On Mount Everest With You

t was not an outstanding school in any way. They did not have any triumphs to put on display. That is why they decided to open their doors to female students that year, hoping that a bigger crowd would give them more notoriety in the area.

Sophie thought it would be convenient for Cassie to attend Ridgeway because it was closer to home but it mostly had to do with the fact that shed already gotten in too much trouble at her previous school. When a thirteen-year-old is known for messing with drugs, naturally you must look at the caretakers.

That shouldve been an exhilarating notion. I shouldve found pure joy in the idea of having Cassies world collide with mine a little more. The only problem was that Ridgeway and Millfield Road had always existed separately in my life. That ten-minute drive symbolised the two opposite corners of society in which I existed. They were two paths that were never supposed to meet.

Things might have been miserable at home, but I had put a lot of effort into ensuring that life outside of Millfield Road was not a reflection of that. I was popular at Ridgeway. I was well-liked. I had friends. I was invited to parties. I was introduced to girls. No one knew that my mother was a nutjob. That my best friend was an addict. That the man whod been a father figure to me had killed himself when I was ten and the world hadn felt right ever since.

I was a different person outside of Millfield Road. Someone Id been carefully curating for years to be the right kind of ordinary. Someone that Cassie wouldn have liked. Someone who wouldn have been friends with her.

There was an unspoken understanding between us that we refused to acknowledge for that entire summer after we found out she would be attending Ridgeway. We didn talk about it. Didn fantasise about what it would be like to walk the hallways together. She could tell that I wasn exactly overjoyed, and I suspected she knew exactly why. Perhaps I shouldve been more subtle with the thousand complaints about Ridgeway that I had slid over her table as well as my suggestions that she should look into different schools.

She had already left by the time Id set out on the first day. There was never any mention of us walking to school together, or sitting next to each other in class, or meeting up at the end of the day to catch the same ride. I think she could already tell what was coming before even I did. I didn know how I was going to approach this. I didn know whether I would be introducing her to my friends or keeping her as a casual colleague. She was meant to be my secret and I did not know how much of her I was willing to share. It shouldve been so easy, but nothing ever is when you
e fourteen and you feel like the universe is conspiring against you.

I knew she was going to have a difficult time at Ridgeway. The boys there could be so tremendously cruel. I knew because I was one of them. It didn help that she didn fit in with the rest of the girls and that it probably wouldn take long for everyone to learn about her addiction because it was never meant to be kept a secret in the first place. She didn care if people found out. Even her mother knew.

”Sophie found one of the bottles today, ” she told me one evening. It was October, we were lying in her bed as we always did, her fathers favourite record was playing, I had my hand wrapped around her wrist because I was constantly checking her pulse.

”And what did she say? ”

”Nothing. ”

But the kids at school did have something to say. They had a lot to say, actually. Sophie had a reputation around town, and the second the surname Loaiza travelled through the corridors of Ridgeway, Cassie became the most talked-about student for all of the wrong reasons. She was an easy target. Everyone knew her story, they just didn know that Id been a part of it. And so they mocked her for her addiction, for her fathers passing, for her mothers promiscuous ways. As if any of that was her fault.

She was already being teased by the time I made it to school. Timmy Higgins saw the infamous Sophie Deneuve dropping her off and that alone was enough to set forth an avalanche of taunts and insults that just never stopped.

The one moment that dictated what the upcoming years would be like happened just five minutes into that first day. When our eyes met while Timmy was spewing some utter nonsense that was likely ridiculously offensive—and I looked away. With my heart all the way up in my throat and a violent urge to cry that I hadn felt since Davids passing, I looked away. My hands were shaky as I shoved books inside of my locker and listened to Timmys voice off in the distance. My vision was blurry. My breathing uneven. But I composed myself right there and then, and moved on with my day with a lowered gaze.

I forbade myself from speaking to her. My eyes avoided her like the very sight of her small frame was a source of revulsion. It was not. I don know why I did it. I think I desperately wanted to salvage the normalcy I had outside of Millfield. I knew I would more than likely be sent to the bottom of the social hierarchy if I associated with her, and my fourteen-year-old self cracked underneath the pressure.

