Photo: Katenadine

Karolina was the librarian type: bushy brown hair, dangly frame and a pair of glasses hanging awkwardly on her long, narrow nose. Her Russian had a bit of a drawl. “Estonia,” she replied nonchalantly to my question as we walked home from school, kicking October leaves that spread like a carpet beneath our feet.

Karolina and her mother were ‘illegals’: they overstayed their visas and didn’t return to Estonia like they were supposed to, choosing a life of struggle instead. Aunt Olya, as I called her, worked long hours cleaning other people’s homes to sustain herself and her daughter, and pay the rent for the tiny studio they occupied in the Bronx. Most of Karolina’s days were spent alone, left to her own devices.

By mid-November I was over at Karolina’s almost every day, hanging out and doing homework together. Sometimes we’d spend entire afternoons eating bananas and baby carrots – her self-invented diet – and chatting about life back home and our parents’ divorce. Despite being a year younger, Karolina somehow seemed more seasoned than me: she spoke about life and boys knowledgeably, peppering her Russian with curse words freely. At my 17, I knew none; she was the one to teach me an Estonian equivalent of the word ‘whore’. Karolina seemed ambitious; she was considering a career in modeling and constantly wore hot pants showing off her mile-long, perfectly straight legs. We even called up a Barbizon ad once. The more I grew to know my new friend, the more I sensed she was as far from a ‘librarian’ as one could get.

My family moved away from the Bronx by early January. Karolina and I lost touch and the only bits of information I could collect was through an odd friend. I was told she had changed – dyed her hair bright red, ditched the glasses in favor of green contacts and became ‘a lot more outgoing’. After graduating, she allegedly tried to enroll into college but was unsuccessful due to her illegal status.

A few years later, Karolina’s number randomly lit up on my cell phone. As we were catching up, I learned that her mother had married an American guy (making her no longer illegal), and Karolina herself had just bought a new car and a 1-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. When I asked where she got the money, she replied with an evasive “from working my ass off for 2 years”. When queried further, she alluded to working at a real estate agency.

Just like her call – completely out the blue – she once stopped by my house. During our brief exchange outside my rented townhouse apartment, I saw that the newly bleached-blonde Karolina now smoked Marlboro Lights (something she did, according to her, since she was 14; I must have just never noticed), and was getting full use out of her modelesque body in a mini skirt and tall shoes. Her boyfriend – whom I saw just long enough to tell he was in his late 30s and possibly Yugoslavian – for some reason preferred to stay in the car while we talked. With tinted windows.

It didn’t occur to me until years later that Karolina was a prostitute. Several months after our last exchange her number was disconnected and I never heard from her again.

P.S. Photo used for illustration only. Names and some facts were altered to protect identities.

Deerlings: Did any of your childhood friends grow up to be something unexpected?