A few months ago, while visiting my widowed mother in her new, smaller home, I came across a brown box in the basement. “Lisanne High School” was written in black sharpie along the side. I removed an English essay on Macbeth, a science lab report with pencil crayon illustrations, an MVP tennis plaque, and down in the corner, two cassette tapes. The first one was the Rolling Stones’ Hot Rocks. I immediately thought of Jane, who had been my friend and then the reason I moved away from my small town in Southern Ontario.
I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. A vision of Jane and I sitting cross-legged on the grassy high school lawn came back to me. The warm sun envelops us like a blanket. We are listening to my new cassette tape, giggling and singing along to the lyrics, “Hey! You! Get off of my cloud. Don’t hang around ’cause two’s a crowd. On my cloud, baby.”
I met Jane in the ninth grade at Oakridge High, in London, Ontario—a pretty university city with around 300,000 inhabitants. I was one of the few who lived outside of the Oakridge radius, in the countryside ten miles north of the school. It was the early 1980s and our ninth grade class was made up of cliques. There were the Smokers, the Jocks, the Geeks; my friends and I were in the Preppy Clique.
Jane was remarkable in the sense that she was not a part of any of the established cliques when I met her. I can’t even remember what junior high school she came from. She must’ve had classmates she knew from before, but over the three years I knew her, I don’t remember her having friends or mentioning any friend by name.
I met Jane on one of the first days of high school. Jane was my friend’s neighbour. My friend had given me the heads up that Jane stuttered and that her mom had asked us to be friendly with her. Standing by our lockers in the main hallway across from the administrative offices, I remember the three of us making small talk. “How do you get to sch- sch- sch- school?” Jane asked. My stomach lurched in sympathy as she stuttered, but I tried outwardly to appear normal. I told her about the elementary school bus I rode, the noisy arguing of eight-year-olds deciding who sat with whom, the smell of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Riding this school bus—and now talking about this school bus—was not how I wished to start my morning now that I was in high school. Still, it was a ride to Oakridge High and my only other option was attending the country school. I managed the tedious ride by playing my Sony Walkman and listening to my favorite cassette tape—James Taylor on one side and Cat Stevens on the other. My annoyance at having to take the bus dissipated as I listened to Jane struggle to speak. I was not sure whether to try and guess the word, help her finish the sentence, or wait. This time I waited, not knowing where to look, my eyes on her struggling mouth. Eventually, it got out that she walked to school.
“You’re lucky. It’s a pain to take the bus,” I replied with a smile. She laughed.
Jane had a loud, easy laugh which surprised me. It was like a river in springtime—overflowing and strong. I suppose because she struggled with words, I had wrongly assumed laughter would be difficult, too. She had brown hair in a Dorothy Hamill wedge haircut, and was wearing Calvin Klein jeans and a polo top. She was a tomboy—I could not imagine her ever wearing a kilt and penny loafers like I did. Her blue eyes sparkled when she laughed and I laughed along with her. I liked her.
Nobody knew how to deal with Jane’s stuttering. The teachers rarely called on her, but then again, she never raised her hand. When the science teacher eventually asked her to explain condensation, she caught on a syllable like a broken record, until finally, with a shake of her head, she gave up. Her marks were mostly dismal. The one exception was art. She told me that the art teacher was submitting a few of her sketches to the local high school art show. I remember a linear cartoony sketch that she was proud of called “Calvin,” after Calvin Klein. She had drawn his hair in spiky vertical lines above his head and his eyes looked straight at me, an inscrutable expression above his dimpled chin.
But it was not only Jane’s stutter which held her back. She was also deliberately unusual, even iconoclastic. Once, she wrote her name on a test and left the rest blank. Later she told me that she was emulating Holden Caulfield. She said she wanted to leave the impression that if she gave a damn she’d score a perfect mark. I was both horrified and awed by this show of courage and stupid reckless abandon against the expected conventions.
