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If Tamarack could be compared to a tornado, you would be a hurricane.
It’s an odd thought Qiu Lin ponders at age fourteen. It’s been four years since they had gained two new neighbours. In those early days, riddled with misadventures and emotions, they felt a connection to the pair of you that was hard to put into words. They reminisce over an old myth their mother liked to tell them during rainy evenings inside, her crocheting and them absentmindedly tossing a handball at laminated floors, watching it come back into their waiting hand listlessly.
The red thread of fate. An invisible string around the finger of those destined to meet. Perhaps that felt like an accurate way to describe it. Something about their neighbours did feel pre-destined. An inevitable that couldn’t be fought against. Yet, the myth was about lovers . Did they love you and Tamarack? It was cruel to speak it into the world, but they weren’t sure of the answer.
After all, things have changed since the three of you were ten years old.
They had adopted a mask of apathy. It was a slow change, carefully planned and executed, as it was in their nature. Even with their burnout, they still took precautions for their image, and this instinct only displeased them more. It was an ironic cycle of dissatisfaction. Tamarack had lost her cheek, her usual assertiveness now disguised behind carefully thought-out words and cautious eyes. People walked on a tightrope around her and she merely returned the favour. There is no permeance when it comes to Tamarack Baumann.
You were much more difficult to describe on the account that Qiu can’t decide if you changed as a consequence to them. Your eyes are clear, you walk with a secret purpose, and they still see the same person they had met in their backyard. Being fourteen didn’t stop you from looking at the world with the same reservation, curiosity, disdain and love as when you were ten. Yet, there is no longer anyone around you. Despite their isolation, Qiu had managed to keep those who had been “in” their circle since the beginning as companions. Even Tamarack had found friends.
Yet, for some wild reason completely incomprehensible to them, you decided your circle would still be limited to Tamarack and Qiu, who could hardly call themselves your friends anymore, but neighbours at best. Despite this, you never gave chase. You didn’t push for their company. You didn’t push for conversation. You simply sat there as if their time and care were a given, as if you deserved nothing less. Perhaps your entitlement should irritate them, but it doesn’t. You liked to act as if you could see something they didn’t, every time your eyes met Qiu’s in passing, it was as if you could already see years into the future. It’s unsettling. It makes them wonder if you also believed in things like the red string of faith. Maybe if the both of you were still friends, they could’ve asked.
Their handball, now slightly tattered with age, rebounds into their gloved hand.
Your mother used to intimidate her.
It was a secret Tamarack had intended to take to her grave. Not out of consideration for you (she hardly had any filter when she was ten years old), but because she was embarrassed that the lady next door was what managed to spook her before the idea of bears or thunderstorms.
Your mother, Opal, was kind. She was nowhere near mean. Yet, she talked like an adult. She talked like an extremely mature and smart adult, even to little kids who are barely gauging the world. Tamarack knew a lot of people tend to talk to their kids as if they were grownups, something about building confidence and intelligence. However, she, whose grandparents spoke to her like the child she was, didn’t understand why your mom used such big words and became super serious out of seemingly nowhere. The unpredictability of nature didn’t scare her. It’s the unexpected behaviour of adults that made her nervous.
However, her opinion of Opal has shifted since she turned fourteen. It’s likely because she can now understand most of what the older woman says, so conversations with her felt less daunting. However, interactions with her have also dwindled majorly over the years on account of the both of you drifting away from each other. Tamarack wishes she could have pinpointed the reason why you both no longer sat together in class, or why she stopped coming over.
(Well, even if she did know the reason, would she have made the necessary chase to be your best friend again?)
Usually, Tamarack’s grandmother preferred to hand over any meals to the neighbours on her own. It gave her both the opportunity to soak up praise first-hand, and an excuse to linger for conversation. However, today she requested Tamarack to send over Apfelkuchen to your household since she had a doctor’s appointment she was running late to. So, in what seemed like a long while, she rapped her knuckles against the mahogany of your door and stood with clammy hands holding tightly to the circular dish. After exactly a minute, the doors open to reveal Opal. Her round eyes widen for a split second at the sight of the golden-haired girl, before swiftly offering her a pleased smile.
“Tamarack? It’s been a while,” She greets conversationally, even if she’s looking down at her from her height. Tamarack returns her welcome with less confidence and enthusiasm, before launching into a quick explanation about what brought her to standing on the porch.
“I see,” Opal takes the dish from her outstretched hand, gently but securely holding it in her grasp. “Please send your grandmother my thanks, and I greatly appreciate her sending over her delicious baking.”
She nods along to the older woman, but she cannot stop her eyes that linger behind Opal. Perhaps, deep inside, she wishes you were lingering downstairs, eavesdropping on the conversation before making your entrance to interrupt your mother’s flow of conversation.
(It’s what you would have done back then . )
Of course, you do not show up and soon Opal bids her farewell, with the obligatory show of gratitude for coming to deliver the cake, and that she was welcome at your house at any time. It’s an offer she’s heard countless times but hasn’t accepted in years. She’s sure Opal would have been floored if she actually kicked off her shoes at that moment, and welcomed herself inside.
She makes the short trek back to the comfort of her own house. However, in that minute-long walk, she swore that with every crunch of boots against dried leaves, she could hear the bells of your gleeful laughter beside her.
All good things come in threes.
The first time you heard that saying was back when you lived in a small apartment with your mother. You had no backyard and no kids your age to play with outside of school. Your mother was often swamped with work, and due to the irregular times she would be home, your elderly neighbour offered to take care of you until she was back from work.
Thanks to this, you had become familiar with the smell of strong incense and sandalwood, and of porcelain cats in display cases. You had also picked up the faint scent of tobacco, which was desperately covered by air freshener and open windows before you arrived at her door. Of course, at that age, you didn’t know what it was and assumed it was one of those heavy and weird perfumes adults tended to use.
Even if she was a bit odd with her patchwork skirts and collection of dolls with glassy eyes, she was not a bad person. She let you watch TV whenever you asked, listening in to the static voices of a smooth-sounding woman with the thrumming of her sewing machine in the background. Usually, she let you do your own thing, whether it was sitting on the floor and colouring in a picture book, or watching whatever channel you flipped through. Sometimes, she’d sit on an aging armchair, watching as you coloured out of the lines of a picture of Barney , and preach to you whatever happened to cross her mind. Many things slipped from one ear and out the other, but one saying from her managed to stick to the metaphorical walls of your brain.
All good things come in threes.
You aren’t sure why, but it became your anchor in your childhood. It bled into your everyday life; this belief that happy days are sure to come your way as long as it all happened in threes. You kept three different types of socks for every colour. When you went shopping with your mother, you made sure to put three bars of chocolate in the cart instead of the one you were allowed (and your mother discreetly put it back before you noticed). You kept three glitter pens in your pencil case.
When you first met Qiu and Tamarack, it was the third of the month. You became a trio on the third of the month. You moved to a three-house cul de sac on the third of the month.
Golden Groove was your fortune, you were utterly convinced of this fact. Qiu and Tamarack were your destiny. Even when with age, you began to stop buying and keeping threes of everything, you still did not let go of this notion. Even if conversation had begun to dwindle and invites to hang out had slowed to a stop, you were undeterred. They were your constants, and whatever path of life you all walk will inevitably converge and become one again.
You reflect on this as you lay in bed, hot tears gathering at the corner of your eyes. In your open palm lies a polaroid of Tamarack and Qiu, much younger, squished together at each of your sides. They smile at you as if in love.