The summer before I started high school, I met Dagny. She was around my age and she smoked which made me think she was older than she was the first time I saw her outside her house at midnight. Dagny was always out at night and I figured she slept most of the day because I didn’t see her then. She had short black hair that she usually wore in tiny pigtails behind her ears and she wore dresses a lot. It was June third when she spotted me outside watching her. Okay not watching her but observing was a thing I did. She saw me and put out her cigarette before charging back into her house. The next day she rang my doorbell.
“I saw you.” She said as soon as I opened the door. Her hair was in her pigtails and she was wearing short overalls and I was at least three inches taller than her, but she still frightened me. Maybe it was her demeanor or the way she spoke all firm and authoritative.
“I was just outside when I saw you.”
“I’ve seen you on other nights too. Don’t you have anything better to do than creep around?” She turned around and started for the driveway.
“I know that you smoke.” I don’t even know why I said it, I just did.
She turned back, narrowing her eyes at me. “So, what are you going to rat me out?”
I shrugged even though I knew I wouldn’t. She walked up to me pursed lips and arms crossed. Now suddenly, she seemed taller than me. Then she smiled. “I’m Dagny.” She said.
“Nora.”
“Nice to meet you.” She pulled out a cigarette. “Do you smoke?”
“No, thanks.”
She shrugged and lit hers. “We’ve got a pool; I was going to go swimming. You got a swimsuit?” I nodded. We hung out all day and into the night and I asked her if her parents knew she smoked. It’s just her and her mom and her mom is at work most nights and sleeps all day, so she doesn’t know; she also doesn’t notice her cigarette packs that go missing because she’s so tired all the time. When night came, I saw from the pool Dagny’s mom get into her car and leave. “She didn’t even see where you were.” I said. Dagny looked up from her phone briefly, “Yeah, she never does. Plus, I don’t know anyone here and I don’t have a car or a license so where else would I be?” She rolled her eyes and flipped her magazine to the next page.
After that I hung out with Dagny every day. She had become my best friend, well technically my only friend. She talked a lot and I listened a lot. As much as she brought up adventure, I thought maybe she was going to be a journalist or something someday. I found out she was fifteen and two months older than me, but she would be sixteen soon; her mom moved them here after her divorce, and Dagny’s going away for her birthday in July to see her dad. I asked her a lot of questions and when she bothered to look up at me from whatever she was concentrated on I knew I’d asked something sensitive and moved on. Finally, she asked me something one day after a whole evening of swimming in her ground pool while we were eating sandwiches.
“Don’t you have any friends? It’s only ever you I see.”
I shrugged. “Not really. I talk to people in school, but it’s usually just me and my parents in the summer.” I waved her smoke out of my face and she swapped hands. That never helped. “So, you don’t invite people over? Try to make friends?” She asked. I shrugged again. I wasn’t much of a talker is all. Dagny was easy to talk to because she didn’t mind all my questions and quirks and when I wasn’t asking her questions, she seemed to like the silence, but this time she pressed on.
“I’m just saying you said you lived here your whole life and you don’t have any friends? And you’re okay with that?”
“Yeah. I mean I am, but my parents want me to reach out more so…” I stopped.
“What? They’re not making you join a club, or something are they?” She looked at me with feigned pity.
“No. It’s just…I’m supposed to move to a new school for high school. Remington Academy actually.”
Her eyes widened. “No way? That’s for geniuses, right?” She closed her magazine and sat up straight.
“I guess, but—”
“Well obviously you’re going. It’d be stupid not to go. Ugh I wish I was smart so bad.” She looked off at the tree line behind her house and splashed the water with her foot. I wanted to tell her that the whole reason for my going there was to make friends. My parents thought I would have a better chance at connecting with the Remington kids. I had no qualms with transferring schools until Dagny. She was my friend and she already told me she was going to Lakeview High School. I had a reason to stay now; all I had to do was break it to my parents and that was going to be hard. They’d already bought bumper stickers and shirts. As far as they knew they were the proud parents of a Remington Academy student.
When I told Dagny that I was thinking about staying she scrunched her face and all her faint little freckles bunched together and were more easily seen by the naked eye. “No way. Nora, you’re going places. You’re starting an adventure. You’re like…like Harry Potter or something.”
“I don’t think Remington is like magic school.”
She looked at me all exasperated. “Okay first, it’s Hogwarts. Second, it is magical. It's a magical place that unlocks possibilities to new places.”
