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I pushed her so hard she fell back and hit her head. Her huge green eyes filled with tears as she looked up at me, terrified.
"I'm sorry," I said quickly, "please, I'm sorry." But it was too late. Agata opened her mouth to scream. All the kids stood around us watching and then the teacher rushed over and I was sent to her office.
"She called me 'crooked nose' so I pushed her," I explained. The teacher said she would suspend me. She would call my parents. This would not go unreported and without consequences.
There was a scratch at the door and in marched Agata. She pleaded with the teacher to let me go. She said she was taunting me — true — and that I finally snapped. I didn't deserve to be punished. She stood with her hands folded, her eyes still huge, this time from begging.
The teacher lectured us both about the dangers of concrete floors and teasing. Under her stern look, something like an invisible, conspiratorial giggle passed between me and Agata.
As we walked out, Agata said, "crooked nose," under her breath. We laughed out loud this time. I held on to her hand tight, the way kids do when they are 8 and in awe of a new-found best friend.
We've been friends for 22 years, 15 of them spent apart as I live here and she lives there. This fall, I'm going back to Poland to be Agata's maid of honour.
You may think this is no big deal, but it is. I am ready to suspend my cynical, anti-wedding, agnostic grumpiness. I will dance with Agata's smelliest, oldest uncle and eat cake and wear a bright pink dress with a bow on my bum — in other words, do whatever it takes to make my best friend happy.
This is what you do for someone who lent you a pair of underwear when you wet yourself laughing once, for the person you called first when you got dumped by some jerk.
We are total opposites. Agata is short, cheery and blond; I'm a tall, melancholic brunette. She is rational and organized. I'm artsy and chaotic. But we've always shared one thing — we laughed. Since that "crooked nose" incident, we've remained relentless in making fun of each other, and have never taken ourselves too seriously.
As a child, I mailed her a postcard saying she had won a pair of leather suspenders and a month-long clown course with a Mongolian circus. She took revenge by acting like the hysterical mother of a naughty child, escorting me out of a store by my elbow, scolding me loudly and telling me to stop embarrassing her.
At 15, I moved to Canada, but Agata and I reunited every summer. We told crazy tales to boys who followed us, shopped for the tiniest bikinis, suntanned and danced. We partied with motorcycle racers, we fell in love with two best friends from the wrong side of the tracks, we got drunk on cheap vodka in a monastery in Krakow. We did dangerous things.
We said if we ever married, our husbands would have to make us laugh as much as we've made each other laugh. Last time Agata phoned me over the Internet, I heard Bernd, her fiancé, telling her a joke in the background and my heart warmed. I hadn't met him but I knew he was a chap like us. (And the joke must have been good because Agata spewed whatever she was drinking into the receiver.)
Then I got a panicked e-mail. Agata had cold feet.
A little background: She is moving to Germany to be with her husband. She has a successful career as a product manager at a legal publishing house and will have to go from working in an office environment to working online — not great for this social girl. She is also close to her family and loves the city where she lives.
She was crying about all of this as we talked and messaged, and it was the first time in many years that she had shown this much vulnerability. She is not an irrational person: romantic, but not illogical. She said she was miserable when Bernd was away. She was desperately miserable when he was away, actually.
We stayed online for a few hours and talked about it all, how complicated it was. And not so complicated: Bernd made her happy. In the end, it was decided that Agata would not call off the wedding, and I would meet her in Warsaw instead of at a clown school in Mongolia, where she would probably have to go to distract her broken heart. We laughed and we hung up.
It was not unlike having your best friend over for tea, talking secrets that no one else can know. With a bit of a delay, of course, and with me looking at my cat in Toronto instead of at Agata in Warsaw.
But it felt real and it renewed my desire to dance at her stupid wedding in a stupid pink dress. You see, she is my best friend and I want her to be stupidly happy.
Jowita Bydlowska lives in Toronto.
Essay illustration by Catherine Lepage.
