This Moment For Life

When I first realized that I wanted to write about Brett I was dumbfounded about where to begin. This couldn’t be written in journal form for really two reasons. The first being that journals are meant to be personal accounts of your life, and the second is that I’d probably have to lie most of the time.

Everybody has the uncanny ability to think back to an incredible event in their past. We can relive those moments and make them our present whenever we feel. But what’s the date?
Think back to the time you met your first real crush. You know the one ;). Do you remember what you were wearing that day? Who you were with? Where you were ahead? I know I do. I can picture that scene perfectly. But only what’s relevant to the memory. The backdrop is a blur and the edges are white like the flashbacks or dreams in a t.v. series. It’s all so wonderful, but I’ll be damned if I could tell you what month that was. Forget the day of the week.
It’s the same way with every memory of that importance. And I bet my left ear you could probably vouch for me on this.

So this is what I plan to do. To the best of my ability I’m going to share with you every Brett related memory I own without leaving to many confusing gaps in between. Or at least the ones pertaining to high school.
Because really that’s where this all started.
We both went to Kingston together. We both walked up those same steep cement stairs in to the smooth marble of the lobby that nerve wracking first day of my Freshman year. And then each day after that as the years went by.
Brett was intelligent. I know I mentioned that earlier.
Though we were both only two months apart in birth he was placed a year ahead of me in school. During fourth grade the teachers finally realized how bright of a student they had and then opted to move him higher at the gifted program’s suggestion. He adjusted fairly well for quite the social leap. He managed to make friends throughout all his classes, but kept each one of us in the original group close to heart.
I guess that’s why he was so well liked. He never went through that “fake” phase. Usually around junior high every classmate you know tends to try too hard to find their place in the group. It’s the time when instead of seeing everyone as your graduating class, you start to see people for their interest. “Oh look, there’s the athletes across the yard from the trashy group. On the next blacktop is the band kids socializing with the skaters.” And so on and so forth. I don’t know, I guess every school’s grouping is a tad different.
But Brett was just... Brett.

He was the boy who lived down the block with his mother and little sister. The one with the strange music coming through his headphones and the sense of humor that put a smile on even the grouchiest teacher’s face. He was the one who started high school without me while I was struggling to just get past eighth grade.
He was also the one who stopped by my place after school that first day with the most peculiar look on his face.
The high school was much bigger then the elementary building. It warped the students in the four schools, that made up our district, to join together in secondary education. He had said that it felt like ten times the amount of people were suffocating him in the hallways and so many different conversations going on that can’t help but be overheard. Everyone was so different and just gave off this radiance of being older and more superior.
Even his fellow ninth graders from the neighboring elementary schools.
It was just so overwhelming and confusing most of the time, but exciting and adventurous too.

I was worried at that point that high school would finally be the event that was going to tear his friendship away from us, with all these new distractions and everything.
Especially when his first day reminiscing got to the meeting of some new interesting characters. Three of which really got him all hyped up again after I finally managed to persuade him to take it down a notch in the lay-Z-boy.
These people were two boys and one girl he got acquainted with during his lunch period and then shared some classes. He said there was just something about them that he knew was going to be long-lasting. And at this point in our friendship I knew Brett was usually always right about such things. In a way he possessed more of a female intuition than I ever did.
Or will ever have for that matter.

The next day he had promised me the same thing. That we were just going to all get along so well. Especially with the one boy.
I’m not exactly sure how I missed the light that shone through his eyes whenever this said boy got brought up in conversation. I’ve dwelled on this thought before and came to the conclusion that my pre-teen mind was still so selfishly distraught about all that was going on. And I just prayed at that point that Brett was actually doing right by them.

Eventually during the course of that same week I learned that I, along with two more of our close friends, was set to finally meet this very special Connor over that coming weekend.