january 7th 2025

jane went to visit a high school friend at northwestern to watch his production of american idiot, and who sat a row in front of them but jocie mintz, alone? 

they said she runs a survivor club, a huge campus-wide project with an audition cycle. i told them about her survivor roleplay account from middle school, how she organized skype games with other superfans across the world, how they’d recruit survivor players to reprise their experiences, people who made a living spilling production secrets on social media years after their tv appearance. i never told on her until that moment. she was my best friend for a couple years, then she got pushed into the inevitable social hot seat, and maybe i didn’t stand up for her when i should’ve—it was me next anyway, and when it was, she didn’t spare me. but we kept each other’s secrets. we were mirrors, her death metal rainbow tshirt and mcr tickets and thick-framed glasses and afternoons at the local acting conservatory (with connall sahler, who went to emerson), my unwashed hoodie and blunt cut hair and cartoon trivia national ranking and the heroes of olympus hardcover in my backpack, both of us astray, bisexual, separated from our childhood friends, losers afraid to sell out but anxious to fit in. we had mutual crushes that we never admitted to, internet histories we had to hide from anyone else, but in her bedroom up the stairs the sworn silence was lifted and we confessed it all. 

sophomore year she admitted she’d lost her virginity to her boyfriend from another school and i told our friends about it. in fairness they pressured me to—i made some reference to her scandalizing, i couldn’t catch myself, then they wanted to know. i was weird about sex, didn’t know how it happened or why, how things could fit together—she’s so small, five foot pale little jewish girl—and i was in love with a celibate brit so none of it mattered to me. looking back i think i’d do that sometimes, sacrifice her to save myself. it didn’t feel like shit-talking, and i was her best friend, everyone knew, so i thought i had a right to air my frustrations. even our names stuck together—we were a packaged pair despite my attempts to wiggle out, and it bit me in the ass for a while. i blamed her for missed invitations. i joined the dogpile when paranoia irrationalized her. i thought it wasn’t so bad if she kind of deserved it. i can’t remember if she did. 

she joined a sorority freshman year of college and her instagram profile is sanitized, orange-filtered, a collage of parties, football games, birthday wishes, heatless curls, nothing before 2020. her best friend committed suicide sometime last year so a lot of her recent posts are about that girl with a mental health advocacy message. she was a sweet blonde type, always smiling but without the dishonesty of their peers. i don’t think jocie is out. our last text exchange was a year or two ago. we hadn’t talked since high school and she asked how i was, and i said i was studying film, and she asked if i’d ever seen death parade (i haven’t). we used to talk about anime with bella learn on the tennis court in eighth grade P.E. while we knocked hockey sticks together. we played town of salem on her family computer, we ate ramen out of plastic bowls, we watched movies in my basement when she slept over on the couch. gertrude and thelma, andrew aguecheek and toby belch, i think she may have loved me. in eleventh grade the crowd spit me out but she disappeared into it, swallowed like a pill. she had sex with a stranger in a car during beach week, partied and daydrank with dudes who asked us out as jokes in the cafeteria. then i stopped hearing about her. then i fucked off to boston. 

there’s this picture of us backstage during our shakespeare club one-night-only production of twelfth night. i’m in a florida fred button-down and she has some bandage over her head for the scene. i think we missed our cue taking it.