“Timbits,” agreed Kelli.

I turned to her, nervous. Why I should’ve been nervous I didn’t know — Kelli was happy as a clam and Trevor was clearly the closest thing she had to a BFF.

“You gonna be ok with Trevor, Kelli?”

Kelli stopped rocking, maybe picking up on my apprehension. “Where Karie going?”

“Just out to see a friend. I’ll be back for supper, ok?”

“Kelli’s supper.”

“Yes,” I said, smiling at Trevor, who had snorted. “You’ll get your supper, Kell, don’t worry.”

“And if you’re good for Trebie,” added Trevor, “maybe he’ll even stick around and eat with his two favourite girls, eh?”

It’s funny how you find yourself living and looking like a stereotype so much more often, so inadvertently, as you get older. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say you become more conscious of yourself as one. It had been so long, it seemed, since I’d been out in public, sitting down to socialize with a woman of my own age, that I felt hyper-conscious of the way we came across. It’s easy to forget about the variety of social categories you might conceivably slot into when you’ve spent weeks inhabiting only one, i.e., my sister’s keeper. But now Jessica and I sat across from each other in a bright café like two nice women in their forties. Maybe business associates (but probably not, given my jeans and Lululemon hoodie), maybe sisters, smiling through old resentments, maybe two moms taking a bit of “me time” or galpals planning to hit the spa for mani-pedis after lunch. The waiter called us “ladies” and was flirtatious when we ordered wine. Jessie engaged with the flirting in a practised way and I got the feeling this sort of thing must be a mindless, daily obligation for her, like an office worker who automatically affects a sing-song voice whenever she answers the phone, to approximate good cheer.

Jessie looked like a real estate agent, because it turned out she was a real estate agent. Her makeup was light and impeccable. Her eyebrows were professionally groomed. An approving phrase of my mother’s came to my mind, looking at Jessica: put together. A very well-put-together woman. You imagined a torso assembling itself out of parts every morning, bit by bit.

We were here, sitting across from each other, friends from childhood, with no idea what to say. We ordered food and sort of winced a smile every time our eyes met.

“You should know,” said Jessica after a while. “I sent that message to a lot of different people last year.”

“What message?” I asked like an idiot.

“That Facebook message.”

“Oh god, of course,” I said.

“I just don’t want you to think I had a weird obsession with you after all these years. Ha, ha! My therapist and I just spent a lot of time going over my past, those years between the ages of six and fourteen, the people who were around me at the time, the fallout from —”