Being Friends

The circumstances of Ronnie, Mini, and Caroline’s relationship may not be relatable to our reality, unless someone has actually summoned a spiritual mother before, but Alice Sola Kim provides a really great story about teenage girls and friendships. She takes away the stereotypical teenage girl tropes and just allows her characters to each be their own person. Their trio is not perfect, they all have opinions of one another that they keep in the back of their mind. For example they always drop Caroline off first to talk without her, they refer to Mini as “a total bitch” for being sharp, and Ronnie is judged for her inability to be open with the rest of them. They still all love one another though, they still care. Their differences do not manifest as conversations behind each other’s backs, but rather in their own thoughts and analyses of one another. It is their differences which made the friendship dynamic work to make a refreshing take in the world of highschool friendship stories. 

        The friends are all different which creates some awkward interactions. There are moments where they seem angry at one another or that they do not fully like one another, but Alice Sola Kim does a great job of encapsulating moments of joy in friend groups. These memories that will stick with them for the rest of their lives even though their friend group has ended. It is incredibly realistic for highschool friendships to end, just as middle school and elementary friendships ended, but it does not mean that those happy memories disappear.  At the end of the story the girls return to where they first met, though in different circumstances. Mini and Caroline think that “maybe, bringing it all back full circle would help” (71). They recognize the memory they had before of them all laughing together about an inside joke. There is no great reunification of the girls, but it gives an overall sense that it was worth it for them to have once known each other.  

One of the best lines in the story is “She once loved them too, you know. Then her mother turned our head and we walked away” (71). This sentence clearly shows the new change in Ronnie. With the mother now partially animating her, she has a double consciousness. One which is her teenage self and one which is an adult. The mothers advice eventually leads her to turn away from her friends and it gives insight into how we may reflect on our friendships as we get older. The mother has a broader outlook on Ronnie’s life, and we may never know whether or not it was a good decision, but the mother obviously felt as though Ronnie’s childhood friendships were meant to be a memory of the past. Ronnie loved the Mini and Caroline who did not know the truth about her, but now because too much has changed it is hard to picture rebuilding. Ronnie built her friendships on an already unstable foundation of guilt and shame and that is what eventually led to the downfall. Neither Ronnie, Caroline, or Mini could ever see each other the same after participating in summoning the mother. 

The significance of having good, realistic depictions of teenage girls is so society overall will see them with more depth and that young people themselves can find something to identify with as they navigate their own relationships. Ronnie, Mini, and Caroline are normal. They are not hypersexualized, their femininity is not part of a punchline, and their interests are not made fun of. They are just teenagers trying to understand themselves. Their circumstances may not apply to everyone, but at the core Alice Sola Kim provides us with ideas of friendship that are realistic to our reality.