When I Was Six, I Promised My Best Friend We’d Go to Prom Together—Twelve Years Later, Mom Locked My Bedroom Door and Told Me the Truth 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. “You can go with Noah tonight, Christina.
But first, I need you to hear something.” Her eyes moved toward the closed door. 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. He was doing the same thing. “They’re old grapes,” he said seriously. 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. Later, Noah found me alone. “Chrissy... would you love me?” At six, I had no idea what kind of question that really was. Then I remembered hearing my older cousin talk about prom.
“But first we have to go to prom.” “A dance you go to when you’re almost grown up.” Noah held out his pinkie. I hooked mine around his. I forgot about it almost immediately.
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. 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. Mom cried when she thought I wasn’t watching. I stopped eating much at school and became quieter. He never demanded an explanation. Years later, when I failed my first driving test, Noah showed up with two ice creams.
“One because you tried,” he said. “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.” “Because your dinosaurs still look like potatoes with arms.”.