It was a sticky September day that I first met him, the kind that digs its claws deep into your skin. What other kind of day could it have been? We were not the mild kind of combination.

I, decked out in my bright pink Wilderness Experience backpack, every zipper clipped with starbursts of keychains, had never made the decision that I wanted a friend. It came in subconscious know-hows, like how I'd packed extra pens and paper, even though I probably wouldn't use them myself. I'd secretly brought my favorite Cabbage Patch Kid in the front pocket of my backpack. But I, with a limp wad of hair as my crude excuse for a ponytail and a clumsy line of roll-on lip gloss across my lips, was not necessarily the most sane person to grace this playground. Though, in the moment, I thought I looked cool enough.

It was the middle of Reading, a couple days into the first grade. I remember I couldn't stop staring at the walls, which were covered in oceanic murals that swept like starscapes around us. I was stuck in a cluster of desks at the center of the room, and I hated not being able to touch it. Feel the paint, cold under my fingers.

As I was in this constant cycle of awe, the boy next to me nudged my elbow. "Hey," he whispered, pointing a pudgy finger to an unfamiliar word in his book. "What's this?"

I leaned in a little closer. "A... An...Ch... Anch-or?"

"What's an anch-or?" He pronounced it how I did. I pulled his book a little closer and planted my finger onto an odd, loopy object above the word. He nodded understandably and thanked me, ever so cordially, then returned to laboriously inching through the story.

The day was sweaty and steaming, as promised, and when they sold popsicles in the cafeteria, I devoured two. By the time I was on the bus for the ride home, everybody's dying of heat. My shirt had slicked to my back. I ran my hand along my forehead to remove the film of sweat settled there, but nothing helps; it kept replacing itself.

I felt a nudge at my shoulder and turned around to find the boy in the seat across from mine. "Hi!" I chirped quietly.

"Mrs. Stratford said it was pronounced ank-or," he reported.

I knit my eyebrows. "Words are weird."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Why were you staring at the wall the whole time?"

I thought for a second, picturing the room in my head. "I like the colors."

"Yeah," he said again, like he's stuck echoing the same phrase. He didn't ask my name until the next day, when he stole a cheezit from me.

I asked his: Chandler. It sounded like wine glasses and wind chimes clinking together. And when he told me to just call him a nickname, I scoffed and pushed him off the bus seat. He was not going to try to cheat me out of all those pretty syllables.

By fall break, he was over at my house every afternoon with two nerf guns, locked and loaded, and an oversized cowboy hat that practically swallowed his head up. We would play war with the other neighborhood kids until the sun dipped under the tree line and the sky was dip-dyed into night.

A late night in the middle of summer, his dad set us up with s'mores, oozy from the microwave, and a tent in their backyard. I told spooky stories and he tried to not be scared. We held our days as they were golden, soft, melting between our fingers.

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This chapter needed to happen. Sorry the writing is a little weird lol. The next chapter is a lot better I promise ;)

Published 11-21-16
Next chapter 11-25-16