I had wanted a friend for so long, and so badly, that when I finally met one I was afraid to speak in case she vanished.
Diana Barry lived across the brook, at Orchard Slope. She was my age, near enough, with black hair and a way of laughing before you had finished the joke, as if she had seen the end coming and liked it. We met in her mother’s garden and swore to be friends for as long as the sun and moon should endure, and at eleven years old neither of us thought that was an exaggeration.
It lasted, which I still think is the most surprising thing that happened to me. Friendships made at eleven usually go the way of hair ribbons. Ours survived my temper and her mother’s, a bottle of currant wine that I mistook for raspberry cordial, a winter of being forbidden to see each other, her wedding, mine, and all the years after, when we lived too far apart to run across a field.
What I learned from Diana is that a friend is not someone who understands you. Diana very rarely understood me. She thought most of my ideas were wonderful and a good many of them alarming, and she said so. A friend is someone who is glad, every time, that you have come.
