Chapter Text
Sun-warmed metal greeted your sweaty palm as you ascended the tallest jungle gym, relishing in the crisp September breeze that shifted your hair around. From the top of the bars, you could observe your kingdom with an imperious eye, letting a grin stretch across your face and reveal your oversized front teeth. Your name was John Egbert, you were six years old, and it was your first day of kindergarten.
It was all so exciting! As you glanced down from your seat in the sky, you could see what had to be a million other kids running around, and you wanted to be friends with all of them! Before today, the most kids you ever saw in one place were your cousins at your family reunion, and that was only--you frowned and counted on your fingers—four kids! Counting you. You didn’t have enough fingers to count the kids on the play ground.
Your dad had dropped you off this morning with a shaving-cream scented kiss pressed to your forehead and a fatherly warning to “be have”. You didn’t know why he always told you that—you were ALWAYS ‘have’! Right now you were playing your favorite game: you were the prince of a golden kingdom, and you and your hammer beat all the bad guys until you could become king! Not having anyone to play with yet, you decided to use your wind powers to fly up to the top of a mountain and find some. A good hero always had friends. Everybody already seemed to be playing with someone, though. A bunch of boys kicked around a red rubber ball by the fence, a group of three was having a contest to see who could stay on the monkey bars longest without falling, and some girls sat in a circle by the swings and played some dumb girly clapping game. Just as you were beginning to get the same twisting feeling in your stomach that you got when you lost your dad in the grocery store, you spied a small, pale figure sitting on the edge of the sand box, staring intently at something cupped in his hands.
Quick as a flash, you scrambled down the jungle gym—the mountain—and bounded over to the boy, beaming with excitement. You plopped down next to him and leaned over his hands, staring at what he held.
“Eeew, gross! Why are you holding a dead mouse?” You jerked back, not wanting to touch it. It was only then that you looked at the boy’s face, and you were surprised to see big, pointy sunglasses hiding his eyes. Why was he wearing those? You stared, mouth hanging slightly open, until he spoke.
“Dead things are cool.” You kept staring, and the boy fidgeted. “Bro told me I’m going to die some day.”
This shook you out of your trance. You puffed out your chest, giving him your most heroic smile. “Not me! I’m going to be king!”
The kid gave you a funny look—at least, you think he did. His nose sort of crinkled. “You can't be a king, stupid.”
Your eyes widened. “You can’t say that word! And I am too going too be king. You should play with me, and you can be king too!” You stood up and brushed off the seat of your pants, which had sand all over it. “Only don’t bring the mouse. It’s gross.”
The boy hesitated for a moment, then gave you a small smile. That made you really happy! You hadn’t seen him smile yet, even though the other kids on the playground were all laughing happily with each other. It made you feel proud that you were the one to make him smile.
“Okay, but I don’t want to be a king. Kings are stupid; all they do is sit on dumb chairs all day and talk. I want to be a knight.” You noticed he spoke a little funny: slower than you, and making the way he said “I” sound a little like “ah”, and a few other things that you couldn’t quite place. Deeming this unimportant for the moment, you grinned at him and tugged his arm to help him stand up. He dropped the mouse into a hole under that sand box and let you tug him forward.
“I’m John!” you offered brightly, then held out your hand because your dad said that’s what gentlemen do. The boy looked at your hand for a moment, seemingly confused, and then tried to high five it. Did his dad not teach him to be a gentleman?
“Dave.”
“You’re weird!” you laughed. Finding a stick on the ground, you brandished it in his direction. “This is my hammer! We have to go fight bad guys now!”
Dave glanced around and found a stick of his own. “Hammers are lame. Swords are a lot cooler.” Despite your “lame” hammer, he ran after you, and together you rounded up the bad guys and sent them to jail, which was the jungle gym you had climbed earlier. Dave wanted to kill his bad guys, but you stopped him because everyone knows good guys don’t kill bad guys, they just put them in jail or wait for them to fall off a cliff or something. By the time the teachers came out and shepherded you and Dave and all the other kids inside, you were panting and laughing and Dave even gave you another smile, which made you super happy. You ate Goldfish crackers together for snack, and you offered him some of the Gushers your dad left in your backpack but Dave said “they look like caterpillar poop” and wouldn’t eat any.
At nap time, you unrolled your mat next to Dave’s and shared your blanket with him, since his Bro forgot to pack his. Neither of you slept—naps were for babies! Also you were way to excited to sleep. Dave whispered to you that his Bro told him to never let his guard down, and he was pretty sure falling asleep in a strange classroom was letting his guard down so he wasn’t going to do it. Instead, you told Dave the jokes that your dad was always cracking, trying to make him smile at you again, and he did, but only because “that was the dumbest thing I ever heard, John”. You laid together on the hard classroom floor until your teacher waved a stupid girly plastic want over your heads and said “Wake up sleepy heads!” to tell you that nap time was over.
