Twelve Years of Friendship
Twelve years is a long time for a friendship to survive childhood.
Ours somehow did.
We didn’t always have the same classes. We made other friends. We developed different interests. We grew into different versions of ourselves.
Noah became obsessed with baseball.
I became obsessed with art.
He tried teaching me baseball statistics.
I retaliated by dragging him to art museums.
Neither campaign was particularly successful.
But somehow, the friendship remained.
Then, when we were twelve, my parents divorced.
That changed me in ways I didn’t understand at the time.
Our house became quieter.
Dad moved into an apartment about twenty minutes away.
Mom started pretending she wasn’t crying.
I started pretending I didn’t notice.
At school, I stopped eating much at lunch.
Noah noticed.
He never asked me to explain.
He simply sat beside me.
Sometimes he talked.
Sometimes he didn’t.
Once, he spent fifteen straight minutes explaining why our baseball team desperately needed a new relief pitcher.
I understood approximately four words.
It helped anyway.
That was Noah.
He never seemed to need the perfect thing to say.
He simply knew when not to leave.
Years later, when I failed my first driving test, Noah showed up at our house carrying two ice creams.
“Why two?” I asked.
“One because you tried.”
I smiled.
“And the other?”
“Because you drove badly.”
I threw a pillow at him.
At sixteen, I told him I wanted to quit art because a girl in my class had laughed at one of my paintings.
Noah stole the ugliest dinosaur drawing I’d ever made.
The next morning, I found it taped inside his locker.
“Noah!”
“What?”
“Why is that there?”
He inspected the drawing.
“Still looks like a potato with arms.”
“Then take it down,” I demanded.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you can’t quit yet, Chrissy.”
“Why not?”
“Because the dinosaurs haven’t improved.”
I laughed despite myself.
That was Noah.
He never gave me long speeches.
He never tried to convince me that everything would magically be fine.
He simply stayed long enough for whatever hurt to become bearable.
And when my first boyfriend dumped me three weeks before junior homecoming, Noah showed up with chocolate ice cream.
He sat beside me on the porch while I cried.
For ten silent minutes, he said nothing.
Then he finally spoke.
“I told you he was an idiot.”
I looked at him through swollen eyes.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I thought it.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“It should.”
I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my ice cream.
Noah still tells that story.
I still threaten him every time.
But beneath all the jokes was something I didn’t fully understand yet.
Noah stayed.
Again and again, he stayed.
The Promise He Never Forgot
So when senior prom came around, there was never really a question about who I wanted to go with.
But apparently Noah believed there was.
One afternoon in February, he found me by my locker.
“Chrissy.”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember first grade?”
I pretended to think.
“No.”
His face dropped.
“Seriously?”
I couldn’t hold it.
“Noah, I’m kidding.”
He glared at me.
“That’s not funny.”
“It was a little funny.”
“No.”
Then he held out his pinkie.
And suddenly I was six again.
Raisins.
Dinosaurs.
A cruel little boy.
A promise I’d forgotten almost immediately that afternoon and somehow spent twelve years keeping anyway.
I hooked my pinkie around his.
“Prom?”
Noah nodded.
“Prom.”
His entire face lit up.
“I already bought the bow tie.”
I blinked.
“When?”
“November.”
“Noah, it was November.”
“Exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“Stores run out of things.”
I laughed.
“They were not going to run out of bow ties.”
“You don’t know that.”
That was how Noah officially asked me to prom.
He’d apparently been preparing for months.
And somehow, that made perfect sense.
The Night Everything Changed
On prom night, I was upstairs fighting with an earring when the doorbell rang.
My aunt called up.
“Chrissy! He’s here!”
“Tell him two minutes!”
“Chrissy! He’s here!”
From just beyond the front door, Noah’s voice floated upstairs.
“She said that fifteen minutes ago!”
Traitor.
I finally finished with the earring and looked at myself in the mirror.
Pretty dress.
Hair curled.
Makeup that had taken my aunt almost an hour.
I was nervous.
Not about Noah.
About everything else.
Prom had always seemed like one of those things that happened to older people.
Then suddenly, I was the older person.
I grabbed my purse and started toward the stairs.
Before I reached the landing, I heard Mom open the front door.
Then silence.
Not normal silence.
The kind of silence that makes you stop moving.
I stepped closer.
Noah stood in the entryway.
Navy suit.
White shirt.
That ridiculous bow tie perfectly straight.
And in one hand, he held a small corsage.
He was smiling.
Mom wasn’t.
She was staring at him.
“Mrs. Jane?”
Mom blinked.
“Oh. Noah. Hi.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
But she wasn’t.
I knew my mother.
Something had changed the moment she saw him.
Her eyes dropped to the corsage.
Then to his bow tie.
Then back to his face.
For one strange second, she looked as though she’d seen a ghost.
“Chrissy is almost ready,” she said quickly.
“I am ready.”
Mom looked up and saw me on the stairs.
Her expression changed again.
“Come upstairs with me.”
“What?”
“Just for a minute.”
“Mom, Noah’s waiting.”
“I know.”
Noah lifted the corsage.
“I have this.”
“I can see that,” I said.
“It’s rosemary.”
I paused.
“Rosemary?”
“The florist said it means remembering.”
He looked extremely pleased with himself.
“And I remember promises.”
My heart sank.
Mom made a small sound behind me.
When I turned, her eyes were wet.
“Mom?”
“Upstairs, Chrissy.”
This time, she wasn’t asking.
I followed her.
The moment we entered my bedroom, she shut the door.
