“I’ll Go First” Friends

an ode to the ones that show you that a coming of age is coming for you too

this is something I wrote for our upcoming book Make It Make Sense which didn’t make the final cut. instead of letting it slip into the abyss of google docs that never get touched again, I thought it would be cute to send it to you 𓆩♡𓆪

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“I’ll Go First” Friends

She appeared in my classroom at six years old and was the first friend I’d made from another country. Her family had just moved over from the UK (a trend that would become increasingly common in our classrooms, but one I believed her family started) and picked me to sit on the special chair with her - an honour as great as any when you haven’t even learnt whether that word is spelt with an ‘o’ or an ‘ou’ yet.

I was tasked with showing her around that day, and I learnt that she was the oldest girl in our year, which now makes a world of sense. This was Laura, and for as long as we lived, she would always do things before my friends and me.

She kissed, partied, and got her license while I was still reading about all that in Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging. She went on a cruise, smoked a cigarette and got her period before I knew the difference between a tampon and a pad. She taught me about cramps and leaks. She gave her first blowjob and in turn, gave us lessons on a banana (cliché, I know, but true.) Laura made me believe my coming of age was coming for me too.

Growing up with three brothers and zero interest in beauty YouTubers, I was completely out of my depth when it came to making myself look pretty, so when the Year 11 dance was announced, I felt sick. When you’re fifteen, dances like this hold the gravity of a wedding day. My queasiness passed when Laura told me, without hesitation, that she’d do my makeup for me, and invited me to her house a few weeks beforehand to do a trial run (I told you it was like a wedding.)

I wasn’t allowed to look in the mirror while she brushed, dabbed, and stroked my face into someone else's. When she swivelled me around to take a look at myself, I remember feeling like Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries after Paolo had worked his magic. I was so shocked at how beautiful and unusual I felt that the only way I could explain it was by using words I’d learnt when I was five years old. In my diary, I wrote:

“My best friend Laura did my makeup today. It looked pretty. Like really nice and good.”

A few months after that, on holiday with my family, Mum and I went to the Mac counter at the airport. Laura had given me a list of every product she used and told me to get someone at the counter to help me match my shades. As I awkwardly tried to negotiate the difference between a medium-golden-natural-beige shade with a yellow or red undertone, I could tell that Mum, who knew about as much about makeup as I did, was grateful that I had friends who cared about things like that. She’d been trying for years to make me like myself, or to at least understand why I didn’t, and by swiping her credit card on these products, she probably thought that something would change.

I did too, but when I went to apply it myself, I couldn’t find anything to accentuate; everything just looked like something I needed to conceal. I’m not sure if being part of the process ruined the masterpiece, but when I was done, I didn’t feel anything like I did that day in Laura’s bedroom. She was my magic mirror, and I was sitting there, flat top brush in hand, asking it why I couldn’t see myself the way she saw me.

It strikes me now, ten years after she first ‘did my face,’ that the reason I loved it when she did my makeup so much was because I was getting to see what she saw. She didn’t just show me how to blend out eyeshadow or give me my first sip of vodka; she wasn’t just the first one to drive me through a police stop, or make me taste a doctor pepper. She was the first person to really see me.

It may have taken me ten years, but thanks to you Laura, I think I see her now too.

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