We took Jane into our circle. We began to hang out at lunch and see each other between classes, as our lockers were close to each other. We would laugh about the day’s events, like when a girl from the Smoker Clique, dressed in thigh hugging Santana jeans, raised her purple nail polished hand during Sex Ed class and asked, “Miss White, what kind of contraceptive do you use?”
I don’t remember Jane and I doing anything just the two of us. I don’t remember going alone with her to the mall or a movie. We did everything in a group. We were always in a group, hanging out together during the hour lunch break and in between classes at our lockers. It was in this easy way that Jane—who was a Tomboy, an outsider—became part of our Preppy Clique.
*
About six months into our friendship, Jane started writing me letters. They started off, “Hello,” or “Dear Liza” or “Dear Ennasil” (my name backwards), never by my given name. In one letter, written at 1:30 am, according to the top right corner of the first page, she informed me that she was recording a Rolling Stones tape for me with a “classic” and “contemporary” side. She said I’d like some songs and hate others. She did this because there were some classics that could not go unheard in one’s life and she wanted to introduce them to me. A couple examples she gave were “Paint it Black” and “Happy.” She had made an identical tape for herself for reference. She signed her letters with “Stay Young” and then “Jane” or “J.K.” in a hurried script in mostly blue ink but sometimes red or green.
The letters pleaded for me to write back.
I found it odd that Jane wanted to have a written correspondence with me when we saw each other nearly every day at school. I felt like she was trying to make our friendship different than the typical high school friendships around us and so I didn’t want to receive her letters in front of others or answer her letters. But I eventually wrote a few shorter letters to appease her. I did not sign them “Stay Young.” I considered that phrase pretentious—like she was trying too hard to be Holden Caulfield.
In April of that freshman year, Jane surprised me with a birthday gift. She handed me a package outside of the locker room after gym. I opened up the lime green and pink wrapping paper to a pink Lacoste golf shirt. Jane had a similar golf shirt in light blue.
“Jane, I love it. This is so nice of you,” I gushed, feeling both thrilled and uneasy. I adored the shirt, but she had spent too much money. I had known her for seven months: why had she singled me out with this gift? No other classmates had received gifts from Jane. I had this odd sense that she expected something from me, but I didn’t know what.
I wore the shirt and we became closer friends. We both liked the Kinks, New York City, and Tom Cruise. I admired her encyclopedic knowledge of music, certain books like Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby, and her indifference to conforming. I thought this was probably a sign of genius. I was a diligent student with good grades, but Jane was more well-read and worldly. She was the only person our age to have a subscription to The New Yorker.
Jane was curious about my life and asked questions about my family. She referred to my parents by their first names, Peter and Gail, even though she had not met them. Nobody my age called adults by their first names. This lack of respect seemed bold and exciting to me.
Looking back, I can see that my parents were interesting. They were young and beautiful. My mom, with her shiny jet-black hair, was always fashionably dressed and fun. When my friends came over, they marveled at her slim figure as she moved around our kitchen, preparing a pork chop with sides of rice, peas, and green salad. Her specialty dessert was no-bake peanut butter Rice Krispie squares made with colourful mini marshmallows.
My dad, a corporate lawyer, had wrestled in the World Championships heavyweight division, and could still draw a crowd at the gym. As a girl, I was filled with pride to see a group of men circle my blond Norwegian-looking father as he grimaced and bench pressed the maximum weight on the machine. The most interesting thing about my parents was that they were still in love. Sometimes I would wander into the kitchen and catch them in an embrace.
That summer my parents took my sister and me to a Doobie Brothers concert. There was so much pot in the bleachers that everyone got a little high just listening to the music and breathing. The stars were bright as we made our way back to the car. My mother took off her sandals and walked barefoot in the grass. When we got to the pedestrian bridge we peered over the Thames River and laughed at our reflections in the moonlight. We were one unit, thinking the same way, making similar decisions.
I don’t know for certain what Jane’s home life was like, but I figured that for her to take such an interest in my life it had to be something different, and not as good, close, or loving. I had the feeling that she was left on her own a lot. She told me she was an insomniac and sometimes walked at night, even in the rain and snow, without her parents’ knowledge.
