{"id":1328,"date":"2025-04-15T01:25:47","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T01:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sphere-ou.com\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2025-04-15T01:25:47","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T01:25:47","slug":"managing-editors-pick-on-the-precipice-by-juli-harter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.ohio.edu\/sphere\/2025\/04\/15\/managing-editors-pick-on-the-precipice-by-juli-harter\/","title":{"rendered":"Managing Editor’s Pick: “On the Precipice” by Juli Harter"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“On the Precipice” a Nonfiction Story by Juli Harter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you\u2019re a kid, life can feel like your friends and yourself against the world, against your parents, against the impending doom of adulthood. Being a kid is like being in a world of your own, and that doom feels lifetimes away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was in eighth grade, I had an obsession with the movie Stand By Me<\/em>. I\u2019d seen it over twenty times that year\u2014including one week in which I watched it every single day just because I wanted to. I was Wil Wheaton\u2019s character for Halloween. What fourteen-year-old girl dresses up as a twelve-year-old boy from an eighties movie for Halloween? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe knew exactly who we were and where we were going. It was grand.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four boys search for the body of a local missing kid their age in 1959. What should be morbid becomes a heroic adventure. Their friendship feels everlasting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recently revisited the story over Labor Day weekend\u2014when it takes place. It hasn\u2019t aged completely well, but the gauzy warm feeling will never leave me. It felt prophetic, like that was the exact <\/em>moment for me to relive it, because suddenly, I saw my fourteen-year-old self again. An embrace just too tight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stand By Me <\/em>is based on a novella called The Body <\/em>by Stephen King. It\u2019s part of a collection called Different Seasons<\/em>, in a section called \u201cFall From Innocence.\u201d The turning from <\/p>\n\n\n\n

summer to fall, reaching maturity. As a kid, it\u2019s difficult to appreciate what that means when you\u2019re in the process of living it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, I was in my own friend group of four girls, and I thought we\u2019d last forever. We were so obsessed with each other, how could we not be? Probably the nerdiest girls in our grade, we had every class together every year. I was the Weird One in the group, known for being loud and jumpy, constantly spitting facts about a TV show I was watching or music I liked. A bit annoying<\/em>, some would say. But that was okay\u2014I was the quirky friend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In eighth grade, I knew things were about to change, that high school marked an inevitable turning point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJunior High. You know what that means. Next year we’ll all be split up.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the end of our freshman year, my best friend and I split off from the Other Two, just as Gordie and Chris split from Vern and Teddy. While the boys\u2019 split was the inevitability of circumstance, our split had been premeditated by my best friend, tired of the Other Two for reasons I can\u2019t quite pinpoint. They caused drama<\/em>, but hadn\u2019t she done the same by always complaining about them in some sort of conspiracy? All I remember is that she made me believe that I had wanted it, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During our sophomore year, she and I stopped talking, getting in a fight over my mental health that left me feeling like a bit of a burden. At the worst time of my life, she left me, and I had no one, really. She was able to convince our new friend group that I had committed the offense, even though the only thing I was guilty of was not having enough energy to hang out with them. I would wonder, if our original group had stayed friends, would the Other Two do this to me? I learned to become a quiet person that year\u2014unassuming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, I apologized\u2014for what, I\u2019m not sure\u2014realizing she would never do it herself, and I had grown tired of being forced to work with her in class, our words short like we didn\u2019t know each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShould we pin the spider or the butterfly in the center of the board?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe spider.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of all, there were <\/em>good memories; she had been a good <\/em>friend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s like God gave you something, man, all those stories you can make up. And He said, \u2018This is what we got for ya, kid. Try not to lose it.\u2019 Kids lose everything unless there’s someone there to look out for them. And if your parents are too fucked up to do it, then maybe I should.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my senior year of high school, I started talking to the Other Two on a regular basis again, sharing classes together without my best friend. I realized that I had missed them, and the petty grievances from the years before seemed childish. At our carlot COVID graduation, we laughed over letters we had written in eighth grade to our senior selves. I remember mine talking about never wanting to lose our friendship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps wishing to recapture what once was, the four of us met up after graduation, swapping stories in a local park like we used to do at late-night sleepovers. I thought it went well, but afterward, my best friend said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to meet up again. They were being annoying.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The more that I hung out with her after high school, the more that I realized that I had grown out of the necessity of her friendship. I knew, as I was about to leave for college, that change was imminent. I had grown tired of the way she judged everyone, of the ways in which she would try to change my opinion to match her own. I remember the exact moment that I decided it. Somehow, our fight sophomore year came up, and she said, \u201cI don\u2019t even remember what that was about.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wasn\u2019t happy when I finally declared to her, \u201cI don\u2019t want to continue this friendship,\u201d over text. I\u2019m not sure I could\u2019ve done it in person\u2014too susceptible to being agreeable. I remember her typing back, \u201cI just hope that when you look back on all of our memories, you think of them fondly, not tainted.