I was born with a best friend – my older sister. She actually wanted a big sister but got me instead. She didn’t choose me, and I didn’t choose her. Yet we love each other because we are sisters.
When I was little, I would follow her around everywhere and worship her every move, convinced that she could do no wrong. Then I grew up. I stopped playing with her so much, got impatient with everything she did, and began hunting for my own friends.
I was in second grade when I met Lauren at a summer camp in Seattle called Yick, Yack, Yuck. We bonded over a dead squid.
Saying goodbye to my sister at the start of camp, moments before I met Lauren
Lauren named him Mr. Squid. Our assignment was to dissect him. We laughed through his entire ink sack removal surgery, we talked about how to break the news to his family when he died, and we pretended to cry at his “funeral” when we threw him into the trash can.
That’s how we became best friends.
But I live in Beijing, and she lives in Seattle, so we only saw each other over the summer.
Each year, I look forward to seeing Lauren. We like to exchange gifts, eat Molly Moon’s ice cream, and catch up during sleepovers at her house.
A dead squid helped two strangers become best friends
But this year, we could not visit Lauren, or anyone else outside of China.
We began to call each other more and more during the spring, making plans for the summer and hoping the pandemic would be over by then. We looked for other camps to join and locations for a road trip. But the pandemic kept raging, so none of these things were possible. We had to find other ways to spend our summer together.
We alternated from WeChat to Instagram to iMessages, calling each other almost every day. She would wake up when I’m getting ready for bed. With 15 hours apart, there is no ideal time for either of us. We’re both groggy and struggling to stay awake, but we push through to make the most of the short window of time we have together.
Screenshots of us during our video calls, one during the day (left) and one at night (right)
Even though we live half a world away, we still manage to bullet journal together and gossip about our day. This week, I watched live as she chased an ice-cream truck down the street, her sister hurriedly handing her a mask. They bought strawberry shortcake and cookies’n’cream popsicles. It was my first experience with an American ice-cream truck.
But what we spend the most time doing is talking, sometimes for hours. I would teach her short words in Chinese, like, best friend – guī mì, and how to say my last name – Xu, which is not pronounced “shoe”. She would recommend some of her favorite science fiction or fantasy books and let me gush over her adorably wide-eyed and overweight cat Skittles, who was still a kitten the last time I saw him.
Refreshments with Lauren last summer
Friendship really helped me get through the pandemic. It kept me sane. It gave me someone to talk to. And most of all, it helped me escape reality and forget about the deadly virus.
It has always been hard for me to keep friends because my family moves so much. I will always have my sister and Lauren will always have her sister. But we all need to find friends outside the family. I am lucky I found Lauren.
Last summer when my sister and I hung out with Lauren and her sister in Seattle
I realized that the distance between us is not what matters. Since the pandemic, all relationships have become long-distance, but Lauren and I feel closer than ever. We have actually spent more time together virtually than during our short annual visits.
Whether your friend lives next door, or in another country, it’s the effort you put into your relationship that matters most. I hope we stay friends for many years to come, with or without a pandemic.
Feifei Xu is a Chinese-American rising Grade 9 student at Western Academy of Beijing who has a strange obsession with dogs and her best friend Lauren. She loves spending time with her family, although quarantine has been pushing her to her limits. At school, she is either hanging out with friends or hiding in the library alone.
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KEEP READING:What Does it Take to Be a Good Big Sister?
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