PLUSTER

Dani Fletcher and I first went to the Milton Public Library to research Benny Goodman for our Music History project.

We were becoming a kind of something ever since the seats in Bio were reassigned and the two of us, notoriously quiet, were moved to the back lab table.

This was always my journey. On first days, when students reigned, I would pick the seat closest to the front and furthest to the side, away from the door. A spot nobody else seemed to notice. Least of all, desire.

Within minutes, we’d end up arranged alphabetically and I’d find myself somewhere in the middle. But once identities were formed and a familiarity was forged, I’d be sent to the back.

I sometimes wondered whether this was the first decision made or the last.

If the teachers thought when sitting down to design their seating chart, “well I don’t have to worry about him so I’ll just put him back there.” Or if they only just realized on that fateful day, seeing me still standing against the wall, that they forgot to remember me.

Either way, I was never someone who needed to be watched. Or worried about. Or scolded. Or called on. I was listening. I was absorbing.

I wasn’t trouble.

I was a back of the room kid.

-

I hadn’t yet interacted directly with my counterpart.

Paul D’Amico told me at lunch, on the first day of 7th grade, that the girl version of me was on our team.

“She’s you,” he said, “but a girl.”

It wasn’t really news. I had heard rumbles before. All through 6th grade.

She was from the Carter Elementary, I went to Hanson.

“Just as quiet,” they would say. Inciting competition, I guess, for teachers pet.

It was a fascination. Probably because before we had been anomalies, but now we were an untethered pair. Not quite a pattern, but not a singularity.

-

When we walked into Bio after Lunch, she was sitting up front and Paul nudged me, indelicately, like - that’s her. But I knew. Because you know, somehow, who people are, by 7th grade.

I don’t know when the information locked in my brain. But it was there. That was her.

And it was true.

Just as quiet.

Or, quieter.

Though, that may have been her size. While I was impressively quiet, I also sort of protruded physically in a way that broke the boundary of invisibility. Dani was quiet and also the tiniest person in the school. At least top 5. Which maybe made her seem even quieter.

It was hard to deny the potential destiny of us.

Like we should -

But, how could we?

Shy kids don’t make themselves known. They let other people find them.

There’s nobody to say hi first. Or, ever.

So, in a way, Miss Ames took care of that for us when she sequestered us to the back lab table.

And, I swear, something happened in that moment.

The inevitable.

Like something rippled through the room.

Through the school.

The important burden of fate had been thrust upon us.

And something was either disrupted or healed.

-

I don’t remember who spoke first.

I’m sure we never said our names, or even hello.

I don’t know when it was decided.

Or who made the first move.

But, soon, Dani Fletcher would become the other half of me.

Her sisters would call me brother.

Her mother would call me son.

And when Ms. Shapiro told us to buddy up for our Music History project, we chose each other implicitly.

Wordlessly, as it were.

And we started spending our afternoons in the stacks on the second floor of the Milton Public Library pretending to learn about Benny Goodman, but really learning each other.

Learning what best friendship meant.

What forever felt like at the beginning.

-

So, that’s why, one month into our Senior year at Milton High, sitting in the front seat of her Christmas Tree green Jetta, covered in Craig McIntyre’s blood - wasn’t so much a surprise, as it was a commitment.

To her.

To us.

To a 7th grade promise still hidden in the stacks of the Milton Public Library.