I Hope You Cried at the End

His name was Raphael Adams.

I punched him in the face when we were both seven years old. Lanky kid, with overgrown dark hair and eyes that looked lost. There were twenty-four others scuttling in the wood-chip playground, but my fist went straight for his face. This pursued a fantastic chase: I was a hungry werewolf and he was my victim. I howled and growled and snarled. Raphael was more of the shy type, which made him perfect for the role of prey. The rest of that day was a blur, because I think some bigger kids started to join in. They weren't very good at playing werewolves; they were too old.

On my twelfth birthday, my mom and dad decided we were going to spend the rest of our lives in a neighbourhood far west from the city. Dad said I was a strong man for helping move the boxes and not making a fuss out of it. I actually wanted to cry. But guys don't cry. I don't remember why the tears started coming, but it happened the first night in our new apartment. The air was so cold that it bit my toes. I had a dream that night where I was a huge monster like Godzilla—not a werewolf. I was crushing skyscrapers and schools and churches with my feet on the way back to the city where my real home was. I missed Raphael.

I was fourteen when I started high school. I had friends in some of my classes but they weren't real friends. Nothing was like what it looked like on TV—the grimy lockers couldn't even fit our textbooks. Then on the second day, I was bolting across the cafeteria from one wall to the next. There were either dozens or hundreds of teenagers scurrying around, but I went straight for the shoulder of a lanky boy with dark hair. The hungry wolf reunited with his playmate. Raphael looked different that day; his hair was cropped shorter and he started wearing more black. I had never seen such a huge smile on someone who had just been body slammed from the side. At least there actually was a smile and not a confused frown. There was a second where I considered the possibility that Raphael might've forgotten who I was. My chest burned at the thought of it

It kept burning until grade eleven. Jason Long! I hated hearing my name, but not when it came out of his mouth. His seventeenth birthday was coming up and he insisted I keep it a secret. So that was that: our little secret. We walked to his house like civilized human beings, and as soon as we stepped through that mahogany door the fangs came out. Us two, wild animals ravaged through four bags of popcorn until our stomachs were begging us to stop. We watched some super old indie films, and wrapped ourselves in rugs to hide from the October wind creeping in through the windows.

This is the part of my memories I replay the most: I felt my jacket pockets and then my pants pockets, panicked silently, and then dug around in my leather backpack until I found the bundle of wrapping paper. It was bright blue and poorly taped together, but I spent a wildly long amount of time on the thing. I did a dramatic gesture and offered it to Raphael. I remember watching as he began to peel back the paper with his fingers, and then ripping it apart with his teeth to make me laugh. I laughed. Then he stopped goofing and stared into his lap. I had given him a silver ring-not real silver-that merged into a wolf's face with two black rhinestones as the eyes. He stared, and then slipped the ring onto his middle finger. Are you asking me to marry you or something? He made a face at me. We joked around. I sat down in the musty rugs beside him, and told him to look again in the wrapping paper. There was a card made from yellow construction paper, from which I scribbled down a very badly written poem:

Hey loser, I mean, my dearest Raphael, I could write something about how cool you are and what colour flowers match your eyes but I figured that would suck. So if you could pretend that you just read something really poetic, that'd be awesome. Happy birthday.

Ps. I hope you cried at the end

Surely enough, he began to pretend-sniffle and fan at his eyes, like the girls in those movies about adolescent drama. You sure are a poet! He swooned and placed a hand at his heart. I think I forgot to react or something because the rest of that memory is just his eyes. Maybe I should've written about his eyes because they were unlike any other eyes I've seen before: It was two oceans of amber and dusk, swirling around inside his eyeballs. I think we had a sleepover that night, and we slept really far away from each other in the same room. I guess after you reach the age where you become a man, you can't sleep in the same bed as your friends. I wonder what age you're supposed to be a man.