By the end of the day, you and Dave were inseparable, and you hugged him goodbye when your dad came to pick you up. Tomorrow was going to be so much fun!
On the drive back home, you bounced up and down in your car seat, telling your dad all about your new best friend and how you were going to fight a dragon tomorrow at recess. You thought about asking him if you could bring an extra blanket for Dave to use tomorrow at nap time, but secretly you liked snuggling close to Dave so you didn’t mention it.
The next day, it looked like Dave had the same thoughts you did, because he said he didn’t have any blankets at his house so he had to keep using yours. Bro said so, so he had to. You knew he was lying, but you didn’t mind one bit.
♦
It wasn’t very long into school before Dave revealed himself to be the best artist in the class, so today you just sat at the coloring station and watched him draw a crocodile, in awe of his skill. He used red for everything, though, and when you said “Aren’t crocodiles green?” he just shrugged and said “Red is my favorite color.”
You laid your head down in the crook of your elbow and watched the tip of Dave’s crayon scratch across the page, and suddenly you remembered the question you had the first time you saw him.
“Why do you wear those sunglasses?” Since meeting him, you guess they were so much a part of him that you just stopped questioning them. But now that you said it out loud, the question burned in the air and you waited in anticipation for his answer.
“First, they’re shades. Shades are way cooler than sunglasses,” he informed you without looking up from his paper. You were pretty sure “shades” were the same thing as sunglasses, but Dave was smarter than you at a lot of things, so you let it go. “Second, I could ask you why you were those glasses.”
You were slightly surprised that he turned the question back at you. “I can’t see very well without them. Dad says bad eyesight runs in our family.” Did Dave need his shades to see?
“Yeah, well being cool runs in mine. So we gotta wear shades.”
“Oh.” It made sense. Cool people always wore sunglasses, and Dave was the coolest person you knew. You continued watching him draw, content with his answer.
Kindergarten passed in a blur of playgrounds and sleepless nap times and learning, and before you knew it, it was the last week of school and your class was taking a field trip to the zoo. You had to pick a buddy, and naturally you and Dave paired up immediately.
The zoo was hot and kind of stinky, but you and Dave were way too engrossed in the animals to care. You held his hand as you bounced from exhibit to exhibit, and vaguely you thought you wanted to study animals when you grew up. Animals were the coolest. Your favorite part was the reptile house, but Dave kept asking you when your class would go see the penguins, which of course you couldn’t answer. When your teacher finally led you to the penguin tank, though, Dave pulled you to the front of the crowd and pressed his hand against the glass, leaning as close as his shades would let him.
You had been largely ignoring the tour guide this whole time, but one thing she said caught your attention. “Penguins are special in the animal kingdom because they mate for life, like humans. We have two married pairs, as you can see…” Married? Penguins couldn’t get married! That was ridiculous. You giggled a little.
“Heh, Dave. Those penguins are married!”
“Mhmm,” he said vaguely, too caught up in the little birds as they hopped from rock to rock.
“But they’re all wearing tuxedos! Isn’t the girl getting married supposed to wear a wedding dress?”
“You’re being dumb, John,” he murmured, still staring into the exhibit.
You sat on the ledge and leaned against the glass, pouting because Dave wasn’t paying attention to you, but then the greatest idea you ever had popped into your head!
“Dave! We should get married!” You stood back up and grabbed Dave’s hand again, bouncing excitedly. Dave finally unglued his attention from the penguins and gave you that skeptical nose-crinkle look he had.
“What? Two boys can’t get married, John.”
“Sure they can! All those penguins are wearing tuxedos, so they must be boys, and they got married! Also, we’re best friends. Dad says when you marry someone they’re your best friend!”
“No, they can’t. Bro says two boys getting married is illegal. He says it’s stupid, but it’s true. ”
You wrinkled your nose at that news. “That’s so dumb. Well, we should get married anyway! It can be in secret. Nobody has to know!”
Dave thought about it for a minute, then gave you a small smile that makes you grin back even bigger than before. “Okay,” he said.
“But we can’t do it until we’re grown-ups, because only grown-ups are allowed to get married,” you said. Dave nods.
You walk through the rest of the zoo still holding Dave’s hand, somehow even happier than you were before. When your dad comes to pick you up after school, you glance around and then lean into the front seat to whisper in his ear.
“Dave and I are getting married!” you exclaim in a hushed voice, beaming despite the thrill of fear at doing something illegal that rushes down your spine. But you and Dave were good guys, so even if you were caught you wouldn’t go to jail, because that was where the bad guys went.
Your dad looks at you in amusement, and you’re glad that he’s not mad at you for doing something illegal. “Is that so? Well, make sure to invite me to the wedding.” You smile and nod enthusiastically, then buckle yourself into your car seat. Dave is standing in the car rider line a few yards away from your car, and you wave at him as you drive away. You can’t wait to get married to him!