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, she got married to her high school boyfriend, and naturally, I was not invited. We sat by each other in every class since we were ten. At recess, we would pretend to be our favorite characters from the books we read. When a teacher said, \u201cfind a partner,\u201d our eyes locked automatically. When we were kids\u2014playing out our futures in our heads\u2014we would declare, without question, that we\u2019d be each other\u2019s maid of honor. When I think back on our memories, I feel that embrace, the one that\u2019s too tight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The truth is that I try not to think of her because I do <\/em>think back fondly, and it is <\/em>tainted. Thrust into adulthood, Gordie and Chris fade from each other\u2019s lives, although less dramatically. When I was fourteen, the quote, \u201cFriends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant,\u201d <\/em>didn\u2019t have too much meaning for me. I wasn\u2019t old enough to see what happens when the distance grows. I wasn\u2019t old enough to accept that time goes on, and that the things and people that feel so immediate fade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAm I weird?\u201d Gordie asks. \u201cYeah, but so what? Everybody\u2019s weird,\u201d Chris responds. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last year of college. Anticipating the drudge of adulthood, the sheer terror of not knowing what will happen when you\u2019re thrown into the world after spending your whole life in school. It\u2019s like asking a fish to leap out of the water they\u2019ve always known, to grow legs and live on land. That feeling that life is going to change, that you\u2019re going to be reaching another stage, but you\u2019re not quite there yet, you\u2019re just on the precipice. The turning from summer to fall, when you start school, but there\u2019s still a few weeks of summer left, like you can still sense its freedom in the sticky air. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most of college, I\u2019ve felt like a completely different person than who I was at fourteen. I keep to myself, live with a little chip on my shoulder, and stress about starting conversations with people. Less concerned with what others think, more accepting of change. Away from the small town where my class size was about one hundred people, where you couldn\u2019t escape the expectations of everyone that knew you since kindergarten, I\u2019ve finally been free to flourish into my own person. Through people I\u2019ve met that embrace my quirks instead of challenge them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The friends you have at twelve are very special, indeed; they capture that freedom of childhood, but I do think you can find it again. Playing a board game on the floor of a friend\u2019s house and drinking wine, I feel like a kid in my friend\u2019s basement again, giggly and warm inside. Friends come into your life when you need them, each with an offering of something new. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlthough I hadn’t seen him in more than ten years, I know I’ll miss him forever.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back at that fourteen-year-old, I find that I miss her. I shake my head at her immaturity, the embarrassment of her running mouth and frenetic energy that made her friends call her the Weird One. I bristle at her over-confidence, but looking at her now, I want to cry and hug her. I wish I could warn her, to let her know that she shouldn\u2019t lose her spirit. I want to tell her that I\u2019m sorry I ran in the opposite direction of almost everything she was, and it feels like just now, I\u2019m starting to put back the pieces of her I lost\u2014an amalgamation of who I was and who I am now. Of all the people I\u2019ve known, of every experience I\u2019ve had, of every piece of clothing I\u2019ve tried on. Maybe that puzzle never ends, with new pieces constantly being made, but that only means that the picture is getting bigger, not being thrown away and replaced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am the only person that has known the entirety of myself, and that can seem quite lonely. But I like the idea that someone who knew me in eighth grade, someone who knew me in high school, even after years of being absent from my life, would still be able to recognize those past pieces of myself in myself now. Or that someone I\u2019ve only known in college would be able to turn back time and look into the window of my past and say, \u201cI know her.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I find that at the core, at the center, we\u2019re not that different. I\u2019ve always lived my life through art, through my imagination. I\u2019ve always been the type of person that believed the world, that people\u2019s lives, should be documented through stories. I\u2019ve always been the type of person to find comfort in rewatching my favorite movies over and over. It\u2019s as though I\u2019ve always known what my place in the world was, and on the precipice of that abyss of not knowing where I\u2019ll be, of not knowing if I\u2019ll see these people I\u2019ve met here in college after it\u2019s done, of not knowing who I might become, it\u2019s nice to know that some things remain the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris: \u201cI’m never gonna get out of this town am I, Gordie?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gordie: \u201cYou can do anything you want, man.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris: \u201cYeah, sure. Give me some skin.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gordie: \u201cI’ll see ya.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris: \u201cNot if I see you first.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“On the Precipice” a Nonfiction Story by Juli Harter When you\u2019re a kid, life can feel like your friends and yourself against the world, against your parents, against the impending doom of adulthood. Being a kid is like being in a world of your own, and that doom feels lifetimes away.  When I was inContinue reading “Managing Editor’s Pick: “On the Precipice” by Juli Harter”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.ohio.edu\/sphere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.ohio.edu\/sphere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.ohio.edu\/sphere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.ohio.edu\/sphere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.ohio.edu\/sphere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.ohio.edu\/sphere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.ohio.edu\/sphere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.ohio.edu\/sphere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.ohio.edu\/sphere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}