brain could think of.
“But first we have to go to prom.”
Noah frowned.
“What’s prom?”
“A dance.”
“We have dances now.”
“No. Prom is when we’re almost grown-ups.”
He thought about that.
Then he held out his pinkie.
“Promise?”
I hooked mine around his.
“Promise.”
I forgot about it before dinner.
Noah didn’t.
Twelve years is a long time for a friendship to survive childhood.
Ours somehow did.
We didn’t have every class together.
We made other friends.
We developed completely different interests.
Noah became obsessed with baseball.
I became obsessed with art.
He tried teaching me baseball statistics.
I retaliated by dragging him through museums.
Neither campaign succeeded.
Then, when we were twelve, my parents divorced.
That changed me more than I understood at the time.
Dad moved twenty minutes away.
Mom started pretending she wasn’t crying.
I started pretending I didn’t notice.
At school, I stopped eating
