PART 1
On prom night, my mother locked my bedroom door.
That was when I knew something was wrong.
Downstairs, Noah was waiting for me in a navy suit with the bow tie he had been talking about for months. I could hear him laughing with my aunt through the floorboards.
Mom turned toward me.
“You can go with Noah tonight, Christina. But first, I need you to hear something.”
I stared at her.
“About what?”
Her eyes moved toward the closed door.
“About Noah.”
Then she added quietly:
“And about me.”
My heart started pounding.
Noah and I had been best friends since we were six.
We met in first grade because we both hated raisins.
Our teacher handed everyone little red boxes at snack time, and I was secretly hiding mine beneath a napkin when Noah leaned over.
“That’s smart.”
I looked beside me.
He was doing the same thing.
“You hate them too?”
“They’re old grapes,” he said seriously.
That was enough.
By lunchtime, we were inseparable.
Noah had Down syndrome, but at six years old, that mattered far less to me than the fact that he cheated at dinosaur trivia and laughed at my terrible drawings.
One afternoon, another boy in class told Noah that nobody would ever marry him.
I still remember Noah’s face falling.
“Somebody will love him,” I snapped.
The boy laughed.
“Then you marry him.”
Later, Noah found me alone.
“Chrissy… would you love me?”
At six, I had no idea what kind of question that really was.
“Maybe.”
His face brightened.
Then I remembered hearing my older cousin talk about prom.
“But first we have to go to prom.”
“What’s prom?”
“A dance you go to when you’re almost grown up.”
Noah held out his pinkie.
“Promise?”
I hooked mine around his.
“Promise.”
I forgot about it almost immediately.
Noah didn’t.
Over the next twelve years, our friendship survived different classes, changing interests, awkward teenage years, and everything else growing up threw at us.
Noah loved baseball statistics.
I loved art.
He dragged me through endless conversations about pitchers.
I dragged him through museums.
Neither of us converted the other.
When my parents divorced when I was twelve, everything changed.
Dad moved out.
Mom cried when she thought I wasn’t watching.
I stopped eating much at school and became quieter.
Noah noticed.
He never demanded an explanation.
He simply sat beside me.
Sometimes he talked.
Sometimes he didn’t.
Years later, when I failed my first driving test, Noah showed up with two ice creams.
“One because you tried,” he said.
“And the other?”
“Because you drove terribly.”
When I wanted to quit art after someone laughed at one of my paintings, Noah stole the ugliest dinosaur picture I had ever drawn and taped it inside his locker.
“Why would you put that there?”
“Because you can’t quit yet.”
“Why?”
He studied the drawing.
“Because your dinosaurs still look like potatoes with arms.”
That was Noah.
He never tried to fix everything.
He just stayed until things hurt less.
So when senior prom finally arrived, there was never really any question about who I wanted beside me.
But Noah still formally reminded me.
One afternoon, he appeared at my locker.
“Do you remember first grade?”
I pretended not to.
His face dropped.
Then he held out his pinkie.
And suddenly I remembered everything.
The raisins.
The dinosaurs.
The cruel classmate.
The promise.
“Prom?” I asked.
“Prom.”
Then he smiled.
“I already bought the bow tie.”
“When?”
“November.”
“Noah, prom is months away.”
“Stores run out of things.”
“They were not going to run out of bow ties.”
“You don’t know that.”
And just like that, our twelve-year-old promise became real.
PART 2
NEXT PAGE
