When I was young my family moved around a lot, so going to school felt like going to war unarmed because the act of making friends was just of my reach. In my life, I can count three friends that I could consider best friends’. The first I met when I was in Croissant Park Elementary attending the third grade. Before this, the only friend I had was my sister. Imagine a hot sticky trailer packed full with tired third graders crowded around the door, the bell was seconds from ringing and the sooner we left the sooner we got home ,and the sooner they got to their air conditioning and their family. the bell was going to ring and everyone was excited to go home but me because my sister and I were going to be alone , until mom came home like always which would be at least six and a half hours in the hot-house, That was until Adam invited us over to his house to go in his pool. that was the day I met best friend number one. that was the first time I was excited for the bell to ring.
Two weeks later I went on my first sleepover packing and unpacking my bag making sure to bring the right toys; not He-man, too boring; yes trap-jaw and figment the imaginary dragon, the perfect combo. The day was great we went in his pool and watched a pg-13 movie it was almost too good to be true. For the next couple months we would have sleepovers every weekend and hang out in class, That was until five months after the first weekend that I was invited over to his house. We were playing with our toys in his room he shared with his older brother, he wanted to make figment fly so placing his hands on the latter and pulling himself and his courage up the six stainless steel rungs to flop onto the top bunk his brother's bed. When he told me to turn on the light I forgot that flipping that switch would not only bring light but also bring to life the industrial fan attached to life. And there some other things i did not know. I did not know that Adam and figment would hit the tile at the same time, or that the light would catch in the deep gash opened in his head gifted to him the industrial monster , I didn't know that the fall would last a thousand terrible seconds or open the gash wide forever staining the white shirt the toy and my memory forever. I didn't know that the next time I saw Adam he would only smile eyes closed from his dark pine bed, I didn't know.
After moving five more times we ended up eighty miles and four grades away from that light switch. I started the seventh grade in a new middle school called West Glades situated in a nice white neighborhood, twenty minutes away by bus. After going to the office to get our schedules my sister and I part ways to go to homeroom. This is where I met Sam my second best friend. After weeks we became close, by the end of the 7th grade with only 3 weeks left in the last quarter, she told me that someone had hurt her. That someone had raped her. She would wake each morning filled with fear the day that her safety was taken from her playing on repeat. twelve days after she told me what was done to her she was found in her bedroom cold and stiff an empty oxy bottle still held tight like a lifeline trying to pull her to safety. I remember the last thing she said it was “I can't wait till it stops” I didn't know that I would never say goodbye her face is still a ghost in my dreams today.
My senior year of Highschool I met Sheldon or rather number three we both took AP art classes together and after a couple weeks and creating some gnarly art together we hung out almost every day and living only a block away from each other we’d swing by his house and then both go to work at panera working the same job. by the time graduation came up we grew close. even lighting up that mad kush together on the drive home from work and going out to the beach to sit and avoid that family drama, But since we have both gone off to school in different states, we still are best the closest friends that i've ever had when im alone after a long phone call with him on tuesday afternoons in the back of my head wonder when I will see is his eyes closed smiling in his dark pine bed.
