Romeo’s eyes flashed again. I realized the first time it happened had only been a hint. The second time, he did it with meaning.
“Would you like me to tell you a story?” he asked. And there, in my local park, on a late summer’s afternoon, in the shade of a wizened white oak tree, reality faded and make-believe came to life around us.
Romeo painted with words, pictures so clear and vivid I can still see them sometimes when I’m caught in the quiet place between sleep and wakefulness. He told tales of magical creatures on crazy adventures. Mythical beasts and unlikely heroes. He wrote himself and Buddy into the story, and after a while, he wrote me in too. He found long sticks for us to use as blades and short ones as guards. He untied my laces and used them to fashion our swords. We defended our bounty and found hidden treasure, and when we were done, we set off again.
“Where to?” I cried, sword held high in one hand, a mud cake balancing precariously in the other.
Romeo cast his eye to the side of the park farthest from my house, slowing his pace and speaking in a somber, hushed tone. “To the dragon, of course.”
The boulder that had always been a big, inconveniently placed rock morphed before my eyes, growing scales and a gargantuan pair of wings. “Inferno,” Romeo called it. We offered the dragon the cakes we’d made—it liked them so much it almost lit Buddy on fire by accident. Once its hunger was sated, Inferno allowed us to mount it.
“Careful,” warned Romeo as we clambered onto the rock, “dragons are wild. Only the brave can ride them.”
Turns out, that day, we were the brave. We must have been because we rode that dragon until the sun hung low and the sky turned orange and pink.
“Home time,” said my mom for the fifth time. This time, despite a chorus of complaints from Romeo and me, our mothers held firm.
“We have to go now, hon. I haven’t started dinner yet and Dad will be home soon,” said Romeo’s mom. “We can meet up tomorrow though. We’re practically neighbors.” Romeo’s house was directly across the park from mine. “I have Carol’s number. We’ll arrange something, I promise.”
“Hey, Tiger,” said Romeo, turning back as his mom led him home by the hand. It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. We’d played for hours, but I’d somehow forgotten to tell him my name, and he hadn’t asked. I was wearing my favorite T-shirt that day, the green one with a big orange tiger and the wordRoarrrron the front. I loved that shirt so much that I was in a bad mood on the days it was in the laundry. By that late stage of the summer, my mom had taken to washing and drying it over night to avoid having to deal with me about it. “We ride at dawn.”
His face was splattered with mud on one side and his hair was disheveled. His cape was a little more tattered thanwhen I met him. It was twisted around his neck and hung askew, slightly lower on one side than the other.
He was a mess, that was certain. But he was heroic.
“Well, no,” said his mom as they walked toward their house. “Not at dawn, Romeo. You can ride at noon or a little later. Actually, late afternoon is probably best because it’s cooler then, but not at daw—”
“No one rides at noon, Mom. It doesn’t happen. Everyone knows that. Who have you ever heard of riding at…?” Their voices faded as they moved out of earshot.
“Goodness,” said my mom, guiding me home as best she could without getting her hands covered in mud. “What a lot of fun you’ve had.”
She took me around to the side of the house and hosed me off before letting me inside. She made me take everything but my undies off and threw my clothes into the machine along with my shoes before we went upstairs.
Lexi stood at the landing and looked down in horror, bolting to her room and slamming the door shut as I approached.
My mom drew a bath for me and helped me wash my hair, scraping her nails gently across my scalp to dislodge the dirt and dried leaves. “Goodness,” she said again as the jug of water she poured over my head ran brown.
I talked the entire time, a steady stream of “Romeo this” and “Romeo that.” She nodded and smiled as I spoke, and when I told her Romeo said that if we closed our eyes and lay under the trees, the leaves would sing us a song, she said, “Ah, I see,” and hummed softly, “Romeo is a dreamer.”
My mom was right. Romeo was a dreamer. He spun words and worlds like no one I’d ever met. We played together every day for the rest of the summer. At first, we met in the park and then at his house or mine. His pool became Neptune or lava or an underwater forest, depending on the day. Our basement was a fortress or a maze or a cave or a safe place where no one could find us.
Days dragged out and flew by. Even though I was wired and denied being tired with my last breath, for the rest of that summer, sleep dragged me under the second my head hit the pillow.
I’d never had so much fun in all my life.
My mom and I met Romeo and his mom at the gate on the first day of school. Sally, Romeo’s mom, had asked for us to be put in the same class and we were all happy the principal had agreed. Despite being in the same class, thatday, Romeo had the same big eyes he’d had the day I first met him, wide and wild, and his mom kept adjusting his backpack and telling him how lovely everything was going to be.
Romeo looked different at school. He had no cape for one thing, and for another, he’d gotten a haircut that was a lot more than a trim. The bushy mane of summer was gone. His shorts and T-shirt were neat and new, and he stood very straight.
“Okay, honey,” said Sally, kissing Romeo’s cheek and quickly wiping her lipstick off as he made a face and tried to squirm out of her grip. Her voice sounded funny, and my mom put a hand on her shoulder. “Off you go. You’ll have anlovelyday, you’ll see.”
I could feel the tension in Romeo as we walked. His arms and legs were stiff and he hung back, falling into my shadow and making himself smaller until I stopped moving and turned to him. When our eyes met, I leaned my head close to his and whispered something into his ear. A message, a code I knew he’d understand. A reminder that even though we were at school and things were different, I knew who he was.
“Roarrrr!”
A slow smile crept up his face, and though he was still very straight and upright, he knew who I was too. His eyes twinkled, and he replied, “Easy, Tiger.”
From that day onward, a precedent was set. Wherever one of us was, the other was too. My friends Dan, Ollie, and Lewis included Romeo right from the start. They seemed to innately sense there wasn’t a choice in the matter. They seemed to understand Romeo and I came as a pair.