I visited Jane at her home only once. It was a typical suburban home, shingled and painted pale brown, and the only thing that stood out was her room. She had free reign to decorate it; she painted her ceiling a blue sky with white puffy clouds. I met her mother in the kitchen and was struck by her prettiness. She was taller, fairer, and more feminine than Jane, but like Jane, she also had a stutter. I never met her father but Jane said he was an asshole. She said that she had started stuttering as a young girl because she was afraid of his temper. I pictured a stern, red-faced man, always in a suit, yelling at young Jane to hurry up as she looked up at him with big blue eyes. No wonder she turned into a loner.
We listened to the Rolling Stones in her room that day, and I remember looking up at her ceiling clouds and wondering if she daydreamed a different life.
As I became closer to Jane, I noticed how others treated her, and in a way, you could say that I became protective. I noticed how other students avoided Jane, feeling uncomfortable with her stutter. She had difficulty getting a story out, but when she did, they were often original and funny. Sadly, many didn’t give her the chance. What would life be like for her without the stutter? Would she still defy society’s expectations? I worried that her bold choices would doom her for future success. She knew I felt this way and it may have egged her on to see my shocked reaction to her rebellious ways.
*
One day at school in the fall of my sophomore year, I saw Jane laughing hysterically at some photos she had taken. My locker was just far enough away that I couldn’t see the details. When I headed over to find out what was so funny, I was disturbed to see that the pictures were of me. Jane had photographed me through the small glass pane of the classroom door while I was taking a make-up math test. With a mix of apprehension and curiosity, I saw myself as my classmates saw me: long blonde hair tucked behind my ears and falling down my back, hunched over the desk, forehead propped on my hand as I wrote. I felt self-conscious for the first time. In another photo, I had shifted and now sat upright, lips pursed, and eyebrows drawn in concentration. It was eerie to think Jane had been watching me without having known it.
After that, I began to find even longer letters in my locker from Jane—the longest about twenty-five pages. These notes differed from past ones in a few ways: they were more accusatory and less friendly in tone. The notes were like journal entries but focused on my day or my family. I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. She would mention sightings of Gail in her car after picking up my sister from school. She thought it hilarious when she spotted mom with her tennis hat still on. She wrote that her aunt had heard the Rolling Stones perform in a small bar and had met Mick Jagger. I was uncomfortable with this new level of interest in me. Was she testing my gullibility? In one letter she informed me that she had tested at the genius level for IQ.
Jane’s letters and her growing preoccupation with my family—with watching me— bothered me. It felt obsessive and frightening. Tentatively, I asked her to stop writing to me.
“Why?” she asked.
“I don’t have time to read them.”
“What will you do if I keep writing them?”
“I’ll throw them out,” I said nervously, already dreading her reaction.
“Bitch!” she yelled, causing students to turn and stare.
Heat rose up my neck and burned my cheeks. The fluorescent hall lights felt like a spotlight illuminating me for all to see. Many of the students felt that she was strange, and now they would think I was too. She laughed loudly, pointing her finger at my face. I turned and walked down the hall quickly. Like Holden Caulfield, she didn’t seem to care what people thought of her, but I cared very much.
A few people at school noticed and commented on Jane’s seeming fascination with me. A boy in our grade asked if we were lesbians, and laughed—as though he didn’t believe me—as I blushed and said no. I didn’t know any lesbians and I was not attracted to Jane in that way. All I knew was that her fascination with me wasn’t typical and made me uncomfortable. Even now, I am not sure if Jane was attracted to me sexually. She never made a pass at me. Rather than wanting to be with me, I began to feel as though she wanted to trade places and become me.
*
A few weeks later, Jane told me she had walked ten miles to my house. I imagined her walking along the dark, lonely country road, guided only by moonlight, wearing her signature Calvin Klein jeans and a button-down shirt. As proof, she offered up details of my Dad’s baseball cap left sitting on his desk in his office, the messy rec room with the cue ball on the billiard table, and the “puke” green carpets which could be seen from the glass sliding doors at the back of our house. She also mentioned spotting my Dad’s tennis shoes, what she called “Pete’s size 10.5 Rod Laver’s.” I didn’t want her to see my growing anxiety and even paranoia. Why was she doing this? Why couldn’t she just leave me alone? I could feel my hands starting to shake and I curled my fingers into balls so she couldn’t see.