Now I was the one who was exasperated. “It’s literally just a school. Except we’re all dressed alike, and everyone is always talking about Harvard and Dartmouth or whatever else a bunch of rich smart kids talk about, and what if I do go and I still don’t make any friends? Then I’ll be the friendless new girl! At least right now everyone knows who I am; it’s familiar.” I knew I sounded whiny and pitiful, because then she looked at me with real pity.
“I’m your friend and at first I thought you were a creep. You’ll make friends Nora.” She said squeezing my arm. I had never seen any look on Dagny’s face other than boredom and sadness so the look of sincerity on her face surprised me. I looked down at my half-eaten sandwich and I wanted to cry. Not even Dagny got it. I wasn’t like her; I wasn’t brave. She pretty much said whatever she liked and did whatever she liked, and she talked a lot about leaving in the middle of the night so no one could stop her or know where she was going. She didn’t need people to lead her the way I did; she could progress by herself.
After her mom left for work the next night, I walked over to Dagny’s with my sleepover bag in hand. She asked me to come over because she ‘had the key to my problems’. She yelled come in when I knocked and as I entered, she was spraying Febreze from a window where she was half leaned out with half a cigarette in her hand. I sighed. “Those will seriously kill you; you know?” she looked at me. Her hair was damp from a shower and somehow sopping wet her jet-black hair was even darker. “Yeah,” she said, “so will heights and frostbite but people still climb Mount Everest.” She flicked the cigarette out the window. “Okay. To convince you not to waste your smarts I got nothing but the smartest movies.” She waved her hand over a stack of movies on her coffee table. The only one I recognized was Good Will Hunting.
“You realize I and everyone at Remington are nowhere near Will Hunting smart, right?”
“It’s the principle. Now sit. Let’s watch.” She patted the couch. I sat down beside her, and she passed me the popcorn. We sat on the couch for a good ten minutes before Dagny fell asleep. I finished A Beautiful Mind solo and she woke up and stayed up for the entire duration of Good Will Hunting for Matt Damon. Afterwards we moved out to the pool around midnight and swam for a while. Dagny reached for her cigarette pack and knocked her phone into the water. “No!” She dived down for it and shook it out as she surfaced.
“I think it’s dead, Dagny.” I said, pulling myself out of the water next to her. She chucked it back in the pool.
“That was it! That was the only portal I had out of this place.” She laid back and after a few moments when she didn’t sit up I laid next to her. It was surprisingly cool causing the hair on my arms to rise up. “You know,” Dagny said, I turned because I heard tears in her voice. “I’m so tired of doing nothing and just like standing in one place never ever moving. One day I’ll go.”
“Go where?”
She scrunched her face, frustrated yet again with my questions, “I don’t know. I just want to go. I want to leave in the middle of the night and not tell a soul where I’m going. Like Will Hunting. Except at least he had purpose.” She sniffed. I wasn’t sure what she meant so I didn’t say anything at all. I didn’t really get a lot of what Dagny said, but she always said I was the smart one.
She didn’t bother with trying to get a new phone. None of her old friends texted her anymore and she saw me every day she said. So, she asked me for books, and I let her borrow some and we talked about them. Dagny loved books, it turned out. We read a lot together too and as her birthday came up, she asked me if I would go with her to see her dad. Apparently, they hadn’t seen each other since the divorce and that was almost a year ago; I agreed I would go as soon as I asked my parents. That same week my parents bought my uniforms for school and got my orientation information. The date was July 21st. Dagny’s birthday.
“I can’t go to orientation. Can’t you guys go and take notes for me?” I pleaded to my parents.
“Nora don’t be ridiculous. You have to go. It’s a new school and it’s a private expensive school.” My mother said. My father nodded sharply in agreement. I knew asking was the wrong move; I should’ve waited and said I was sick the day of her birthday. I went to Dagny’s and ran into her mom on the way upstairs. I was in such a hurry I didn’t even notice her car in the driveway. She looked tired and uninterested in anything that wasn’t sleeping. “Oh, hi Mrs. Rosden.”
“Hello. I--are you looking for Dagny?” She asked, perplexed. I nodded and she pointed up the stairs. I thanked her before running up the steps and knocking on the door. “I’m busy!”
“It’s Nora.”
“Oh, come in.” I opened the door and Dagny looked up from her book. “Hey.”
“I can’t come with you to your dads for your birthday.” I gushed. “I know I said I would, and I really had planned on it, but my orientation for Remington is on that day and my parents won’t budge. I knew I shouldn’t have asked; I should’ve waited and pretended to be sick.”
