I met her when I was in seventh grade. We were in orchestra class, and sat just a few seats apart. We didn’t talk for the first few weeks. After a while, some spark lit the flame that became a raging bonfire that still burns bright today.
She is someone that “friend” doesn’t quite sum up, because that word doesn’t even come close to doing her justice. In fact, I feel like I’ve known her since the beginning. Of what? I don’t know: just the beginning. I know, with full confidence, that I love her.
I don’t remember our first conversation or the first time we saw each other outside of school. The period of my life when I didn’t know her seems awfully unimportant and boring now—sad, even. It all just fades into the blurry background when I look through the lens of hindsight.
What I do know is that in eighth grade, we took French together. Every day, we made the trek up to the high school together, laughing at our terrible pronunciation. Every project was now a group project for her and me. The night before every test and quiz, we would call each other for a few hours, only about 30 minutes of which was spent reviewing our words for the week. The rest was gossip and the singsongy sound of her sweetly innocent laughter.
Eventually, it became a tradition to go to Frosty Boy after school. The widest smile in the world would spread across my face when I saw her lean her bike next to mine on the mulch outside the ordering window. It grew even bigger when she sat down and began her animated summary of that day. She knows how to slip in the perfect joke, making even the most mundane topics entertaining. Soon, as the weather gets warmer, I hope we can bring the tradition back.
In the first few months of this year, we had AP World History together in Mr. Anderson’s class. This meant we played Age of Empires together, a month-long crash course on how a city-state built in the woods behind FHC might come about. We sometimes snuck off to walk among the trees that were tinted yellow by rays of the August sun. The green leaves, just weeks before they would fall to the ground, flitted in the wind. The sound of birdsong and woodpeckers in tree bark colored these rogue strolls, gracing my days with a few minutes of bliss.
I have full confidence that she will be my first and last love. First, because she is one of the only people I’ve truly and thoroughly loved, to the fullest extent of the word. We fight, like all true loves. We don’t agree on a lot of things. But we have the one most important thing in common: we love each other. I can see, 60 years from now or however long we live, us together. Any romantic relationships we had or have will fade into the background; we’ll die together, in silence and in peace, but most importantly, in love.
