my 'the summer i turned pretty'

matching necklaces

the summer of 2019

when i was in the beginning my teenage years i went on a trip to hawaii to visit my grandma.

it became a tradition for my family to buy souvenirs for the fisher family everytime we went on vacation. but these souvenirs held more meaning than most. or at least, to me.

my family visited a swap meet and my mom found a bunch of necklaces she thought would make the perfect gift to bring back for them. she asked me to pick out some for the boys, so i did.

i grabbed one for conrad, and one for jeremiah.... and one for me. after paying for the necklaces, my mom noticed there was one pair of matching necklaces."is that for you?" she asked. i nodded but didn't say anything else so she added "i'm excited to see which boy you give it to. i think it's going to be conrad."

and she was right.

i felt kind of bad when we finally gave them the necklaces, because i had bought matching ones for me and conrad, and not for jeremiah. but i just hopped he didn't notice it.

i wore mine everyday, except for the days i was mad at conrad. and later, conrad started doing the same.

it was exciting to see him snapping me everyday and getting to see him wearing the necklace i had got for him.

this went on for two years, he even wore it when he went on dates with other girls. it made me feel special that the girl must feel so special to be on a date with conrad, when in reality the necklace he's wearing matched with me. they were ours.

except one day i noticed he had stopped wearing his. so that summer when our families went camping together, i made sure to pack my necklace and wear it on the trip and maybe he'd notice it and start to wear it again.

and surprisingly my plan worked! one day while we were walking around together he pointed out my necklace and said that his broke. i felt a bit of mixed emotions at that time, but i was mostly happy since he had noticed that he referred to his necklace as his. because when i had given him his necklace, i didn't tell him we had matching ones, although at the time i was wearing mine. it felt so nice to know that he noticed that ours were matching.

it made me wonder if the reason he wore his everyday was the same reason i wore mine: i just wanted to feel a bit closer to the conrad i don't get to see everyday. i envied the girls that got to go to school with him.

maybe his necklace breaking was a sign, because a few months after that, it was like nothing had ever happened between conrad and i. he was off dating another girl and barely talking to me.

maybe the breaking of his necklace was the beginning of our end.