“He didn’t mean it, Lisa. That door is so light, I’m always forgetting and letting it slam behind me.” I heard the edge in her voice, which usually meant that I had done something that made her sad or uncomfortable. It was the same thing I heard when the doctors were telling us about new tests I had to have or when we talked about my walking.
Quinn came back slowly to the train table. She picked up one of the people waiting to board my blue train, and she turned him over and over in her hand. As we played, I saw her glance out the window more than once, and I knew she wanted to be outside. It never occurred to me to say that to her, though. I was always happier when Quinn was playing with me. I liked Leo, too; they were both my best friends. But Quinn made me feel special in a good way. It was like she didn’t see my walker or my spindly arms. She saw the real me, inside.
Leo was my friend, too, and usually the three of us hung around together. But I didn’t think Leo ever understood me the way Quinn did until the first day of fifth grade. That day, standing on the playground with all those boys standing over me, I was scared for the first time in many years. I wasn’t so much afraid of what they were going to do to me as much as how embarrassing it was going to be, how I didn’t want to be humiliated in front of Quinn. I didn’t know if she was there yet, but I knew she would be soon. The idea of her seeing me on the ground, dirty and maybe worse, made me sway in nervousness, something that I hadn’t done in a long time.
But then a bad situation got even worse. All of a sudden, Quinn was right there in the middle of those boys, and she was yelling at them. She threatened to go get a teacher, and pretty soon they all left. Then it was just Quinn and me. Before I could say anything to her, Leo was there with us, and she was yelling at him for not coming to help me.
I knew Quinn thought she did the right thing. She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t thanking her and why Leo wasn’t praising her. But she was a girl. She couldn’t see that not letting me stand up for myself—no pun intended—made everything worse.
It was kind of funny that my first memory was of Quinn choosing between Leo and me. That didn’t really happen again until later, when we started fifth grade. That year, when Leo started playing with the other kids at lunch, I knew Quinn would rather be running around with all of them instead of sitting on the monkey bars every day with me. But she never said it, and she never left me. And I never said she should.
Maybe it was selfish, but I guess that I felt like my whole life was a little unfair. Quinn made up for some of that. If it was selfish to want her to stay near me and be my friend, I was okay with that.
