The Third Floor

When I was younger I had a friend named Jana who was the shit. She was everything I wanted to be and I tried my darndest to be just like her. It was like she just DID all the things I wanted to but was too chicken or reserved or self conscious to do myself. But she certainly made me open up. We were the only two girls in a very catholic school that would wear jeans under our school uniforms and then tucked them up and fought back when we were told to take them off. We were the only two girls who wore Chuck Taylor All Star Hightops and traded one shoe each so we had one black and one red. We were the only two girls that went after two boys in an older grade.

Jana had, what I thought at the time was, the coolest life ever with the coolest parents ever. They were relaxed and funny and let her do whatever she wanted. She lived in a big old house in "the Gates". Her dad drove a cool old mercedes. Her mom had friends that were Tarot card readers or were living with Aids or something else that seemed just as foreign and exotic to my sheltered boring life. We listened to new old amazing music that was nowhere NEAR the top 40. We went to places kids our age didn't typically hang out. We wore crinolins as skirts and our dads suit jackets and army boots. We shopped exclusively at the Salvation Army.

Everyone wanted to go to Jana's for sleepovers. Parents has reservations about letting it happen. But every once in awhile the stars aligned and I was allowed to go. She had the coolest bedroom ever, painted whatever color struck her fancy. She had a mannequin in her room and a birdcage complete with strange exotic bird. She had walls full of posters of Marilyn Munroe when other kids our age had the latest pop star plastered on theirs. She started my full on fascination-slash-obsession with James Dean. Her moms room had its own veranda that matched the one on the main floor. But the best part of their house was the third floor.

The third floor is where all the fun took place. All the squealing and truth or dare and boy-crush confessions. Her mom would rent us R rated horror movies and we would quite literally scare the life out of ourselves. Their old house moved and creaked and we swore people were trying to get in, trying to kill us of course. The screams that came from that third floor would rival any horror film.

I remember one sleepover she had a Ouiga Board. We all asked it the same question. Are you there? And who will I marry? We all swore that none of us moved the thing around at all but none of us believed each other fully. The answers were too coincidental. But the most frightening part about the Ouiga Board experience? When our parents found out. Whooooo-eeeee! We got some heat for that. Our teachers even found out at our ultra-catholic school and we got in some pretty impressive crap there too.

I ended up working with Jana's dad a few jobs ago. He was still the super nice guy I remembered. I got her email address from him and we corresponded a time or two. But I think our special friendship lay best where we left it. Tucked up on the third floor.