“Jane, I want you to stop walking out to our house at night.”
She looked at me with a curious expression. “I like walking to your house at night. It helps my insomnia. Why do you care?” she said.
*
After that exchange with Jane, I felt like I was always being watched: at night, I made sure my curtains were firmly drawn as I undressed for bed.
At school, we still hung out sometimes in a group, but I tried not to be alone with her. Our other friends had noticed that I was her focus, but like me, they were unsure how to address it. I didn’t share the details of her letters or her walks to our home at night. The last thing I wanted was to draw more attention to myself or have people wonder why I had been singled out.
One night about a month later, my parents were returning from a dinner and spotted Jane walking along the road. They picked her up and drove her home. They told her it was not safe for her to be out alone this late at night. Did her parents know she was out walking alone?
Staring outside the passenger window and watching the telephone poles go by, I confided to my mother that I was uncomfortable with Jane’s intense interest in my life. My voice quavered when I told her that classmates at school had noticed and commented on it.
“It is unusual,” my Mom agreed, “but I do feel sorry for her. Just imagine what it must be like to stutter. Be kind.”
I rolled my eyes, exasperated but also angered by my mother’s empathy, which often came at my own expense. Before school dances, my mother would tell me that I should dance with any boy who asked: “Think how hard it is for them to get up the nerve!” She didn’t know that sometimes these boys had all the nerve, that they drank before dances and that during the slow songs they pressed themselves against me.
As my fifteenth birthday approached, Jane began making a habit of telling me about how close she was getting to my parents. She told me several times, “I spoke with Gail today.” When I asked my mother if this was true, she denied it. I was confused. Why did Jane keep saying this when my own mother said it wasn’t true? I was sure my mother wouldn’t lie to me. Maybe Jane was trying to make me paranoid to get back at me for cooling our friendship. If so, it was working. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Jane was planning.
Finally, my birthday arrived. The day had passed by uneventfully at school, but when Jane approached me at my locker to wish me a happy birthday, I thought I saw a mischievous glint in her eye. That night, surrounded by my family, my Mom entered with a lit cake and I could tell from my seat it was not homemade. It was round, frosted with rosettes of thick cream, and ringed by maraschino cherries with the stems still on. Plentiful chocolate shavings adorned the sides and top. My mind flashed to Jane and her favourite black forest cake from the Richmond Bakery. I knew it was her favourite because she had mentioned this cake in one of her letters. I thought about how I had never seen her eat. At lunchtime in the cafeteria, she sat at the Preppy table and watched us all eat. When asked why she wasn’t having lunch, she said she ate when she got home from school. I took little bites and spread my fingers around my sandwich so she couldn’t see what was inside.
“Where did you get this cake?” I asked, watching my mother’s knife slice into the velvety rich chocolate cake and deliver a piece to my plate.
“It’s a gift from Jane. Doesn’t it look delicious? I can’t wait to try it.”
I felt red-hot fury rise inside me. “You lied to me! I kept asking you if you were talking to her! I’m not touching it. It’s probably poisoned! Can’t you see what she’s doing?”
I stormed off to my room. My family lingered over dessert. I caught exclamations of delight coming from the dining room. Afterward, my mother came up to my room. “Jane wanted to give you the cake as a surprise—that’s why I couldn’t say she had called. I don’t understand why you are so upset. You are overreacting. Of course it isn’t poisoned.”
My sobbing subsided. My family didn’t understand what it was like. Finally, I heard the door open. My dad entered and focused his blue eyes intently on me. His lips were pressed thinly together. “I can see this is upsetting you. Let me call my friend Dr. Gibson and see what he thinks.”
Advice from a psychiatrist. I took a shaky breath and tried to exhale some tension.
