Growing Up Together
Twenty-two years passed the way a long shift passes.
Painfully slow in the middle.
Gone before you realize it at the end.
I packed lunches using the wrong kind of bread.
I braided hair so badly that Mrs. Hunter often intercepted the girls before school and fixed my disasters on the porch.
“You’re going to give those girls complexes, Noah,” she told me once while brushing through Ava’s tangles.
“I’m doing my best.”
“I know you are. That’s the problem!” she teased.
I worked double shifts at the hardware store.
Then triple shifts whenever somebody needed braces, science fair supplies, or new sneakers because the old pair suddenly fit nobody.
There were science fairs.
There were fevers.
There were broken hearts I didn’t know how to repair.
When that happened, I made grilled cheese sandwiches and sat beside them while they cried on the couch.
There were also periods when all three girls seemed determined to hate me simultaneously.
At thirteen, June slammed doors.
At fifteen, Claire refused to look at me for an entire month.
At seventeen, Ava informed me that I didn’t understand anything.
The truth was, I didn’t.
But I stayed.
