The Interlude

For a girl who considered Fearless more holy than the Torah, I was confused when high school was nothing like Taylor Swift said it would be. I wasn’t dating a boy on the football team or throwing rocks at anyone’s window or kissing in the rain. Though I felt a bit betrayed, it didn’t really matter. Because while I didn’t get my high school fairytale romance, I got my high school fairytale friend group. 

Known by our group chat name “Seniors in the House” (SITH, for short), we were a clan of wholesome weirdos who drank more Wawa milkshakes than Natty Lights. Save for the occasional high school party (where one of us would likely end up sleeping by the toilet), we spent our weekend nights stuffed in my small attic eating doughy Trader Joe’s chocolate chip cookies, firing off prank calls, and laughing about the time Maddie stuffed her bra with pinecones or Charlotte’s awkward dance moves at Homecoming. Most of us had gone to elementary school together in Delaware County, Pa., and our numbers grew with every new friend from the travel soccer team or middle school math class. By our senior year, we were 11 years and 11 post-pubescent girls strong: a hodge-podge of athletes, artists, student council members, and bad drivers that just really worked. 

But as wonderful as SITH was, it was still high school: awkward and uncomfortable and immature. By the time college rolled around, I was excited to leave it behind: to start fresh, to figure out my passions, to find out who I really wanted to be.

Four years later, enter the global pandemic: the hammer that crushed our senior springs and post-grad plans into a million little pieces. Suddenly, my friends who dreamed of New York or San Diego or London were back home in tiny little Swarthmore, Pa. I spent four years “finding myself” only to discover I might never actually “find” myself. I graduated college into a void of chaos that meant moving my crop tops and work blazers into my pink-walled childhood bedroom. I felt lost and alone, forced to try to fit myself back into my high school shadow.

I was angry. I felt way too big for my small suburban town, and I was mourning the life I lost: the exciting new job I was going to have, the cute new apartment I was going to move into, the bars and restaurants and concerts where I was going to make memories. “I just feel so trapped,” I told my friends from college over Zoom happy hours and game nights, who nodded and held up their wine glasses in a symbolic “cheers.”

My high school friends were disconnected — we spoke only every once in a while — but soon enough we were all in our hometown again for the first time in four years. While our SITH group chat messages began again sheepishly — “Does anyone maybe want to go for a masked walk today?” — a casual routine shortly followed. 

Yes, there were moments of “Wait, you’re not friends with her anymore?” and “You have a boyfriend?!”, but starry evenings on back porches diffused the morsels of tension. We celebrated our graduations standing six feet apart in our elementary school parking lot, wearing caps and gowns and popping bottles of cheap champagne with The Chainsmokers’ “Closer” playing in the background. I had always imagined my college graduation with college friends and college professors, but celebrating a big moment with the people who had known me since kindergarten felt equally as special. —

Other times, we went on spontaneous morning walks or ate Italian ice in the park. After a sweaty socially-distanced Fourth of July workout on the Swarthmore College campus, we drank frosty Watermelon White Claws and jumped into the creek. It wasn’t what any of us expected for the summer after college, and not all 11 of us were around all of the time . But despite the masks and the six-feet-apart rule, it felt normal. Even though the world was crashing and burning around me, I was happy, because I was busy and distracted and laughing every day. 

Of course, there were not-so-great moments, too: the five-mile walks in the woods where I’d spew empty threats to my friends about moving out and reclaiming my freedom, angry phone calls following brutal job rejections, FaceTime calls until 2 a.m. despite living only blocks apart, filled with “What do I want to do when I grow up?” And then, “Am I supposed to have grown up?” But as our pandemic-engulfed life chugged on, I had 10 constant reminders — either in my neighborhood or only an emo text message away — that while I may be lost, I am definitely not alone. 

And we may not be grown-ups, but we’ve all grown. Meagan and Megan are nurses, strong and resilient health care heroes with mask lines on their cheeks to prove it; Carly realized she wanted to be a physical therapist, Katie a teacher; Morgan started an Instagram cake business; Annie’s thinking about medical school. I’m headed to New York to start a copywriting job. But more than that, my friends are all kinder, more empathetic, more mature people than they were when I left them. 

I know now that growing up doesn’t have to mean growing apart. We’re not the same SITH cohort we were in high school; our 18-year-old shadows no longer fit our curves. But we don’t have to be. We can grow together across space and time — through high school, through college, through a gosh darn global pandemic — making room for each others’ evolving identities. 

As the light finally peaks through at the end of the pandemic tunnel, my friends and I are planning moves out of our parents’ houses and out of Pennsylvania. SITH’s COVID-induced utopia is coming to an end. It’ll be different, sure, but I think we’d all agree that while what’s next is uncertain, our friendship isn’t.