The Bear in the Basement

The basement still smelled like 2019—like berry lip gloss and stolen moments watching scary movies we were too young for. I hadn't been down here since eighth grade, since everything changed.

"You still have him?" Maya asked, pointing at Mr. Cuddles, the stuffed bear with the missing eye and the suspicious stain on his left paw from when I dropped ice cream on him in second grade. We'd buried him in the back of the closet like evidence of a crime.

"He's... sentimental," I lied, though the truth was I'd never been able to throw him out.

"Super sentimental," Maya said, her voice doing that thing where she's being sarcastic but also kind of not. She sat on the dusty carpet and started untangling the mess of cables behind the TV—coaxial, HDMI, something ancient with those red and yellow plugs that belonged in a museum.

"We're supposed to be studying for finals."

"We are studying. We're studying the art of procrastination." She held up a cable triumphantly. "Found it! The lost chord that connected your Wii. Remember when we played Just Dance until 3 AM and your mom came down in her robe and told us we were being ridiculous?"

I did remember. I remembered how Maya used to be at my house every weekend, how we'd share earbuds and whisper about crushes, how she was the first person I told when I got my period. Now she was the friend I'd texted maybe twice this semester. High school had done what high school does—expanded some friendships until they burst, shrunk others until they were paper-thin.

Maya tucked Mr. Cuddles under her arm like it was the most natural thing in the world. "Remember how we swore we'd be friends forever?"

The bear stared at me with his one good eye, judging me for all the times I'd been too busy, too cool, too whatever to text back.

"Yeah," I said, and something tight loosened in my chest. "Forever's a long time, though."

"It's not about forever," Maya said, plugging in the cable. "It's about right now. It's about bearing witness to each other's weirdness. Speaking of—" She turned on the TV. "Dance battle? For old times' sake?"

I grabbed the other controller. "You're going down."

Mr. Cuddles sat between us, our oldest and truest audience, as we danced like idiots in the basement, two people who used to know everything about each other, starting to learn again.