primary school. love.
a memory. first love? hardly. but i had a crush on you from the day we met until the day i left. did you move in late, from newcastle? memory fails me there. but i remember. from second grade until even a little after i moved away for good in 7th grade, you were really the only boy i even thought about. there was that brief stint with someone else in 7th grade...... my friends told his friends (you. oh the irony) that i liked him, and you told my friends that he liked me, and that was the end of it.

but you. remember in mrs. blight's class... i had short hair at this point, and just got glasses. (this was even before the brief, failed attempt at correcting my imbalanced vision with an eye patch.) you said, direct quote burned into my history: "you look like an alien."

you were always the first to make fun of me. come to think of it, we spent a lot of time together, with our mums leading girl guides and you and i, too young (or too male) to participate would play stupid games and crack each other up underneath tables and you had no idea what it really meant to me.
but when you would tease me, i didn't see it as the playful reciprocated flirting. but, strangely enough for me, i didn't cry about it. i just laughed with you.

but do you remember the time you ran away? it was after swimming lessons. i noticed before we even got on the bus to go back to school, but i was too scared to tell anyone. i was scared that someone would figure me out. "why were you watching him anyway?" i remember lining up to go into lunch and worrying more. lost in the vast depths of egremont while everyone else, oblivious, went on with their daily duties of lining up outside the slippery wood-floored assembly room several miles away. the collective oblivion may have fed your loneliness, or whatever inspired you to run that day. if only i could have told you then that i noticed. that i was sad and frustrated at my incapacity. i had no idea where you had gone, but at that moment i was afraid of never having a chance with you.

but then it was my fault. the whole thing in 7th grade. chris simcock. what a fiasco. i was too scared to even speak to him. was the whole thing - me following through on my petty attraction to the boy with big ears and unfortunate last name - because you had a girlfriend who wasn't me?
but going to wyndham changed us. no more gallivanting around the mission during girl guides. no more interaction. i don't even remember telling you i was about to move. i remember feeling the jealous reward of retaliation, picturing someone mentioning that i was gone, and wondering what thought would cross your mind... whether your heart would skip a beat maybe, or you'd swallow hard and try to calmly change the subject so nobody would notice that you missed me even just a little.

the people i remember most vividly from thornhill are emma, nicola, and you. emma with fondness, nicola with resentment and a little fear still, and you - you with a glimpse of that giddy young obsession, wondering if i really ever knew you at all.