On prom night, my mother locked my bedroom door.
Not by accident.
Not because she was angry.
She turned the lock deliberately, then stood there for a moment with her hand still resting on the doorknob.
That was when I knew something was terribly wrong.
Downstairs, Noah was waiting for me. I could hear his voice drifting through the floorboards, followed by my aunt’s laughter. He had arrived in the navy suit he had been talking about for months, wearing the bow tie he had bought early because he insisted that important things should never be left to the last minute.
He was waiting for me.
I should have been downstairs with him.
Instead, I was standing in my bedroom, staring at my mother as she locked the door behind us.
“Mom?”
She turned toward me.
There was something in her expression I had never seen before.
“You can go with Noah tonight,” she said quietly. “But first, I need you to hear something.”
My stomach tightened.
“About what?”
For a moment, she said nothing.
Then she looked directly at me.
“About Noah.”
I felt my heart sink.
“And about me.”
Suddenly, the prom I had been looking forward to for months was the last thing on my mind.
Because whatever my mother was about to tell me had something to do with the person who had been my best friend since I was six years old.
And I had no idea how much that friendship meant until that night.
Noah and I had been best friends since we were six years old.
There was no dramatic beginning to our friendship. It started because we both disliked raisins.
Our first-grade teacher had given everyone a small box of raisins during snack time. I quietly pushed mine underneath my napkin, hoping nobody would notice.
Then I heard a voice beside me.
“That’s smart.”
I turned.
Noah was doing exactly the same thing.
“You don’t like them either?” I whispered.
He shook his head.
“They’re old grapes.”
I considered his explanation.
It made perfect sense to six-year-old me.
By lunchtime, we were sitting together.
By the end of the week, we were inseparable.
Noah had a wonderful sense of humor. He loved dinosaurs, remembered strange facts about almost everything, and could turn an ordinary afternoon into something memorable.
I liked being around him.
Our friendship was simple.
We didn’t think about why we were friends.
We simply were.
One afternoon, another child said something unkind to Noah.
I don’t remember exactly how the conversation started, but I remember that Noah looked hurt.
I immediately defended him.
Later, he found me sitting alone.
“Chrissy?”
“What?”
He looked unusually serious.
“Will you always be my friend?”
I shrugged.
“Of course.”
He smiled.
Then he asked me about something he had heard older students discussing.
“What’s prom?”
I explained that it was a special school dance for older students.
He thought about that for several seconds.
“Will we go?”
I smiled.
“Sure.”
He held out his pinkie.
“Promise?”
I hooked my finger around his.
“Promise.”
Then we went back to talking about dinosaurs.
At the time, neither of us realized that a tiny promise between two children would still matter years later.