My mother locked my bedroom door on prom night.
Not pulled it closed. Turned the little button on the handle and pushed it in.
That’s when I understood something was actually wrong.
Downstairs, Noah was standing in our entryway in a navy suit and the bow tie he had been talking about since the second week of November. I could hear him through the floor, telling my aunt something about the limo situation, which was not a limo situation, it was his brother’s Corolla.Source: Unsplash
Mom turned around and faced me.
“You can go with Noah tonight, Chrissy. But there’s one condition.”
I stared at her.
“I know. Curfew. That’s generally how dates work, Mom.”
“I’m serious.”
Something in her voice was off in a way I couldn’t place.
“Okay…” I actually laughed. “Midnight?”
“No.”
“Eleven-thirty. Eleven, if you’re going to be like this about it—”
“Christina.”
She used my full name, and the smile came right off my face.
Her hands were shaking.
“You have to hear something first.”
“About what?”
Her eyes went to the closed door.
“About Noah.”
My heart started going.
“What about Noah?”
“And about me.”
She sat down on the edge of my bed in her good cardigan.
“I owe both of you the truth, and I’ve owed it for six years.”
We Became Best Friends at Six Years Old Because of a Box of Raisins
I want to back all the way up, because none of the rest of it makes sense otherwise.
First grade. Mrs. Alvarez’s class. Snack time meant those little red boxes of raisins that schools handed out like they were doing you a favor.
I was in the process of quietly burying mine under a napkin when the kid next to me leaned over.
“That’s smart.”
I looked. He was doing exactly the same thing, except he’d also put a crayon on top of his napkin to hold it down, which showed considerably better planning.
“You hate them?” I asked.
“They’re old grapes.”
I thought about that.
“…They are.”
“Old grapes are gross.”
That settled it permanently. By lunch we were best friends and we have been for the following twelve years.
Then came dinosaurs, which cemented everything.
Noah knew an unreasonable quantity of dinosaur facts and had firm opinions about which ones would win in fights. I drew them.
Badly. Extremely badly.
The first time I showed him my Tyrannosaurus rex, he looked at that piece of paper for a solid four seconds.
“What is that? It looks like a potato with arms.”
I shoved him off his chair. He laughed so hard Mrs. Alvarez moved our seats.
Noah Has Down Syndrome, and at Six That Mattered to Me Considerably Less Than the Cheating
I want to be honest about how a six-year-old actually processes this, because I think adults get it wrong.
I knew Noah was different. Obviously I knew. He had a speech therapist who pulled him out on Tuesdays and Thursdays and he sometimes needed longer to get a sentence where he wanted it.
What I cared about at six was that he cheated at dinosaur trivia by looking up the answers before he asked me the questions, and then acting astonished when I got them wrong.
That was the entire nature of my grievance for the first year of our friendship.
Our friendship was simple. It stayed simple until another kid decided to complicate it.
One Afternoon Our Teacher Announced She Was Getting Married and the Whole Class Lost Its Mind
Everybody had opinions.
Chocolate cake. Vanilla cake. What flowers. Whether there’d be dancing. One kid insisted, at length, that a wedding requires a trampoline and would not be talked out of it.
Noah put his hand up.
“My wedding is going to have chocolate cake.”
“Excellent choice, Noah,” Mrs. Alvarez said.
“And no slow songs.”
“Why not?”
“They’re boring.”
And a boy across our table — Roger, and I have never forgotten his name — snorted.
“You’re not getting married, dude.”
