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She took you to a party when you were young.
This, like many things you say, is a lie. This, unlike many lies you tell, is a lie that makes you happy. There was a party, yes, and it was a glorious party, and you danced and she read and you saw the world, which had seemed so small before, unfold like a blanket before you. It was a party so perfect it made you sick.
But she did not take you. She took herself and you took yourself, plain as plain. And because she was Anne with her strange short hair and her perfect words, she was suited for it. She stood as she always did like a wildflower in the most beautiful garden. Which, as a metaphor, is trite, and you know Anne would have a better one. You make so few allowances for yourself, though, that perhaps this small one is alright.
Here’s another: you say that she took you to a party because you wish she had. Because that would be perfect. She is Anne Shirley Cuthbert, freer of minds, the firecracker-bright center of every room. She speaks, and people listen. What’s more, they heed.
And she chose you. You, Diana, and though you do not have a low opinion of yourself - self-abasement is unbecoming - you have never been anyone’s choice before. You wear the right kind of dress and you share your fine food and you know the unspoken rules of girls better than your own two hands, and so you have been accepted, but never chosen.
Anne chose you. What’s more, she chooses you every day. Walking to school, making up stories about the fairies that must live in the hollow trees along the path, barging into your house and shocking your mother every time. Cutting a lock of her hair and secreting it to you during class, tucked in a cinnamon tin. Like the Victorians, she had said, and you tucked it underneath old dresses in your wardrobe, and sometimes in the morning when you’re getting dressed you run your fingers over the smooth, cold surface, just for a second.
If the world were just, you could say that you lie to everyone except for her, that she makes you honest. But the world is not just. You lie to her. You have to.
You have always thought that perhaps you can lie to her forever. Recently, you have even come to believe that this strange and girlish thing between you could be good enough, if you squeeze your eyes shut hard.
Right now, though, you have done something bad. It may be the worst thing you will ever do. You took the Queens Entrance Exam and you are sure you passed it - not vanity but common sense - and it is dark outside and your mother believes you are doing charity work. You drank moonshine - moonshine! - and you can feel it burning your stomach, and your hands, and your lovely pale cheeks.
You are unaccustomed to rebellion. You want to think it suits you. You want to think you wear it as easily as a dress with puffed sleeves. But you look at her, at Anne, and she is telling a story about a pirate and it isn’t fair, what does she have to rebel against - but then the firelight catches her flame-colored hair and the weak protestation dies a coward’s death on your lips. And then, and then, she starts to dance.
There isn’t any music, or none that you can hear, anyway, but her movement is rhythmic all the same. Graceful the way a dragonfly is graceful, she stops and starts and stops and starts again. Others begin to dance, but not you. You just watch her.
She twirls around, but when she stops, she’s dizzy, and you think for a second she’s going to trip backwards and straight into the fire, and the thought makes you brave enough to grab her thin wrist and pull her down. Whiskey has made you graceless, though. With a shriek, she collapses on top of you.
You imagine the grass stains on your dress, and you laugh, and she laughs too, though you don’t know why until she says, “do you remember our grown-up tea?”
Of course you do. “Of course I do!” You say, and she laughs harder.
“Your mother was furious. She said,” Anne pauses, laughs, still on top of you. “She said we’d never see each other again.” She extricates herself from you and lies down in the grass, her head next to yours.
“She’ll have her way yet,” you say, suddenly not laughing, suddenly fingering the half-locket she gave you, imagining that she is doing the same thing but not peeking.
“You failed? But, Diana, you’re so smart!”
“We won’t know for a month.”
“But you must have passed! Diana, you...your French, and piano, and all those books you read, and next to me you’re best at geometry-“
You’re blushing. It’s strange. Flattery is unbecoming in the boys who walk you home, you look lovely, your garden is nice, your house is so big. You don’t blush then. You thank them as curtly as you can get away with and leave them as quickly as possible. This, though, these drunken compliments, you wish they would go on forever.
“We’ll be roommates at Queens. We’ll study all the same subjects. We’ll see all of Charlottetown together. Oh, Diana, can’t you imagine it?”
“Do you remember when we used to play Lady Cordelia?” You curl onto your side, turning to face her. In your head, she knows what you mean. In your head, you have told her the truth. Maybe you are doomed.
“Always. Those are my dearest and most treasured memories.” She grabs your hand and squeezes, although it is slick with unbecoming sweat. Maybe you will go to Queens.
People are yelling for her. It makes you happy and sad at once, which should not be possible. They love her, they should love her. They are taking her away from you.
“Do you need help?” She says as she climbs to her feet, and you shake your head. Things around you have begun to spin, and you don’t think you could bear to stand. Or to be a face in her crowd.
“Good morrow to you, then, Prince Wisteria,” she says, and giggles, and runs off, waving both arms above her head. And you’re alone.
You pass your entrance exam. You don’t go to Queens.