The Weight of My Old Friend

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Last time I had seen Ashleigh, she was naked in our friend’s basement, just like me, just having been through the ringer with the boys, as we were filmed, cheered on, covered in sweat and dying inside. She was splayed out on the carpet, long chestnut hair shining in the fluorescent, her skin looking perfect as always, and she was mouthing something to me. I say mouthing because I couldn’t make out the words—couldn’t hear, couldn’t comprehend. Sean later told me that she was thanking me for finally losing my virginity. 

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I just remember looking down at her from the top of the steps. Smiling, next to a pile of soda cans and clothes. She waved me goodbye, thinking maybe that we were going to go to the movies or the mall soon. But that was that. I went off to college and she stayed behind. I only saw Sean once more—he had been in jail, decided that porn making was great, and he had taken it a little too far. I won’t say with who or what, but I had known him my whole life, and to find out he wasn’t real after all made it hurt like a bitch.

 

Years went on, expanded, caved in on themselves, and I had never taken a lover in the four years of undergrad, two years of master's. I kissed someone once, but it felt like I was going to collapse afterwards, and I didn’t want to learn about falling and standing again. I let it all go. Blocked out the basement. Forgot about the video we did. Sean kept his word though—he left my face out of it. That was the only comfort I ever got out of all the defilement.

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But this isn’t about that. It’s about Ashleigh. About a year after the master's program, I got an Instagram message from her mom. She had never moved out of town and I had since got an apartment in Philadelphia. She wondered how I was and was curious to see if I would reach out to Ashleigh. I explained to her as politely as I could that seeing her would be the worst possible thing that could happen to me. I had moved on and gotten over it, thought no more about the times we shared, and was sad if Ashleigh still thought of those times or wanted to be a part of them. I had blocked her on all socials, I said, and I’m sorry to do so, but I had no choice.

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Her mom replied that Ashleigh knew nothing of choices anymore herself—the drugs had taken over and they called the shots. All she wanted me to do was just come down and see what I could do. I was her last hope, last ditch effort. 

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I took the bus back home, knocked on the same old green door I had known since I was a little girl. Her mom answered, red-eyed, gaunt. Gave me a hug with the boniest arms you can ever imagine a person having. She’s in the basement, Morgan, she said. She never leaves the basement. Every time we call the cops, or the rehab facility, here she’s back in there somehow. I think I want her to… and she didn’t finish the sentence. Morgan, just please see what you can do. 

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When I walked down the basement steps, all I could feel was the heaviness of days. Pounding in my head. Sitting right on my chest, like a brick or a lie you tell someone. I tried to brace myself but there’s no way to protect it. There she was, on an old beanbag chair. Rail-thin. Dry skin. The antithesis of what Ashleigh used to be and was. Clothes that just didn’t look like clothes. She had no hair. All of the chestnut colored hair that she primped and slaved over, gone, in the trash or on a wig that someone else gets to enjoy.

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“Morgan,” she said.

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I didn’t cry. I just walked up to her. I’ll admit, I had some kind of speech prepared when I was riding the SEPTA out here, but I realized it would be pointless. I took a big sigh and did the only thing that makes sense in those moments—I nestled into her on the beanbag, her bony shoulder digging into my cheek, and I just held her.

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Ashleigh’s hand—whatever power that was left of it—clutched my other cheek and we laid there in the dim light for a couple of hours. I sang to her eventually, all the boy band songs, spoke to her about poems I read in school or the things I ate. At one point I grabbed onto her by the waist and I felt the weight of my old friend. The weight that wasn’t even weight. The body that was not body. The sexiest girl I had once known—and all of the boys too—was simply going to be this way. And to her credit, she blamed no one. Not even me.

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I don’t know how long I sat there. She whimpered in the dark and I talked until I thought I was mouthing the words. I kissed Ashleigh on her bald head and I told her to enjoy her life. She asked if I could help her up the stairs to the bathroom. As I guided her through the room, she thanked me for singing to her. I didn’t even know what I said. I couldn’t hear myself. I was swarmed by the past. The old smells, the day we went down to that other basement. I suppose it was going to be forgotten in time, like I had forgotten about Sean.

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“Morgan,” she said again as we made it halfway up the steps.

 

She didn’t tell me what she meant by that.