Found an old school photo today. One of those yearly ones where they line everyone up and tell you to smile and half the kids look vaguely traumatized.
He's in it.
We were not friends at the time. For a few years, actually, he made things pretty unpleasant. Nothing dramatic -- just the sustained, low-effort kind of cruelty that kids have a real gift for. The kind that doesn't make for a good story later because nothing happened exactly, it just kind of kept happening.
I don't fully remember what changed it. At some point around thirteen I got tired of it and said something, or..hmm yeah..I did something, and that was apparently that. We became friends almost immediately after, which felt confusing at the time and still does a little, honestly.
He'd had a hard time of it. His father had died. There was other stuff. I didn't know any of that while it was happening -- you don't, when you're that age, you just take people at face value and his face was not particularly inviting.
Anyway. 12 years later, when I had knee surgery, he was the one taking me to physiotherapy. We'd meet up sometimes even after we started working.
10 years later, life did what it does -- I moved, he eventually moved to Canada -- and the contact got sparse. He told me about Canada a couple years ago, almost as a footnote.
He's still got his arms crossed in the photo.
Same face.
Drove me to physiotherapy though.
Some of the people I was certain about -- gone.