RAQUEL, A Story in Two Parts

Raquel: The Girl, the Legend to Me

Part One: The Svelte Chic

In third grade with Miss Hinklebury, I met Raquel. She was truly beautiful. She wore an awesome top knot side ponytail every day in her extra long, flowing blondish locks which toppled her head to the side sometimes when she was trying to write or do math at her desk. The teacher actually out loud suggested one day that she change her hairdo- that it might help her concentrate. But, I never minded Raquel's simplicity or lack of attention in in class. I would sit nearby and watch her, with her big florescent, bangle earrings, zoning off.

Whenever I watched Raquel in this way, most of my inner drive, which was otherwise devoted a cycle of competition and let down with the other smart girls in class, I felt just fine, centered, or at least amused. When she began to talk to just me a lot, I was thrilled, who would not be. I quickly discovered she was a real life ballerina and going to make it big. That was it- why she was not hardly bothered by class, she had herself an alternate plan.

We would hang out at her house. In the basement where her Dad had installed a dance bar. my chubby leg could barely meet the side. But, twirl, spin, jump like wild she would. Her eyes would glaze away in a way even more thoroughly than in class, and away she was swept herself on a whim and a dream. I admired her, her confidence and assumption that this life was clearly what she was meant to do/be. She was slim, yet muscular really. Her legs as she explained, needed power to be graceful, strength to stretch and pirouette. Raquel was scheduled to go en pointe any day. We were both about eleven years old. She was only waiting for her very special toe shoes to come from New York as she had ordered them from the one reputable ballet store nowhere near our town. The toe shoes were light pink in the usual way, with sharp looking ribbons which would cut into her legs, I later grew to know. I remember the pointe part, it's wood to meet her feet and skin. (It was not until much much later that I learned of the perils of the feet of real ballerinas such as my Raquel.) Anyway, we spent time together with her spinning and looking at the heavens and or the full length wall mirrors in front of her face and budding female form. We did have in common that we lamented on the upcoming blooming of our breasts, I because I was she and she could not afford to upset her form.

One night after we had had swim competitions in school, during Raquel encouraged me to write our team's letters on my face in red zinc which unfortunately, did nut nub off enough for a night time affair. Raquel's mother had planned to take me along for a treat to Raquel's Christmas show of The Nutcracker Suite. The three of us ladies sat side by side in a seafood restaurant that I had never been to the likes of in our city. I accidentally ordered oysters, and so I tried them. ( On that, I did okay.) I was wearing a very sadly ill-fitting dress, the only one I had packed for the overnight occasion. Raquel and I had got dressed up together about an hour earlier. She looked great and petite and sexy. I was pudging out of a sailor suit. But, together we were an all-girls' harmony.

At the show, I was mesmerized by the Sugar Plum Fairy. I don't remember the whole rest of the night. Had there even been any other times? Any other dancers? I just sat in that velvet theater seat and admittedly, I gawked. I don't remember what color her tutu was. I don't remember the theme or story. Tonight, her hair was slicked back so tightly it looked black in strict contrast to her pale pink skin. She was some other world being on that stage. I was so proud to see her, to call her my best friend. I was so proud she called me her best friend. Later, we wrote our names together in the play bill.

Sometimes we hung out at her pool. Raquel and I would babble about our dreams. Hers was to continue her clear success and talent/success in ballet. Me, I wold go on and on about dreams big and small. I am not sure what I said. I just know that I felt I could tell her all. She would nod. I just knew she was listening and understood and appreciated me. In retrospect I guess, maybe she was actually off somewhere in her own little world of symphonies and pop songs like by Whitney Houston that rang in her head.

Then one day, hiding in the old backyard camper on her granddad's property next to hers, barely hiding form the hot summer sun, my Raquel told me that it is over. She was leaving, catching a bus in great hope and fervor never to be back again. Raquel had auditioned at a major ballet school in Philadelphia and got in. She was barely even 12. She would never have to go to public school again. Her Mom had hired a traveling teacher instead, so she could focus on her dream. This was the most major opportunity. She never, ever questioned this outcome. She never even thought to look back. She was off and running, following her destiny like no one I had ever known to win.

