A cowbell and a beanie go to anyone who can guess from which musical the lyrics in the summery come from. It's a tough one.
She met him in the second grade. He was new; she was already friends with everybody. During a lengthy lesson on subtraction, she felt a gentle tug on her long dark braid, and turned to meet the whitest smile she had ever seen.
"I'm Tom," he whispered, "and I already know that you're Maureen."
She only nodded, accustomed to people knowing her face. She had friends in grade three and four and she had the most friends in all of grade two. It was no surprise that the new boy would have learned of her already.
"I'm going to be your best friend," he told her.
And so it began.
Sometimes she hated him for being so easy going.
Sometimes she would fly at him with a fury of her day, screaming at the world and tugging at her own hair, begging him to react with her. But he'd only fold her, calmly, into his great arms and murmur gentle things.
Sometimes she would stop speaking to him for days at a time, hoping for a reaction. But he'd act as if nothing were different, as if talking to a brick wall girl were the most natural thing in the world.
He came out to her first, at fourteen, and she squealed and promised to set him up with any guy he wanted.
She came out to him first, at twenty-three while she was still strung to a very sweet, yet very male filmmaker.
They planned their dream weddings, if only they were legal. She didn't want to have to wear traditional white; he didn't want to have to wear anything at all.
They imagined better worlds together.
She promised to take care of him when he lost another kind of love. She read him fairy tales and they pretended they were seven again.
He left her that way, playing pretend. She didn't cry, because in childhood games, the dead always come back.
She visited him a lot, each time introducing herself again, not giving him the chance to forget her.
"I'm Maureen. I'm your best friend."