We learned from Dr. Gibson that Jane’s behaviour, which now verged on stalking, should not be taken lightly. He advised me not to encourage the friendship in any way. I was relieved to hear this. The next day I was cooler to Jane. Dr. Gibson’s words had given me courage.
At lunchtime I was direct with her. I looked her in the eye. “Jane, please don’t write to me anymore. If you do, I won’t read it. I’ll just throw it out.”
“What?” she asked incredulously. I repeated the sentence and walked away, feeling other students’ eyes upon me and wishing that I was invisible.
But Jane did not stop. From there on, almost every day I would find another letter from her in my locker. It got to the point where my heart would beat faster every time I opened it and looked at the top shelf. The letters became angrier and full of threats. One letter had a cover page emblazoned with a large skull and crossbones. When I found stapled pages handwritten in black ink, I would gingerly hold the pages by the corner as though I was carrying a rat by the tail and dispose of it in the nearest hall trash can. Usually, Jane was watching from her locker and would call me a bitch and then laugh as I walked mutely by her.
Once during my tennis lesson, I could have sworn I saw Jane streaking across the hill opposite the court. But the next time I looked up she was gone. Her behaviour affected me in every way. I became aware of the possibility that she was behind me, or near me, at all times. I would glance behind me at school, check the aisles while grocery shopping with Mom, and look out for her blue polo shirt and jeans on the street as I sat in the passenger seat of my Mom’s car. I knew she had a knack for spotting our car. I made sure my curtains weren’t open even the smallest crack. Even in my bed at night I did not feel safe from her watching.
In the end, I went to boarding school some 100 miles away from my home. At the time, I said it was for the school, the academics, the experience of boarding and making friends from all over the country. But a big part of my leaving was to escape Jane.
One night in May, a year later in my dorm room, I was listening to Wham and lying on my floral duvet. The Preppy Handbook was on my desk and a poster of Mikhael Baryshnikov, shirtless and leaping in the air, hung above it. My roommate entered the room with a letter for me. I recognized the slanted, cursive writing immediately. The envelope felt light in my hand. A short note after all this time seemed ominous. Outside my window a brown squirrel scampered across the courtyard, searching for a nut. Jane was nowhere in sight. I waited until my roommate left, and then I picked up the envelope from my desk.
The letter was brief, less than a page, and written in a persuasive style. She told me she was writing a fictional account of our friendship and that she had an editor.
The book was about our friendship, Jane said. The narrator was an intelligent young woman who could read other people very well but was blind to her own “distortions.” Her particular distortion was becoming obsessed with a character that was me. “We are friends in the book, but not as good of friends as she would like,” Jane wrote. “When her character becomes ‘weird,’ my character becomes distant and she becomes suicidal.” She then goes away to boarding school and this essentially acts as the “straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
In writing the book, Jane wrote, she had realized she needed to cope without me or suffer a complete breakdown. She explained that her family had never given her boundaries. She now understood, she said, that she invaded my privacy. Part of her wished that I had just told her to “fuck off” earlier, not been so nice, given her a boundary. In the end, Jane concluded, “People are not aware of what they mean to other people. Problems can be easily camouflaged.” She signed off, “Later, Jane.” In the end, she blamed me…
I carefully put down the letter.
Even though I was hundreds of miles away from Jane, I felt the old fear rise in me again. She had acknowledged that she had invaded my privacy, yet I could feel her anger and frustration coming off the page. Wasn’t writing this book continuing with her obsession? I did not open any lines of communication. The best thing for both Jane and I was distance.
I wonder about my strategy of ignoring Jane. I felt this was what the doctor had recommended, it made me feel better, and I didn’t know of any other way of cooling the friendship. I recognize the irony that while I wanted to become invisible to her, my escape from the friendship made her feel invisible to the world.
I couldn’t sleep for several nights after finding the Rolling Stones tape in my mother’s basement, in those boxes of my old things. Whenever I tried to close my eyes, I pictured her lone figure in the dark, walking toward my childhood home.