At 6, I Promised My Best Friend with Down Syndrome We’d Go to Prom Together – 12 Years Later, Mom Said I Could Go with Him Only on One Condition
He considered that.
Then I remembered something my older cousin had been talking about.
“But first we have to go to prom,” I added.
“What’s prom?”
“A dance.”
Noah frowned.
“We have dances now.”
“No. Prom is when we’re almost grown-ups.”
“Oh.” He held out his pinkie. “Promise?”
“What’s prom?”
I hooked mine around his.
“Promise.”
I forgot about it by dinner.
Noah didn’t.
***
Twelve years is a long time for a friendship to survive childhood.
Ours somehow did.
We didn’t always have the same classes. We made other friends. We developed different interests.
Noah became obsessed with baseball.
I forgot about it by dinner.
I became obsessed with art.
He tried teaching me baseball statistics.
I retaliated by making him visit art museums.
Neither campaign succeeded.
Then, when we were 12, my parents divorced.
That changed me in ways I didn’t understand at the time.
Our house became quieter.
Then, when we were 12, my parents divorced.
Dad moved into an apartment 20 minutes away.
Mom started pretending she wasn’t crying.
I started pretending I didn’t notice.
At school, I stopped eating much at lunch.
Noah noticed.
He never asked me to explain.
He just sat beside me.
Sometimes he talked.
Sometimes he didn’t.
He never asked me to explain.
Once, he spent 15 straight minutes explaining why our baseball team needed a new relief pitcher.
I understood approximately four words.
It helped anyway.
Years later, when I failed my first driving test, Noah appeared at our house carrying two ice creams.
“Why two?”
“One because you tried,” he said.
“One because you tried.”
I smiled.
“And the other?”
“Because you drove badly.”
I threw a pillow at him.
At 16, when I told him I wanted to quit art because a girl in my class had laughed at one of my paintings, he stole the ugliest dinosaur drawing I’d ever made.
“Because you drove badly.”
The next morning, I found it taped inside his locker.
“Noah!”
“What?”
“Why is that there?”
He inspected it.
“Still looks like a potato with arms.”
“Then take it down,” I demanded.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you can’t quit yet, Chrissy.”
“Why not?”
“Because the dinosaurs haven’t improved.”
“Still looks like a potato with arms.”
I laughed despite myself.
That was Noah.
He never gave speeches.
He just stayed long enough for whatever hurt to become bearable.
And when my first boyfriend dumped me three weeks before junior homecoming, Noah showed up with chocolate ice cream.
He sat beside me on the porch while I cried.
He just stayed long enough for whatever hurt to become bearable.
After 10 silent minutes, he finally spoke.
“I told you he was an idiot.”
I looked at him through swollen eyes.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I thought it.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“It should.”
I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my ice cream.
Noah still tells that story.
I still threaten him every time.
“I told you he was an idiot.”
***
So when senior prom came around, there was never really a question about who I wanted to go with.
But Noah apparently believed there was.
One afternoon in February, he found me by my locker.
“Chrissy.”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember first grade?”
I pretended to think.
“No.”
His face dropped.
“Seriously?”
“Do you remember first grade?”
“Noah, I’m kidding.”
He glared at me.
“That’s not funny.”
“It was a little funny.”
“No.”
Then he held out his pinkie.
And suddenly I was six again.
Raisins.
Dinosaurs.
A cruel little boy.
A promise I had forgotten that afternoon and somehow spent 12 years keeping anyway.
And suddenly I was six again.
I hooked my pinkie around his.
“Prom?”
Noah nodded.
“Prom.”
Then his entire face lit up.
“I already bought the bow tie.”
I blinked. “When?”
“November.”
“Noah, it was November.”
“Exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“Stores run out of things,” he said.
“I already bought the bow tie.”
“They were not going to run out of bow ties.”
“You don’t know that.”
That was how Noah officially asked me to prom.
***
On prom night, I was upstairs fighting with an earring when the doorbell rang.
My aunt called up.
“Chrissy! He’s here!”
“Tell him two minutes!”
“Chrissy! He’s here!”
From just beyond the front door, Noah’s voice filtered in.
“She said that 15 minutes ago!”
Traitor.
I finished the earring and checked myself in the mirror.
Pretty dress.
Hair curled.
Makeup that had taken my aunt almost an hour.
I was nervous.
Not about Noah.
About everything else.
I was nervous.
Prom had always seemed like one of those things that happened to older people.
Then suddenly I was the older person.
I grabbed my purse.
Before I reached the stairs, I heard Mom open the front door.
Then silence.
Not normal silence.
The kind that makes you stop moving.
Prom had always seemed like one of those things that happened to older people.
