I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. Our family didn’t have a lot of money, so my clothes were all homemade or hand-me-downs from cousins, which made me a target of the schoolyard bullies. One of the bullies even lived on my street, which made life even more miserable.
So I made up an imaginary friend named Polly. Polly could have been a pink elephant with wings or a giant blue bumblebee, but my imagination was not that great, so she was just a kid like me, except better. She had black hair that she wore in long ponytails, not short and mousy brown like mine. She wore shiny black patent leather shoes, not white cloth tennis shoes like I did.
Polly helped pick me up when I got knocked down, was there to listen to me cry when the bullies got too bad, was there to play games and have tea parties with when my parents were too busy. Unlike the rest of the world, she cared what I had to say. She was my best friend in the whole world.
One day in mid-summer, when it was hot and everyone was miserable and angry from the heat, I got fed up and the bullies started to get theirs.
Polly was sitting with me on the front porch, both of us with a glass of cold lemonade, when Charlie Mathers, one of the bullies who lived down the street, showed up, parked his bike right in front of our driveway and started yelling insults. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words from a horrible person still hurt like hell. He saw the car coming way too late… it never even slowed down, in spite of the neighborhood signs that said ‘Slow, Children at Play.’
Charlie’s mangled bike landed in our front yard, bent up like a twist-tie. I could tell Polly was smiling behind her hands. I was startled, but I couldn’t feel anything for that mean little monster who tormented me on a nearly daily basis. My parents couldn’t do anything about it, but the cosmos sure did. My mother had heard the brakes squealing and ran outside to make sure it wasn’t me dying in the street, screamed and ran back inside to call emergency services. It was already too late by the time they arrived.
Since Charlie was their leader, the other bullies stayed away from his house, and therefore away from me, for the rest of the summer, leaving Polly and me in a rare oasis of peace.
When school started up again, Mike Curruthers fell off the top of the monkey bars and broke both his legs. He had been calling me names at the time. Kenneth Brown nearly choked to death on a chicken nugget one day at lunch. He’d pushed me down in the lunch line and bruised my knees. Polly laughed for a long time at the bulging eyes and panicked expressions on his face and the way his arms and legs flailed as he writhed on the floor.
The rest of the bullies started to run scared from whatever force in the universe was coming after them. But I knew what it was… because Polly was always there when it happened.
When middle school came around, I started making new friends. Real people, this time, who didn’t care if I wore last year’s styles or that I had glasses or didn’t have patent leather shoes. Polly hadn’t cared, either, but I slowly started to forget about her. I didn’t need her anymore. I had people who cared about me for me. There were still bullies and still awful people in middle school, but I didn’t need Polly anymore to cope with the day-to-day. New things occupied my mind like boys and art classes. Schoolyard bullies had blended into the background noise of a whole new world. I had daily time in the library to read about a world of new possibilities that set my previously underactive imagination alight.
I’m in high school now and it’s been two weeks since Polly came back. She still looks like the same little kid I made up in elementary school, but she’s just as dangerous as she ever was before. At first, she was upset that I abandoned her, demanding to be part of my life or else she’d go after my friends.
To prove her point, one of my friends got in a bad car accident. They’re still recovering in the hospital and will be for quite some time. Then I found out they had stolen my boyfriend. Polly told me so I confirmed it with one of my other friends. I told Polly thank you, and she didn’t seem to be expecting that kind of welcome back, so I think she forgave me for abandoning her.
Some of the mean girls and bullies decided I somehow had something to do with it, just like when we were all little, and I think one or two were even afraid of me. Paul Davis, one of the more daring of them, called me a witch… not with a ‘b’, but an actual witch. Since I was in my goth phase, I took it as a compliment. He still fell down the stairs that afternoon and never spoke to me again afterwards, even going so far as to walk in the other direction if he saw me coming down the hall.
Polly didn’t need to prove anything to me. She’d always been at my side, even when I thought I’d forgotten her. She said she’d hurt me if I ever did that to her again. I believe her.
Now it’s just like she’d never left. Polly is once again my best friend in the whole world, and this time, I’m going to tell my other friends about her. As long as my friends are truly friends, they don’t have to worry about Polly. Maybe you’d like to meet her too.
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