To Sally

Why, Silly Sally? Just because.

You said that we first met in the bilik study, and I was eating something. You recalled being so hungry back then, and just when I was supposed to offer you the food, I finished it.That is a subject of contention. Because I don't remember eating the first time we met.

Anyway.

We had the 'budak baru' syndrome, oh how it feels funny now. It felt so cool back then, and it sparked dislike which is as unnecessary of its inception, in the first place. The miles we covered during riadah, bringing books unread, in favour of our incessant gossiping. The hours we studied with each other, to no avail, because I kept you talking.

Oh the times we used to have, just laughing. But you have to admit, we brought out the worst in each other - in the orthodox friendship kind of way. We bitched about other people, we formed exclusive alliances. We once laughed throughout our Isyak prayers. After the affair finished, we said, "Nothing good is going to come out of us being with each other"

In that respect, maybe. But I learned a lot from the two of you. About what, I am not so sure. But learned, I did.

During form five, it was the three of us. Bounded on what, I don't remember. But I'm grateful to have you two anyways. I was unbearably conceited and penyibuk, and you were in some ways, hypocritical- as we all were. I don't know how you tolerated me back then - probably because I was always around, always in your nose, that you reconciled the reality with any notion of life there without me as a fixture. Regardless of our perpetual fights, we ended up back in each other's pockets.

But I loved you, genuinely. I smile everytime I think of you and your childish squeak. Your walk which is at least nearly as violent as mine. Your self-deprecatory honesty - at least around the two of us. The way you make people feel at ease around you. Your innumerable idiosyncrasies.

That's why, browsing around your pictures nowadays, I can't help but feel so old. Because those youthful days - those stuck-up, clueless, petty days feel like a relic of the life I forgot when I left behind. Yet when I talk to you, those days no longer feels like a separate part of my life. It's a continuum. People grow up, that's what.

Well, at least I think so. We revert to our carefree, irresponsible selves every time we speak again, and here I am thinking that the only thing that has changed is the fact that we are now thousands of miles away.

Not that it matters.