie’s dismissive eye rolls as the boys discussed the new tightness in my jeans.

The first day of seventh grade, Suzie approached me to say, “They only partner with you during gym class so they can look at it while you run,” and grinned as I stammered in response.

In shared beds, we took to sleeping as far apart as possible. Our bodies seemed unable to shape themselves in the way they used to, to accommodate our asynchronous growth. This was fine. She didn’t need me. She had learned to wield the boys’ desire, to move under the constant assumption of their gaze. We fell asleep to the glow of her flip phone as it buzzed with incoming messages.

By eighth grade, weekend nights together had been replaced.

Instead we convinced parents to drop us at the playground, joining the growing adolescent small-town scene for games of Flashlight Murder. This was the premise at least. Independence and darkness provided the perfect cover to act on the curiosity of budding sexual tension. I’m told that several of my classmates had their first kisses on nights like these. That Suzie did. With the new boy who moved from Kentucky and bumped our class size up to eleven.

I watched her as she said this in the corner during recess. Wondering if there would be a moment of recognition between us, of the nights in shared beds. There wasn’t, and I said nothing. I was starting to doubt my own recollection of these nights. Of a time when her interest in me wasn’t diluted by incoming texts.

The last Flashlight Murder of autumn was cold. I pulled my sweatshirt close to me as the murderer counted down and we scattered. I moved nimbly, independently; unlike many of the others, I wasn’t bee-lining toward a secret crush. I sprinted from one tree to the next, avoiding the scan of the light and the scurry of moving feet.

3, 2, 1 . . . Small voices called out to each other, beckoning. I bolted in a final attempt to gain distance. Psst. Though this didn’t seem to be for me, I turned my head, tripping on uneven ground. I fell to my knees, then face. I rolled clumsily in the bordering drainage ditch, coming to a stop at the base. Breathe, I thought. You’re hidden. I let my limbs relax.

It was here we found each other, brushing arms in the darkness of the culvert, and it was like it used to be. The woods, our bodies. They have always known how to speak to each other. A cool breeze blew and we huddled together, unspeaking. The flashlight skimmed above our heads and then disappeared. I craned my neck to make sure she was alone. That we were alone. I moved closer.

“Why did you say Quentin was your first kiss?” I whispered.

“Because he was.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

If I only reminded her of the weekends, I thought. Every Saturday in the woods. The way we flew when we were together. I miss that, I wanted to say.

I leaned closer to whisper this, but she was gone, sprinted to the next hiding place where I could hear her giggles rise alongside Quentin’s.

*