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 better relief pitcher.
I understood maybe four words.
It helped anyway.
Years later, when I failed my first driving test, Noah came to my house carrying two ice creams.
“Why two?”
“One because you tried.”
I smiled.
“And the other?”
“Because you drove badly.”
I threw a pillow at him.
When I was sixteen, I nearly quit art because a girl in my class mocked one of my paintings.
The next morning, I found the ugliest dinosaur drawing I had ever made taped inside Noah’s locker.
“Noah!”
“What?”
“Why is that there?”
He looked at it.
“Still looks like a potato with arms.”
“Then take it down.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you can’t quit yet.”
