New Friends

The summer was coming to an end and it had been just like all the summers before it, as far back as the Girl could remember in her short existence. The other kids in town would spend their days outside getting dirty and making the most of this joyous time away from school. The Girl had done so in the past, but having turned ten just recently she felt she had outgrown such activities. So instead she stayed home devouring old fashion magazines from her aunt’s beauty salon. The styles were usually outdated, but the glamour seemed timeless to the Girl. She would imagine herself in a magical world with beautiful people untouched by the hardships of real life. “Oh yeah…” she thought “and there’s no dust either, I hate dust”.

That afternoon she had spent hours trying to decipher articles meant for much older readers and jotting down the foreign sounding names of designers and people who seemed to be important in that world that now fascinated her. She flipped the page and came across a phrase that would remain present in her mind for the rest of her life “diamonds are a girl’s best friend”. She then started to wonder how a piece of shinny rock could be a friend to anybody. Her mother was outside on the porch sewing buttons onto her father’s worn out shirts. Perhaps her mother could help her understand this most peculiar sentence. “Mamma, can I ask you a question?” “Sure baby” responded her mother sweetly. “I was reading some old magazines and it says that diamonds are supposed to be a girl’s best friends, how come?” The mother burst out into laughter and explained to her daughter the best way she could “well diamonds sure aint no friends of mine, they rarely make their way to this side of town”. “Why not?” insisted the girl. “Silly girl you must understand that those magazines show pretty things that people like you and me will never have”.
The girl went back inside feeling angry that at only ten years of age she had already been sentenced by her own mother to an ordinary life. She loved her mother, but she didn’t want to be her, and she knew the only way to become who she wanted was to leave that dusty town behind. So from that day on she began to prepare her exodus which would occur exactly eight summers later, by continuing to devour the magazines which she thought contain the knowledge needed to exist beyond the town.

Twenty summers had passed since she had first learned of these elusive pieces of carbon and twelve summers since she had left her dusty hometown behind. That summer was turning out to be exactly like the many summers gone by, when all of a sudden a shiny black car came into town leaving a cloud of dust as it flew by. The car stopped in front of the humble house where and old lady sat in her porch. The woman who stepped out of the car was dressed with things that women of that town were never going to have. She made her way towards the porch and smiled at the old lady and said “Hi Mamma!” “Well it seems like you’ve done well for yourself”. “It hasn’t been all good, but at least I’ve made new friends”-said the Girl smugly as she opened her jacket to reveal an exquisite diamond necklace.