She was way very excited to tell me, her best friend. I smiled and jumped up and down with her in glee, appropriately. But, inside I was dying at never to see my dear Raquel again? I did know my feelings were normal, if sentimental, I thought they were less important. I think we may have mumbled something about writing letters to each other, although we both new that anything as boring as writing really did not suit her. She was going to have the time of her life. She was not going to have the time to write. Somehow, I did know this, but I believe she said she would try it around the off seasons. Raquel was off! and into her life.

I never heard from Raquel again. No more passed notes in class. No more shared whispers bunked up in the family camper or in her bed. No more swimming side by side with Raquel, no more wearing her cousin's left over swim suits because they fit me but had ruffles more like hers. My breasts had started to show a tiny bit. I was not yet sure what to make of that, but in general I guess that was okay as in natural, at least they weren't gross or big protrusions. Raquel's breasts thru her swim suit were buff, not unlike the rest of her. She was all muscle, yet so soft and beautiful and fawn-like all over her body and face as well.

Part Two: Biker Chic

Well, at least not until that one fateful phone call over 4 years later. Raquel broke her knee. Her career was over. What?! My Raquel was still actually out there and alive and coming home to me? She didn't even sound broken like she said. She had somehow taken even this in stride, it seemed. By the time she had called me to tell me these details she had broken her knee in Philadelphia, had surgery there, been told she would never dance again, and had been hanging out at home here for about two summer months and I had not even known. She reported barely having had to wear a cast or brace. She had been spending all her days hanging out at the local race track behind her house with her Dad and brother's friends. She was fine apparently, she was over any sign of trauma or disappointment (maybe because she had achieved her dream.) On to the bike races then and she told me we were going there together on Saturday.

We met up back at her house. I was shocked at her new form. Raquel was still very slim but in a push up bra very obviously with hot pink lipstick all over her mouth. Her once coveted ponytail was now a poof, blown all over with hair spray and big bangs. She smiled and hung on me when we touched after all those years. I guess we were both changed and not wanting to be. I had grown to be so much taller than her. I towered. I had cut my hair. I forgot or didn't think to tell her. She asked me why, but I shrugged, not knowing there was a why type reason. We both stared for a few suspended seconds, but we managed to giggle together too.

The plan was laid out by her to “get ready” together immediately and go off to the bike track and for me to meet her boyfriend and his muscle car too. It was a whirl. I started to brush my own hair and attempted to fuss with it. I looked over suddenly and saw half of my Raquel's ass cheek. No joke. Raquel was standing backward to her bedroom mirror on purpose shoving her very cut off jean shorts up into her butt. I immediately thought it was a joke. She had to be clowning. The intimate joke just for us But no, my little Raquel, fallen ballet angel, was there in front of me preparing to go meet a boy who apparently liked this wort of thing. The clearly self-cut booty shorts were like mocking my soul. She was going on about being discovered at the bike races- something about being a beer girl in a picture or something. Something about Coors Light reps being there last week, or so she had heard.

What happened later that night, turned out to be the first and only time I ever drank under age alcohol in my whole life. I think we had spent all day at the races first. I barely remember that. It had been both horribly boring, hot in the sun in the backstretch where the drivers worked under their cars' hoods and on their bikes and hung out, and I think at last the race itself was rained out.

Several of us gathered together an idea. They had all hung out drinking in a favorite out of the way spot many a times. I felt it important not to protest, not to stick out as one against these ideas. I had felt totally like a gawky fish out of water all day already. I thought I would just take sips to fit in.

I believe I had two beers, standing right next to Raquel and several boys. Hers was ugly. He had a pocked face as if acne scars and was older. The one assigned to me who already was acting aloof was taller, for my sake, and wore a black tee shirt. Nothing much happened at first. I was nervous. I probably talked too much. I had never hung out with older boys and these ones were so unlike myself and my dreams. I wondered how come once beautiful Raquel picked that boy. Did he come with her new found red lipstick smear and perfume. I kept zoning, wondering such thoughts. Her boyfriend was the leader of the crew. He had the best and loudest car. He had been scheduled to win, before the rainfall. He lead us to the side of some road somewhere with trees. I was stuck riding in the back of his sports car, uncomfortably. I quickly jumped out and took hold of a beer. We stood around as if in a circle of sorts. Cigarettes and beer. Nothing more.