Dagny looked astounded. “Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk that much without asking a billion questions.”
“Dagny!” I whined.
She laughed. “Calm down! It’s okay really. I’m a big girl. I'll be okay. Breathe Nora.” I spent the rest of the night telling her how I made my mom promise to take us out after Dagny got back. We would go shopping, see a movie, get our nails done, whatever she wanted. She smiled at everything and she seemed to be okay with it, but sometimes when I looked out of the corner of my eye, she had that sad look on her face.
On July 21st I went to my orientation and actually had an okay time. I talked to a few girls at a booth who were wanting to start a film club which they assured me was code for watching movies during free period and after school; I signed up. I wondered what Dagny would say when she found out I joined a club on my own accord. I wanted to text her so bad and see how things went with her dad, but her phone had been destroyed so I would just have to wait. Orientation was long and boring as I had expected, but the mixer with students was actually fun. Nobody there seemed uptight or cold, they were actually nice, and I didn’t realize it, but I had actually made friends I would keep through high school, friends I would need very much.
That night when I got home, I think even as I walked up the driveway, I knew something wasn’t right. When her mom opened the door and looked right through me as if I were a ghost, I felt like I had become one. She cried and invited me in to explain, but I rejected her. She told me it was an accident, a God-awful accident. She sputtered out small snippets like ‘found her in the pool’ and ‘didn’t answer her phone’. I wanted to tell her Dagny’s phone drowned in the pool two weeks ago. I wanted to tell her a lot of things she didn’t know about Dagny, but I didn’t, I couldn’t. She said there was alcohol and I remember thinking I’d never seen Dagny drink, smoke tons yes, but I never saw her drink. She said she slipped and hit her head and fell in the water. Her father blamed himself. He was late, he said, she probably thought he forgot. Then he and Mrs. Rosden argued over all the past birthdays he hadn’t been there for, and I walked across the street to my house with my parents and I sat on the grass. They pleaded with me to go inside, but I stayed, and as all the cop cars and ambulance disappeared, I watched the shimmering reflection of the water from Dagny’s pool.
The day of the funeral wasn’t anything like it is on TV. It was sunny without a cloud in the sky. I watched mourners in the distance come see their deceased loved ones in sundresses and beach shorts. Summer was my favorite season, but I couldn’t wait for winter so everything around me matched how I felt. After the service everyone gathered at Mrs. Rosden’s home and dug into the funeral casseroles. Dagny’s father hugged me and told me he was glad she had a friend. He had dark hair and freckles like her, and he was kind. I sat on the couch where Dagny and I watched movies together just weeks ago and I thought I would start crying, but my face in the reflection of the TV was stone. I couldn’t be sad yet, because I was still angry. I knew Dagny for one summer, and that was all I would ever get. I hated she would only be a blip on the rest of my life, and time would slowly erode my memory of her. I shook my head and smiled a little as I remembered her asking me what the point was for me keeping a journal, and I told her so I don’t forget anything. “When you live your life the same way every day,” she’d said, “you’ll remember everything like it was just yesterday.” It was a typical Dagny dig, but I hope she was right.
When school started my mother took it upon herself to go with me to talk to the principal and guidance counselor about my recent loss to quickly explain away any bad work performance or behavior before it even began. Naturally teachers, students, and anyone else I saw looked at me with sorrow and pity as they passed and talked to me. Everyone showed patience with me; teachers gave me extensions on papers and assignments and waited for me to thank them for this thoughtful gesture. After a while though people forgot. Eventually, I started feeling like a ghost again.
It’s four years later and when I think about Dagny and that summer, I feel like a ghost all over again even now. If it weren’t for the doodles on my books, she’d drawn it would be like she hadn’t existed at all. When her mother moved away it was as if I was the only person on earth who knew of a person named Dagny Rosden. My parents and neighbors all quickly forgot her, but I never did even after I stopped crying and talking about her.
I’m thinking of her now and all those midnights with her as I sit here in my car that I got for my sixteenth birthday, a birthday Dagny never reached; I think of her and that summer. I watch the clock and as tomorrow becomes today I start the car and pull out of my driveway. I’m leaving at midnight like Dagny always wanted, I’m going to some of the places she always talked about going, and I think I finally get it. I’m not doing it completely in Dagny’s style obviously. I left a note for my parents that I’ll be back in a few days and I’ll call them when I get where I’m going. Still though it’s a kind of weightlessness and freedom, leaving in the middle of everyone else being asleep and I’m wide awake.