Sitting next to me on her living room couch, I could tell by her squirming body that Jade wanted to get up and do something.

“Sooooo…” I said, leaving the answer open ended in hopes she’d tell me what she wanted to do.
“Can we please do something?” Jade pleaded.
“Alright,” I agreed, sitting up from my slouching position.
She smiled widely, “I heard about this really good movie that just came out and-”
“We’ve gone to the movies over a dozen times this summer,” I said cutting Jade off. It has seemed like every week now we see a movie. “Why don’t we just go into town or something?”
She lied back on her coach, crossing her arms across her chest.

Realizing that in a few days it will be me asking to do something she doesn’t want to do, I gave in. Just by simply looking at her and nodding, she knew that that was my way of agreeing to go along.

Our friendship began the day back from Christmas vacation, the same day I was starting my first day at my new elementary school. I was facing Ms. Cocoa’s desk, watching as she was putting together a stack full of papers that I would need to have my parents sign, when someone poked my shoulder.

So far I had met a handful of my new classmates and already forgotten all of their names, so when I turned around to see a girl about half my size staring up at me with large brown eyes, I was ready to get the introductions over with.

“Oh,” the girl said, taking a step back when I turned around.
“Hi,” I forced myself to smile. “I’m Sarah Jo.” I extended out my arm so that we could shake hands, just like my dad had taught me to do. But instead of shaking my hand in return she bunched her shoulders in so much that somehow she got even smaller than she already was.

“I thought you were Zoe,” she said so softly it was practically inaudible, before scurrying off to a group of girls who she joined and started to giggle with.

In the coming days we started to talk to each other, at first in larger groups, than by ourselves on the playground. Soon we had our first play date where I met her parents for the first time, parents who I would later consider partially my own.

I didn’t know it then, but that little Colombian girl who I met that first day at my new school would become my best friend for more than a decade. Just one year later we would be singing Christmas carols in front of her whole family and dressing up in crazy clothes which we’d use to put on a fashion show along with her older brother who was also adopted from Columbia.

Together, we went from doodling in the first grade, to playing with our American Girl Dolls in third and ending up where we are now, separated by different schools but somehow managing to keep our friendship just as strong.

I felt awkward at first, sitting on the couch with Jade and her two teary eyed parents, watching the screen intently. Jade was originally looking for a video her step dad had taken at one of her birthday parties when she was younger so when she came across the video of her adoption, which she had never seen before, it had taken immediate presidence.

The video was taken by her adopted father who had died from cancer when she was two. I had only heard a few stories of him periodically over the past decade and only ever saw one picture of him that sat on her bedside table.

The video took us through every step of Jade's parents trip to go see her for the first time in Columbia. It took the viewer from inside the airplane that was still on the Logan Airports runway, to their layover in Dallas. They had already adopted their son from Columbia a few years back, but by the way they acted the night before they saw Jade for the first time, it was as if it was their first time ever going through the process. They were both so excited, neither able to keep still for more than a few seconds at a time.

As they pulled into the orphanages driveway the next morning, young kids waved to them as they pass and a few even run along with their car. Jade later told me that in Columbia, when orphans reach the age of 9 they are forced out of the orphanages and sent to live on the streets.

Jades parents sat in the waiting room, anxiously awaiting their new daughter. You could hear other kids in the background, having just been shooed out, fighting to listen to what was going on inside.

It seemed like forever before a kind looking women came into the room, carrying a large object that was completely covered by a white blanket. Handing the baby over to her new mother, she uncovered the blanket to reveal a chubby baby girl, with patches of her hair spattered on top of her large head, and a obvious looking red birthmark, which ran from her hairline to in between her two eyes, in the shape of a tornado.

Like Jade, I too was adopted when I was very young and over the years the two of us have always been there for the other when that fact can become too much to handle. Her and my stories have intertwined so much that it would be impossible for the two of us to not become as close as we have.