Then we heard it. The police sirens came out of nowhere. The crew ran all at once in every direction. They had done this before, run from the cops. They had a plan, it seemed. Suddenly, the tall boy was grabbing at me. He picked me up off the ground and threw me over his shoulders. I felt up so high. I lead with my instincts, of what I immediately thought was going on. I kicked him. I screamed. I flailed and hit him in the head.

I was flung down into the back of a pick up truck. I did not know at all where I was, in what part of the county or road. The sky above me was spinning. I felt sick all of a sudden. It got worse when I screamed. I got called a freak. I was told to shut up or else. Then, I heard words of yelling. A male yelled out to Raquel. He told her to shut me up. She called out to me to do so. I fell deaf. It was only her words that silenced me. I was shocked. There was something important going on. (The police passed us by on the road as we were mostly hidden apparently by a grassy alley behind a highway.) They never did come.

And, that is it. It is the end of my story or would-be saga about Raquel who was no longer my own. My pessimistic heart wants to add, and maybe she never was, but no I don't believe that. Whatever we had once, as girls together... We had swam and danced and dreamed side by side. I had sat on the floor next to her swirls and mirrors. Nothing happened that night. The male had just been throwing me into the pick up truck to shut me up and hide from the oncoming police. He had no intention of hurting me. Neither did Raquel. The outcome was, I just never saw her that way again, nor her me. We as best friends ,who tried to carry on right after all those years of not seeing each other and separate places of sexual maturation, had come to a close.

I never spoke directly to Raquel again. She did attend our old school that September, as she said she never would. Her Mom had fired the private teacher when there was no reason anymore. Raquel was reduced to being any other high school student- except that on the first day she literally wore black leather 7 inch stilettos. I was embarrassed for her for this. That she did not seem to notice that nobody else wore those around here. She looked like she assumed herself to be blatantly more sexy than any other girl-woman in the hallway, but as she teetered around on those heels, all I could do was sigh. My sigh went down deep inside me somewhere. She had been so beautiful. She had been so out of this world and yet so real to me. Now, it was like nothing I had ever seen at our high school. Nothing I had dreamed of, nothing I really wanted to see there and especially not involving my once own ballerina dream girl, not even an aesthetic that I could appreciate. We did not meet eyes. There was nothing left to say in words. We had never had many classes if any together in the distant past anyway. This year was no different and the next year too, until graduation (I assume she made it to there,) we never spoke again, alone without each other but this time in the same town.

My ballerina spun away in my mind eventually, when I got over Raquel. But that peace over the stark contrast of what I had seen and what I saw in her that I was not yet ready for in myself or other women for that matter, took me a while to reconcile. Somehow, many years later I allowed it to become more like bittersweet. We had each grown up. We had become women and not done so together as I would have liked the most. Part of me guessed that such could I knew that could have happened during the teen years anyway, but I was just not prepared.

What had drawn me to her was now gone and so sorely in my opinion been replaced with the bawdy, stark, stereotype of sexiness beyond both of our years. And, I had still had it in me at the time to wish, whether I did so subconsciously or consciously, that I would just not look so crude to her. I wished she would just go away as simultaneously as her unfolding in front of my eyes so blatantly again made me watch her. At this time, as about in eleventh grade, I did not yet know of the concept or pass time that some people prefer of watching porn videos. Yet, if I did I might have equated my initial reaction to watching Raquel that final day that way. As she descended, walking away from me into the distance of the hall after not having acknowledging me, I saw her ass shake from the angle of the stilettos no doubt, and shook my head in perhaps slight judgment, but it was more like a sick and interesting mix of repulsion and awe. Girlhood over, womanhood seemed to have driven us apart.