You.

You.

You were I and I were you. You wore my face and I wore yours. Your hair was in mine and I clutched at it. Your fingers were cold and I smudged your lip gloss. You didn’t want to cry and I cried for you.

You always confuse me because you look so much like me, with your clear eyes and watery hair, darker than mine and straighter than mine. I hated your hair, it was shiny and thick, subtly beautiful, better than mine. It was only slowly that I realized I loved you. I don’t know how it happened.

~

I remember when we turned sixteen—there was no party because of the War, but we still had fun—that summer when the air tasted vaguely like the perfume I got you for Christmas and you stuck to me everywhere we went because Lavender was out of the country.

It was a sweet summer, whose air was hot and sexy, breezeless, breathless. Behind the invisible warmth there was a layer of insect drone, buzzing with a sort of laziness that was slow and casual. I don’t think I was thinking strait that whole season; maybe it was of the heat, or maybe it was the scent afloat in the loose air—a sort of black and bitter-thick scent—that seduced me. I still think of it, whenever the humid-sweet smell gets too dense—soft and loose—and I remember how you wanted to decorate our room green, and how we fought because I wanted it blue.

You were everywhere. I had slowly started to remember how funny you were, how much sugar you wanted in your tea, how you liked your toast—those things that I usually forget after a year and then remember all over again when we come back in the oncoming of summer.

I always disliked sharing a birthday with you because I would get less attention; I never said anything, of course. The week after our birthday, there was a storm that swept through London, and our room was cold because it was on the second floor and the windows were big and the wind would sometimes leak in. I remembered how you were scared of the thunder ever since you were little, so I got up and went to over your bed—which you decorated green just to annoy me—to see how you were doing. And you were beautiful.

Those boys were right when they said that you were prettier than me.

The next morning, you wanted to go somewhere fun—“Oh come on, Pad, it’s not raining anymore!”—although I was incredulous on your idea of fun, I nodded anyway. And we went to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor on the corner of Diagon Alley, and spent the entire afternoon reminiscing—“Remember when you used to braid my hair? And how you couldn’t do it right and you always tangled it?”—I remembered how much we had grown apart. I didn’t care much then, and days went by quickly.

You came into our room one night and I tossed away A Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry because you were crying. You never told me why, though I guessed that it had something to do with Ryan McKee, the down-the-street neighbor you had a crush on. You then collapsed onto my bed since it was the nearest to the door and I went over to you. Suddenly you grabbed my wrist and kissed me.

I didn’t see it coming. I should have, but I didn’t. You were still blurry with tear when I pushed you away, and you stopped sobbing and looked at me. Your eyes were soft and sad, your eyelashes were wet and so was your hair. The silence between us was drawn out, long and easy. Then you left the room and I was alone.

It tasted sweet because you wore strawberry lip gloss and salty because you were crying. I didn’t know what to do, so I sat there, then went to bed. I didn’t hear you come into the room in the dark, or when you whispered “I’m sorry,” and the next morning, I said nothing to you and you said nothing to me.

The August that followed were long and tedious because I (both of us) began to remember the delayed homework. The sun was hotter that before, almost baking, not quite though; the air was no longer sweet, but clammy and sticky as wont of the upholding summer. We seldom spoke to each other and I never went anywhere with you anymore because Lavender came back.

I don’t know if I was jealous of her, Lavender Brown.

But one day, another storm came and I woke up from the thunder. You were trembling in between your sheets, the rain hit hard and vindictive against the panes. So I fumbled out of my bed in the dark, went over to you. You looked just as beautiful as I remembered you, and even as you breathed raggedly in your nightmare, you were still prettier than me.

I kissed you.

You didn’t wake up, though, because you were hot and sweaty, and I realized that you had a fever. As usual, mom fretted and dad worried, but I watched you silently from my bed, and I decorated the whole room green.

Then summer ended with the golden nostalgia of autumn. We went out for a walk, just before the start of school, to a Muggle park near us. The streets were paved with leaves and they crushed beneath our feet. The sky was sheer and cloudless and the sun was warm. There were little kids chasing their dogs, couples walking hand-in-hand, babies bawling harshly from their strollers, and birds that sang their yellowy song. Autumn flowers bloomed around us and I told you that I loved you. You said nothing.

We went back to school on another rainy day. It wasn’t a storm this time, but a slow mizzle, cool and cathartic and showering the world pure.

A girls is sixteen only once. I was never sixteen because it’s the year I fell in love with you. But it was golden, that one summertime dreaming.