no. 36

Best Friends

We don’t look alike but we get alone just fine. Better than fine, even — he’s my best friend. We go pretty much everywhere together. Been all over. He brings the snacks and I bring the drinks and then we just set off and romp around.

If you listen close, you can learn a lot from nature. It doesn’t tell you everything just in a day, but if you listen close and keep coming back for months or years then soon you’ll find you know a bunch of stuff other people are clueless about. That’s what him and I know — the secrets of the forest. Ha. Tricky thing is they aren’t secrets, really, just that no one else is around to hear them. Anyone could learn but not anyone does. No fault of theirs. Everyone’s inclinations are different.

In town we don’t talk much. Have our own separate lives in fact. Go to different schools. He does theater stuff. That’s not for me. I do track. You know, and he’s big and I’m small and that kind of stuff shouldn’t matter but it does so I think, in town, that keeps us away from one another. He’s still my best friend though.

Sometimes I think about what it’d be like if he died. Obviously I don’t want him to die but I just want to feel what that would be like, to say to myself, “he’s gone,” and to imagine him not ever being back. Just feel that hole open up in my heart where he used to be.

Sometimes I even tear up a little bit. It feels good in a sad way to tear up. You know, I think I love him. Funny how I never thought about it that way.

This is part of The Exquisite Corpse, a daily writing challenge.