I met Kelly the summer before my freshman year of high school. We were pretty much instant friends, but there was one specific occurrence that really brought us close together.
We had been at Stephen’s house for a party. An innocent party, we weren’t quite to the age of sneakin’ booze and sex was still beginning to enter our consciousness.
You’re going to laugh at this story and how cheesy it sounds. We were up late that night, out in the woods behind Spruce Street. A game of hide and seek was going on, but Kelly and I were sitting on the end of the dock talking about the concept of god and signs of a higher power. (Yeah, I was that big of a dork as a child.)
Stephen comes along and joins the conversation. I think we all lost track of time, but we were watching the sky intently. We had decided to see if we could ask for a sign of some sort of higher power.
There was nothing really extraordinary in the sky that night. A large number of shooting stars, but that was normal for fall in upstate.
Kelly had fallen asleep contemplating the sky, and Stephen and I continued our conversations about the existence and the nature of god. We’re lost in our talk, when all the sudden there is a loud boom and a flash across the reservoir.
Kelly shoots up off the dock and looks around. It scared the shit out of all three of us.
It turned out to be a fire cracker, but Kelly was still shaken. Really freaked out about it. She just kept talking about this dream she must have been having and the explosion and how it was a sign.
Stephen and I tried to calm her down. We walked her back toward land, we sat for a while under a giant oak tree. A few of our friend wandered by, some showed concern and others thought Kelly was just messin’ around.
Johnny, a friend of Stephen’s came by and thought it’d be funny to fuck with Kelly. He steps up behind her and shouts a loud boom in her ear. She falls immediately to the fetal position and remains unresponsive for the next two hours.
Most of our friends thought she was just messing around, and left to go to bed. Johnny actually felt bad, an emotion I didn’t know he was capable of. He stuck around with Stephen and I, and we sat with Kelly into the early hours of the morning.
We contemplated the possibility of needing to call an ambulance, but didn’t really know how that would have worked. “Hey, we were contemplating god and not my friend is catatonic can you send help?” It’s not exactly easy to explain.
She did eventually snap out of it. She had no memory of the time that had passed, at least that’s what she said. A strange and difficult bond had formed between Stephen, Kelly and myself.
For the next few months we talked non-stop. Mostly about our experiences that night. We each experienced it differently, but were strongly moved by this event. At the time it seemed huge.
We spent all our free time together or talking on the phone. We became the best of friends.
Filed under: Private, biography, first, kelly, lesbian, love, romance, Stephen, three, true
