I was a mean girl

A memorial

“It’s so great to meet your husband. He’s, like, so nice.”

I’m sitting between my childhood friends Emma and Marianne, who I haven’t seen in over a decade. We are at a funeral home in Springfield, Massachusetts, filled with strangely familiar faces from my hometown, warped by time and grief. Our friend Krista’s mom died last week. Pancreatic cancer, jus…