Girls Growing with Girls
by Adina-Marie Torres
University of the Incarnate Word
Adina-Marie Torres is a sophomore at the University of the Incarnate Word, graduating spring of 2025. She's a double major in Fashion Merchandising and English with a passion for the arts.
Amber.
There was a time, before the adulting came too quickly, that I was booming. With limbs flailing
in dance, voice caring to the mountains, and sequence jacket showing the aliens just where I
would be giving my daily performance. I would run with the girl next door who biked and
together we’d hide from cars that passed by, scared of being kidnapped. Together we’d crouch
under the bushes, chest-pounding, holding in our laughter. I think she kissed me once. Under the
blanket next to her Patrick the star doll. I don’t quite remember the moment. But we lived in
suburbia.
And I wasn’t gay and I wasn’t going to be a pop star either. I took her, the girl next door,
to church with me once a month. Bounded by Lana Del Rey and increasingly weird art projects,
we were inseparable. The summers were spent playing mermaids and we’d swim like dolphins in
a way that wasn’t dolphin-like at all, water spraying anyone within five feet, we were Shamu.
Her brother would come home after work at the grocery store and give us all the chips
and soda he didn’t want. I was never given junk food and Serge gave me the best cornucopia a
child can ask for. We ate baloney sandwiches even though we hated baloney because it was 2008
and I’d listen to her mom talk about who was fucking who, without a clue what sex even was.
We were only friends in the summer, by winter we’d drift apart without so much as a
hello during school. We’d spend the year without the other, wondering who would gain the
courage to ask if we could play a week after school let out.
The first couple of times it would be Amber who would ask, flip flops on, and already
donning a swimsuit. Over time though, it would lessen and lessen. I would be the one to ask,
sometimes it would work, other times, “Oh Hannah, Amber isn’t home right now. Maybe swing
by later?” If she wasn’t there, I wouldn’t ask for the rest of the summer. Young Hannah figured
that Amber was avoiding summer hangouts. One summer, neither of us ever asked again and it
stayed that way. During spring break this year, she lent me a fur jacket, the one she wears
whenever she posts her clubbing videos on Snapchat, for a wedding I was attending in the
winter. We still say hello to each other whenever we pass. Friendships were strengthened in
seasons and sometimes those seasons passed.
But it didn’t matter, because I was booming and the talent show was next week and I was
in kindergarten and my backup dancers were in the fifth grade, and isn’t that so cool, Amber?
Adrienne.
Not too long after my seasons with Amber faded, I met my stepcousin, Adrienne. My
direct opposite, Adrienne was incredibly petite and uncharacteristically muscular for both her
age and her size. She was the first girl I met who truly loved athletics, she ran across my
Grandma’s acre barefoot, unafraid of espinas or ants.
She loved animals so much that she thought she was one. Having been sheltered from just
about any outside-of-church friendships, I thought all kids were like Adrienne. Sonic the
Hedgehog obsessed, chasing other animals, doing backflips on the trampoline. She had a way
about her that captured the affection of every boy in town, even at a young age. So confident,
Adrienne would scare the guys into her grasp, the boys learned the thrill of a codeine woman
early.
The tell-tale signs were there, hidden beneath the young exterior. She and I would often
draw together, I pictured flowers on paper while she drew another character, a wolf, but with
human-like qualities. Adrienne saw herself as the wolf, Rose Wolf, a personified idea of her
idealized self. Tall, curvaceous, goth. She insisted that her contact name on my Motorola match
her personality: Rose Wolf.
Together, we would become character obsessed, fictionally dreaming about dating Jack
Frost (my choice) and Shadow the Hedgehog (her choice). When we would play pretend, the rule
being to always be somebody you weren’t, I was Celeste Winters. It was fun, riveting even to
play in Adrienne’s world. We would watch anime, even the ones with bad words, and scream
when we got to touch our animated lovers.
The transition was slow, evolving under the age of our ripened youth. Steadily, her world
became more intricate, her fur would collide with Shadow’s, the two shades creating
a nightshade not unlike a Van Gogh painting. There were the notebooks, hidden underneath junk
under the bed, pages, and pages of her and Shadow, kissing, touching, posing together. It was the
physical embodiment of early youthful lust. The images of them, front or back, are all fresh in
the mind. Most of them were repeats of the same figures, like a mantra Adrienne would say to
herself. As if the more times she drew them together, the stronger the fabrication of her mind
would be toward her reality. She lived there, in her world where she was God, where all beings
bore her attention and praised her for her feminity. Worshipping the way her hips moved, the
tightness of her shirt against her chest. The way her slim legs intertwined with theirs. Rose Wolf
and Shadow. Flip. Rose Wolf and Shadow. It was difficult to notice the dangers so deep in the
web. We couldn’t have been more than twelve.
Her mother would beg her, please Adrienne, your sisters need you, they want more
snacks. Adalyn and Avery want to play with you. But Rose Wolf was playing Shadow and
Adrienne wasn’t bound to them anymore. I always felt honored to be the only other female in
Adrienne’s world. It was a great privilege, to be able to live everything she wanted and wanted
to do. She never slept, because when she closed her eyes she wouldn’t be with him anymore. Not
with Shadow or Levi or Raphael or Zeref. She had to consciously choose to live with them, for
them.
Eventually, I lost her. Adrienne and Rose Wolf. Completely taken by her world, she lost
interest in her future, consumed solely by costumes and maid outfits. I was her friend, probably
her only real, living friend. I couldn’t save her from her addiction and as a child, I nurtured it.
She called me last week, inviting me to a furry convention. I’m still not quite sure what to
make of it.