Then she locked it.
“Okay, you’re scaring me, Mom.”
She turned toward me.
“You can go with Noah tonight, but only on one condition.”
Anger hit me before fear did.
“If this is about Noah having Down syndrome, I swear to God…”
“No.”
“Because I’m eighteen, Mom.”
“I know.”
“He’s my best friend.”
“I know that too.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Mom pressed her lips together.
For several seconds, she couldn’t speak.
Finally, she sat on my bed.
“Do you remember the year your father left?”
The question caught me completely off guard.
“What does Dad have to do with prom?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are we talking about him?”
“Because there’s something that happened that year.”
I folded my arms.
“What?”
Mom looked toward the floor.
“You were twelve.”
“I know.”
“You stopped eating lunch.”
My arms slowly dropped.
“How do you know that?”
She looked at me.
“Noah told me.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“He found me one afternoon.”
“Where?”
“In the school parking lot.”
Something in her expression made the room suddenly feel much smaller.
“He caught me crying in the car,” Mom admitted.
I sat beside her.
“Mom…”
“I thought nobody saw me.”
She rubbed her palms together.
“But Noah did.”
Downstairs, faintly, I heard Noah laugh at something my aunt said.
Mom heard it too.
Her face crumpled for half a second before she managed to compose herself.
“What did he say to you?” I asked.
She looked at me.
“He asked me if you were broken.”
My breath caught.
“Why?”
“Because you weren’t eating, sweetie. You weren’t laughing. He said you sat by yourself sometimes.”
I looked toward the bedroom door.
I’d forgotten most of those lunches.
Apparently, Noah hadn’t.
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him you weren’t broken.”
Mom swallowed.
“Then he said something I’ve remembered for six years.”
“What?”
Her fingers closed around mine.
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“He said, ‘Good. Because I don’t know how to fix people. I only know how to stay.'”
I couldn’t speak.
The words hung between us.
I don’t know how to fix people.
I only know how to stay.
Mom squeezed my hands.
“For six years, Noah has kept a promise to me that you never knew existed.”
My heart began pounding.
“What promise?”
Whatever came next was the truth she’d dragged me upstairs to hear.
And suddenly, I wasn’t sure I was ready for it.
Mom’s voice cracked.
“I asked Noah to promise he’d look after you.”
I stared at her.
“You… what?”
“I was falling apart, Chrissy. Your father had left, you barely spoke to me, and Noah was the only person who seemed able to reach you.”
I froze.
“I asked Noah to promise he’d look after you.”
Mom wiped her cheek.
“He said, ‘Okay.’ Just like that.”
Downstairs, Noah laughed again.
Mom looked toward the door.
“And then I did something I’m ashamed of.”
“What?”
“For six years, I worried you were sacrificing too much for him.”
I went still.
“Every time you waited for Noah, defended him, or changed plans because he wasn’t invited, I wondered whether you felt responsible for him.”
“Mom…”
“I kept measuring your friendship by what Noah might need from you.”
Her mouth trembled.
“I never bothered measuring it by what he gives.”
Suddenly, I saw six years differently.
Ice cream after my driving test.
That stupid dinosaur in his locker.
Those lunches when I couldn’t talk.
The porch when my heart was broken.
All those moments I’d thought of simply as Noah being Noah.
He hadn’t needed me to carry him.
We had simply kept showing up for each other.
“So what’s your condition?” I whispered.
Mom smiled through her tears.
“Don’t go tonight because six-year-old Chrissy promised him.”
She squeezed my hand.
“Promise me you’ll go because eighteen-year-old Christina chooses him.”
I laughed.
“Mom, I wasn’t going because of the promise.”
“I know that now.”
“The promise is just why Noah bought a bow tie four months early.”
That finally made her laugh.
Then we went downstairs.
Noah looked between us.
“You took a long time.”
Mom walked directly toward him.
“Noah, may I have the first dance?”
His eyebrows shot up.
“Mrs. Jane, this is not prom.”
I burst out laughing.
Mom put music on anyway.
For thirty awkward seconds, Noah counted the steps while Mom repeatedly moved in the wrong direction.
Finally, he sighed.
“Mrs. Jane, Chrissy dances better.”
“That’s why she’s your date,” Mom said.
Then her voice softened.
“Thank you for staying.”
Noah frowned as though she’d thanked him for doing something completely ordinary.
“She stays too.”
Mom closed her eyes.
That was the answer she’d needed for years.
The Prom
At prom, when the first slow song began, Noah held out his hand.
“Chrissy… You owe me.”
“Twelve years?”
“Yes.”
He stepped on my shoe within five seconds.
“You’re terrible at this.”
“Your dress is badly designed.”
We laughed until people stared.
Nothing extraordinary happened.
Nobody applauded us.
Nobody stopped the music.
There was no dramatic moment when the entire room suddenly understood our friendship.
We were simply two eighteen-year-olds dancing badly together.
And somehow, that was enough.
Afterward, Mom waited outside.
Noah carried my heels because my feet hurt.
I carried his jacket because he was feeling hot.
At the car, he opened my door.
I climbed inside, leaned across the seat, and opened his.
Mom watched us in the mirror.
For years, she’d seen me beside Noah and wondered whether one of us was taking care of the other.
That night, she finally understood.
Nobody was rescuing anybody.
Nobody was fulfilling an obligation.
Nobody was carrying the other person through life.
We were simply two people who had figured something out at six that adults sometimes spend their whole lives learning.
When somebody matters to you, you stay.
And sometimes, if you’re lucky, they stay too.