Fourteen Boys

1

Here's to the boy who
waltzed my way out of a dark, empty street and who drew me maps and taught me
geography (this city is our city, this river is our sadness, and this restaurant is where you taught me how to recognize the language of
every pulse of a heartbeat)

•••

The first boy was named Ellis. We met in the summer before sixth grade when I had just moved into town. He lived a few houses down from me and rode his bike to welcome us to the neighborhood. At first, I thought his mom just forced him to say hi - just to see what kind of people we were. But instead, he invited me for a tour around town, and for some reason, I agreed.

Maybe it was the lopsided smile or the way his eyes shone or maybe it was the curly black hair that fell on his face that made me fall in love with him at first sight.

Ellis and I became best friends that summer but I couldn't help but fall for him. I fell in love easily as a kid, I guess. Of course, there was always that unrequited love that hung in front of my face like a big neon sign. I couldn't just shove all those feelings at the back of my mind. After all, we spent every moment of that summer together. He showed me all of his favorite spots - especially the abandoned and restricted ones.

We'd sit on the swing set in his backyard and talk about everything - our favorite books, movies, TV shows, superheroes, and whatever else we pulled off from the top of our heads.

I loved discovering things about him, even the stupid little things. Then we'd get ice cream and sneak into an abandoned swimming pool and just pretend we were somewhere else.

I clung to him so much because I felt so alone.

However, he changed when school came. He had his old friends to hang out with and I felt like an outsider. Even though we became best friends over the summer, it didn't exactly mean his friends were automatically mine as well.

Everyone looked at me differently. Maybe it was because I knew him well, I don't know. But I suddenly felt lost again, like I was thrust into a big city without a map.

Ellis didn't even stand up for me when the mean girls whispered behind my back. And maybe it was because I expected too much from him but what was I supposed to do? I invested so much time getting to know him that I didn't even realize he wasn't the same person I met.

Our friendship ended just as fast as it began and it hurt even more because I loved him. I loved him and he didn't even notice. The Ellis I knew during the summer had completely vanished.

He was no longer the boy I had campfires with in my backyard or the boy who took me to the aquarium because he thought I loved sharks. I would have loved them anyway because of him. He took me to places you couldn't find on a map, so we made our own. On soggy yellow paper, we made a map of our favorite places - in complete detail, full of stick drawings and doodles.

That map was the symbol of our friendship but he forgot about it, about all our adventures when school started.

It was painful when Ellis told me that we couldn't be friends anymore. He wanted to ask a girl out and he didn't want people to think that I was his girlfriend. That was the worst pain I'd felt at that time. Sure, it was still the sixth grade but losing a friend that young haunts you forever. Especially a best friend - there's no other pain like that.

He was the first boy to break my heart.