Dimorphous

By Upama Bhattacharjee

It was laughter.

It was that open, unabashed, loud laughter that I had first come to associate with her. It rang like glass breaking in sunlight, like no one had ever told her to be quieter.

I had flinched when I heard it the first time. No one around me ever laughs like that—childlike, innocent. I remember looking at her then, smiling as I shook her soft, soft hand, and something curdling in my stomach. Acidic, bitter, irrational. Her ease felt like violence. How does she do it?

How dare she when falling apart is all I will ever know?

She had everyone wrapped around her fingers before class even ended. The teachers adored her neat notes, the way she solved physics problems faster than any of us, even though it was her first day. My classmates hung onto her witty, little anecdotes about Spain, about her charity work in Ethiopia. I loved the way she said I had pretty hair.

My smile stuck through the entire conversation, plaster-thick, and my hands itched like I was holding a live wire. I kept nodding like a doll whose strings were tangled. I wondered if she could see them behind my eyes.

Obviously, she was as perfect as one gets.

The face. The body. The ridiculously expensive imported silver pen. The legendary parties at her apartment. The fact that she can get second place in a competition I'd lose sleep over, and congratulate me with grace. With a small wink, with a giggle.

She had it all, and yet, she was determined to throw it all away. Foolishly. She told anyone who'd listen that she wanted to travel the world when she grew up. Live out of her suitcase, probably taking her mom's G-Wagon. She would never settle, couldn't, even if she tried. She’d marry a poet or a pilot, maybe both. She was a wild one—she always added with a cheeky smile, like it was easy.

My dreams come with interest rates so high that I have to let them go. My voice trembles when I ask for things. I can’t sleep without earplugs. I reread every text before I send it. I solve questions again and again only to get it wrong the last time. I rehearse conversations like job interviews. I don’t dream anymore. I bargain. I strategize. I do the math before I speak. I carry mediocrity in my bones like it's my birthright.

It made me want to scream. She had everything I ever wanted, and yet, she never needed any of it. It felt like theft. She stole the life I would’ve died to earn. And then she offered it to me like a joke. Told me I was lucky to be “so grounded.”

It started small enough. A sting. A tightness. Thoughts to glances to search histories. Then late nights scrolling through posts she’d liked five years ago. Then it was everything. It began to live in me. In my stomach, in my spine. It burned my flesh when I looked at her, clawed at my veins, and when there was nothing else to consume, it sank into my bones. It grew teeth. Sharp, sharp teeth. And I was feeding it.

The displeasure turned to hatred. I stopped being able to look at her without feeling like something was unmaking me.

Yet, she was my friend. At least she always said that she was. She’d throw a careless arm around my shoulder, laughing that same goddamn laugh, and say, “You’re a good friend, you know. You listen.” And I’d nod. And I’d smile. The guilt worsened later, alone, in the dark of my room. She said it so often that I wanted to believe her. Like my silence meant something. Like it was enough. I loved her.

God, it felt like love. Love that curdled too fast. Devotion with nowhere to land. I didn’t want to hold her hand. I wanted to know if the air in her lungs tasted sweeter. I wanted to split her open and wear her. I wanted to walk around inside her skin and see how it felt.

I wondered if she ever noticed me flinch at her touch.

Over the years, there were sightings.

Accidental reunions. Half-hearted smiles across grocery aisles. The tight-lipped warmth of the usual promise: we should catch up over a cup of coffee sometime. Routines. Routines. She wore her success comfortably—subtle, unmistakable. My knuckles had turned white on the cart when I had finally gathered the courage to ask her. I learned that she had settled for an illustrious career at a Fortune 500 company—her dad was expanding into the real estate industry—and I was still struggling to pay my bills. I was still ghostwriting blog posts for a wellness startup that hadn’t paid me in two months, even though I had listed ‘freelancer’ on my bio like it meant adventurous.

She had been kind enough to not ask after my career. Just the general Did you get married? How is auntie? I miss her cooking so much. I guess she thought it was kindness. She would smile in a certain sad way, when I stumbled over a drawn-out account of Ma's deteriorating health and the accumulating hospital visits and she would say, “You have not changed. Not at all. You are a good person.”

Good? What does that mean? Good like mediocre? Good like forgettable?

I'd lie through my teeth, and tell her that she hasn't either. I'd come home wondering if it had been a compliment. Routines. Routines. Once she was driven half-mad by them, and now she pulls them over her shoulders like a cloak. She used to say she’d die if she ever worked a nine to five. Now she talks about KPIs and quarterly goals with glossy-eyed devotion. How dare she?

And then— she was gone. Her LinkedIn read ‘Open to Work’. I don’t know if she left, or disappeared, or just slipped through the cracks of the version of her I still carried. Perhaps it had only been a matter of time. I was being killed by the ghost of who she used to be, and she was left bleeding by the one she became. We haunted each other, I think. Perhaps, she had escaped to the Neverland she had once promised herself. Up, up, and away!

I don't run into her at the grocery store anymore. I still pick out the vegan options, stash it in the cart in a way that I hoped was effortless. I mull over the protein content in my cereals, even though it'd make me sick two days later. Her route at the park is now traced by a woman with a little brown chihuahua. I take the long way home in case she's running late. I imagine running into her by accident. I imagine being beautiful enough that she’d blink twice.

She never shows up.

Even her profiles are deactivated. I spend hours inspecting photos with women who had brunches with her at the Hilton. Where did she go? Where? Is she hitchhiking across Europe? Does she live in a lighthouse? Maybe she’s living the life I never dared draft.

Pretty, little, perfect angel. She had to do it. She had to play the part because she knew—she knew—it'd kill me.

Where is she?

I check every day. I refresh. I retrace. Nothing.

Where?

Why did she leave me behind? I need her, doesn't she know that?

Grief blooms in my lungs, chokes the airway until all I can say is her name again and again, tears soaking the bedsheets she had raved about four years ago in an Instagram story. She’s gone. But she’s not gone enough. So, I wait and I check and I look and I watch. At train stations, at bus stops, at crossroads, I linger for a moment longer than I should. I wear the cheap knock-off of the perfume she complimented once. I rehearse lines in the bathroom mirror. Sometimes I imagine what I’d say if I saw her again.

You look happy.

She'd say, “I missed you.” I imagine her eyes shining. I imagine it over and over until I believe it.

You're such a good friend.

Do you even remember what you had done to me?

Sometimes I say it out loud. Sometimes I don’t recognize my own voice. I can't tell where mine ended and hers began. I can't tell if she's unhappy, or if I just want her to be. But that feels like enough. It feels like victory. She's gone. The warmth in my chest doesn’t feel right, but it feels good. And I'm still here.

I'm still here.

The bitterness turns into sadistic elation. I fulfill my prophecy, as she told me to, and I listen.

By Upama Bhattacharjee