I was ten or eleven and a regular and you were the new kid at Sunday school and we got in a circle and talked about animals. It turned out that you knew one of my friends and I wanted to be either a panda or a tiger and our friend wanted to be a dog and you wanted to be a squirrel. I think that maybe, another kid wanted to be a turtle and dogs don’t really care but I knew very well that you liked squirrels and I thought that was the best animal and I secretly wished I could’ve said squirrel.
And so I would see you on Sundays and we would talk and you said you had a girlfriend that was beautiful and I thought that was kinda a funny thing for an 11 year old to say but I wished then that I knew someone that was beautiful, and that I could have a girlfriend. I also thought your dark basketball shoes were cool even though you hated them and you didn’t like basketball nearly as much as I did.
I went over to your house one Sunday and we ate chicken and stars and I saw your secret room full of pictures and your bedroom with the bass guitar and for once I thought that rock music may be cool and I wished that I played guitar like my dad so we could play music together. Most kids would’ve plugged in their guitar and played to show off but you knew I didn’t want to hear you do that.
You gave me a shirt, one of your favorites, to play water guns with and then we went to a baseball game that your parents had tickets to. Your older brother and sister went but they didn’t bring friends and I was the guest and we sat in the backseat and told jokes and your parents heard you say ‘balls’ and they corrected you with testicles and we laughed so hard.
Then summer came and even though you liked football best we both went to the same basketball camp and you wore the dark basketball shoes I liked so much but you didn’t think so much of and you weren’t that good at shooting but you were good at defense and you blocked shots and would steal the ball and it was exciting and I always wished I was as quick as you were.
You came over one day after camp and we went to pizza hut and you ate so much and we got cheesy bread sticks and you passed gas right before we left and I laughed so hard in the restaurant I embarrassed my mom. You had a baseball game so you had to leave early and you passed gas all the way down the steps and I laughed all the way down the steps and mom was late to take you home. After we dropped you off she yelled at me because you got to your game late but I couldn’t help but laugh the entire time she talked, I laughed about that all summer.
School started and we were finally in the same school but I wasn’t that cool and your hair got long and I would see you in the hallway but we wouldn’t really talk except sometimes on Sundays but you told me or my mom told me or your mom explained to me that you didn’t really believe in god and I thought you were a bad kid for a little and started to accept that maybe we wouldn’t be friends anymore.
The year disappeared and you met another beautiful girl but she became more of a friend and the other boys would put all sorts of pressure and questions on you but you were always ahead of your time and it took me a while to figure out what you had so long ago. Except, I still don’t have it quite as good.
Two school years later we would sit next to each other in homeroom because our last names were so close and the second day of school we both wore pink shirts and I punched you on the arm and even though you were a lot bigger and stronger than me you still said it hurt and that I gave you a good punch.
I remember the day the heavy girl fell out of her chair and we both helped each other laugh even though it was the wrong thing to do and then it happened again and we laughed harder than we laughed on the staircase and the teacher gave us a look like we were wrong but we laughed too hard to mind. And I laughed about that all school year.
I remember all of the pretty girls that would walk you to homeroom or hang out with you before school started and you would give them hugs and they looked so happy being around you.
I remember the day my mother told me you told your mother you thought that I was cool and that meant the world to me because I could not think of anybody cooler than you and everytime I saw you after that I could take a little bit of refuge in myself like hardly any other person I had ever met, even though we only talked once or twice a day, five days a week. Maybe sometimes on Sundays too.
I remember when I finally had a girlfriend and you told me you thought she was so pretty and that I had done really well and that meant the world to me because I always thought that you knew the prettiest girls and I had worried for a while that you were too cool to notice my girlfriend. But you were so much cooler than that.
I remember the night before our field trip when my father taught me to play pool and I was so excited to get out of town with you that I didn’t really pay attention at first. Then I started to wonder if you liked pool and then I thought that you would be good at pool and then I thought that maybe we could play pool together one day so I started paying attention and even though I didn’t make many shots I was better than when I started and good enough that I thought we could play together.
I remember the day of the field trip when the shy girl with the camera who was on a field trip from a school that we had never heard of asked to take a picture of the two of us. That’s the only picture I can think of both you and I.
That was at the end of the year and I forget if you signed my yearbook but summer came and you were done with basketball at this point and it was my last year at camp and then school started and we had homeroom again but you were good friends with and sat next to the girl that I liked and was too shy to talk to and so I didn’t say much to you. Then I asked her to the dance and I think she felt bad so she didn’t say much to anyone in homeroom. It wasn’t your fault even though you would always ask if she was okay.
And that first year disappeared and so did our conversations and I had a friend that was your friend and he bought the bass guitar that was in your room that one Sunday after church.
We didn’t talk again until we had math together. Your hair was short now and you looked so serious on the first few days of school, but then, someone made you laugh and it was the same laugh from the staircase.
And in the last semester the teacher went alphabetical and we sat next to each other and I was so happy for that.
And I always looked up to you in class because you would ask the questions I was too ashamed to ask and you never seemed to understand what I didn’t understand and you wouldn’t let the teacher move on until you understood it.
I always looked up to you because everyone in the room would light up when they talked to you. The girls would always take long looks into your eyes and the guys would give you handshakes and high fives. The math teacher saw so much in you, more than any of us and he would talk to you about things absolutely nobody else in that fucking classroom could have answered and it blew my mind that you were having those kinds of conversations and you were my age.
And then I would think back to a Sunday when I overheard your father say that he was so proud of how far you had come and how much you had grown and how, even though you knew that, you would never hear him say it like he did that day to another parent.
On one of the last days of school you asked me how long I had been playing guitar and I smiled when I answered. One of the girls told you to grow your hair out and you said you definitely would be and I encouraged it and told you that you had your whole life to have short hair. That these were the years to let it grow.
Then we threw our hats in the air and took pictures and I went somewhere else and you were here and my mother told me she saw you and you asked about me and you said hi and that meant the world to me and I so badly wanted to run into you somewhere in this small town but it wasn’t meant to be.
And I saw your picture on the news because these small towns don’t have any good news to talk about and then I went to play pool and I remembered everything I learned from my dad for you. After awhile, I got tired and the game got hard and I knew I wasn’t going to win. So, I scratched on the eight ball and hung up my cue stick.
I wear a squirrel necklace now. From a friend who is a girl. And I get the same kinds of questions now you faced so long ago and you answered them so well but I’m still so lost. You’ve faced challenges I will never dare take on and I won’t be able to understand what you endured. I remember when I heard the teacher say you were the best writer in her class, maybe that she had ever had and you could express yourself like no other student she had taught.
I guess writing always helped you figure things out and I so badly now wish we could have talked about writing. And I hope you continue to write and I hope you’ve figured things out now. I hope there is a pool table in the middle of a basketball court with trees for poles and squirrels living in the trees and I hope there are a bunch of cheesy bread sticks and bowls of chicken and stars and stairs to run down but there’s no baseball game to attend. I hope our names will be the same and we can sit next to each other again and you’ll wear the same pink shirt but I won’t hit you so hard this time. I hope we get to see the picture taken of us and I hope your hair touches the floor. Until then, sleep well.