She never confronted me about it once we were back in the privacy of our homes. Oddly enough, things did not change when back in Millfield Road. And by that, I understood that she saw herself as unworthy of my company. She was not. Not a day went by in which I did not scorn myself for the way I treated her, and yet I never changed.

And just like that, our friendship was reduced to whatever happened inside the brick walls of our apartment building. I did try to make up for my putrid behaviour. I tried to be by her side as much as I possibly could. I hated seeing her do drugs but I hated leaving her alone even more. It made me itch to know that something could possibly go wrong and I wouldn be around to help her.

The most memorable night out of all the ones we shared happened to be New Years Eve. We were sixteen by then. Sophie had gone out with her newest lover–a man in his early thirties who dressed as if he was working an office job every hour of the day. I knew Cassie would be using that night, so I cancelled the plans I had with my other friends to stay with her.

As a teenager, Cassies appearance remained loyal to that of her childhood self. Her round face housed tired eyes that looked strikingly like Davids, pain and everything. Her features were still harsh and tired and they made her look like she was perpetually irritated. Wavy black hair fell past her shoulders, and she continued her habit of never putting any effort into it.

I think the most notable physical difference that marked the separation between our childhood and current selves is that I had stretched into one-eighty-six meter height while she was somewhere in the lower half of one sixty-something.

We were in her bedroom. The apartment was eerily silent, serenaded only by the sound of other people celebrating off in the distance. We were illuminated by the golden LED lights that hung lazily from the walls. Her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow. For a moment I felt comforted by the fact she at least wasn in any pain. And then she opened her eyes to reveal her small pupils and the tears that threatened to spill. I instantly wrapped my hand around her wrist. There was a pulse. Everything was alright.

”Im sorry Im such a bad friend, ” she said, her voice hoarse due to the tightness in her throat.

I could not believe, for the life of me, how she believed herself to be the bad one out of the two. She was far too kind with her judgement. If there was anyone who shouldve been profusely apologising it shouldve been me. But she couldn see that. She always painted me in very flattering shades of gold that made me out to be far more than I was.

”Happy New Year, ma chérie, ” I whispered, softly pressing my lips against her forehead. We could hear the commotion coming from an outside world that we did not want to let in. ”Heres to many more. ”

No one at Ridgeway knew that I was the one who found her when she overdosed that summer.

It all started with the sound of choking. A sound that is never known to indicate anything good. Unless you
e into that sort of thing, I guess. It happened in June. My mother had ordered me to go ask Sophie whether she was done with the magazines she had borrowed. There were three. ”Make sure she hands you back all three, ” she said.

I walked up the set of stairs, from the eighth floor to the ninth, and knocked on the door that was directly in front of me. I did not receive an answer and did not put it past Sophie to be out with one of her many lovers on a Sunday morning. I hoped maybe Cassie would help me get the errand done, and so I called for her.

But instead of receiving either one of the two options I was expecting, be it a ”Coming! ” or no sound, I heard choking. Deep intakes of breath, wet coughs, a throat that was unsure of which direction to send the foamy liquid that was flooding it.

I froze. I could neither yell nor show any urgency. My fist closed around the doorknob. Please turn. It turned. The door felt both heavy and incredibly light, and my senses had gone into such overdrive that I could not even feel the coldness of the metal that pressed into my palm. I did not want the door to open because I feared the scene that would be waiting for me. In that sense, everything moved slowly. Seconds dragged by, elongating as if to follow the commands of a moment that wished to remain frozen in time. But I knew I needed to act fast, and although my mind was asking for time to brace itself, my body was choosing to act without bothering to receive authorisation.

She had been laying on the very centre of her living room floor, only a couple of feet away from the door. I had the impression that she had been in the process of rushing to get help when her body had caved in. She was drenched in sweat, her mouth producing noises that indicated a clear struggle, and her skin had turned a variety of shades that each pointed to a different issue. It seemed as if life had been drained out of her.

And it occurred to me, as I watched the paramedics work on what appeared to be her lifeless body, that she never really stood a chance.