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Blaine hates Kindergarten.
His Mommy told him he would love it, but he doesn’t.
The other kids are much bigger than he is, and too loud, and Blaine’s been here one whole day and he hasn’t sung a single song like his Mommy told him he would.
He doesn’t like the sound of the whistle that the teacher blows when he goes out to recess, and no one wants to play with him. Blaine watches as everyone makes friends and his tummy feels all twisty, just like it always does when he’s about to be sick and his Mommy rushes him to the bathroom.
He doesn’t want to play tag (the other kids are so much bigger), so he sits at the lunch tables by himself.
Suddenly he notices another boy, sitting in the sandbox all by himself. He has brown hair and he’s also small, just like Blaine is.
Blaine walks over to him. He realizes the boy is crying as he gets closer. His eyes look just like the bright blue sky above them.
“Why are you sad?” Blaine asks, sitting down next to him.
The boy wipes at his eyes and looks over at Blaine. “The girl with the pink headband said my skirt looks stupid.”
Blaine looks down. He didn’t realize the boy was wearing a skirt. It’s a pretty blue, just like his eyes, and Blaine thinks it looks very good on him.
“I think it’s cute,” he tells him, and the boy looks at him with those wide eyes. Blaine really likes looking at them, he decides.
“Really?”
“Yes!” Blaine insists, and then he pulls the lollipop Cooper gave him earlier in the morning out of his pocket. Lollipops always make him happy, and he doesn’t want this boy to be sad anymore.
“Want this?”
The boy takes it from him, turning it over in his hand, before smiling. “Thank you very much.”
“My name is Blaine,” Blaine introduces, and when the boy unwraps the lollipop and sucks it between his small pink lips, Blaine decides he likes him. Very much. “We are going to be best friends,” he announces happily.
“Really?”
“Yep,” Blaine nods, and he understands why the boy looks so shocked. Best friends is a big deal.
“I’m Kurt,” Kurt smiles, and then he reaches out and touches Blaine’s blue bow tie, before giggling. “It matches my skirt! We really are best friends.”
Blaine holds his hand all the way from the sandbox to where they line up when the scary whistle blows.
And he realizes that maybe he likes Kindergarten alright after all.
…….
Blaine loves laying on his Mommy’s lap at nighttime while she reads to him.
He’s warm, and sleepy, and he has Margaret, his favorite stuffed animal dog, clutched tightly in his arms. The funny voice his Mommy does when she pretends to be the frog in his favorite story always makes him giggle. It sounds nothing like her!
“Froggy wasn’t froggy anymore, he was a man,” his Mom reads, and Blaine gasps. “He was a very attractive man, too, with dark hair and eyes that illuminated the entire room.”
“Mommy?” Blaine asks. “What does attractive mean?”
“It means when somebody looks pretty or handsome,” his Mom explains, and Blaine perks up.
“Like Kurt!”
“Oh?” his Mommy wonders. “Who is Kurt?”
“Kurt is my very best friend,” Blaine says seriously, because as mentioned before, it’s a big deal. “And he is pretty. Just like Froggy.”
His Mommy smiles, then tickles his side, and Blaine shrieks, squirming away from her and giggling.
“Well, we should have Kurt over to play sometime.”
…..
Kurt loves the movie Finding Nemo. They watch it three Saturdays in a row.
Blaine loves it, too, because it makes him think of Kurt, and the way Kurt’s laughter sounds when the “touch the butt” line is said. He likes the way Kurt’s cheeks light up pink when he’s happy.
Kurt always cries when Nemo reaches the ocean, and Blaine always gives him a hug, because hugging Kurt makes him feel warm and fuzzy, and he wants Kurt to feel that way, too.
The third time they watch Finding Nemo, Kurt turns to him at the end of the movie and says, “I made something for you.”
“What is it?” Blaine asks excitedly. He loves presents.
Kurt pulls two beaded bracelets out of his pocket. They’re small, made on thin, plastic wire and filled with red and yellow alternating round circle beads. In the middle are two chunky white square beads that have the letters B and K on them.
“The ‘B’ is for Blaine, and the ‘K’ is for me, Kurt!” Kurt tells him excitedly, and Blaine smiles.
“Just like we learned in school!” he exclaims, and Kurt nods expertly.
Kurt is so smart.
“This one is for you,” Kurt says, trying to tie one of the bracelets around Blaine’s skinny wrist, but his small fingers can’t quite loop the wire together.
“We can ask my Mommy to do it,” Blaine says with confidence. “She knows how to do everything.”
While they’re searching the house for Blaine’s Mom, Blaine stops Kurt in the hallway and gives him a big, gigantic hug.
“Thank you. You are the best best friend in the whole world.”
……
When Blaine starts first grade, he and Kurt get put in separate classes.
Which is practically the end of the world for Blaine.
But then Blaine’s Mommy reminds him that they can still have play dates on the weekend, and it feels a little bit better.
One afternoon at Blaine’s house, Kurt suggests that they have a tea party.
“That sounds like fun,” Blaine agrees, and together they climb onto the counter to retrieve Blaine’s Mommy’s fancy chinaware out of the cabinet. (Blaine tells him they must be super careful, and Kurt assures him he is an expert in all things tea party).
They set up the dishes around Blaine’s dining table, and when they’re finished Kurt stands back and surveys their work. Then he heads to Blaine’s room.
“What are you doing?” Blaine asks.
“We can’t have a tea party with no friends!” Kurt answers. Duh.
He gathers an armful of Blaine’s stuffed animals and arranges them around the table, then motions for Blaine to sit and pours him an empty cup of imaginary tea.
“I feel like a grownup,” Blaine giggles, and Kurt smiles.
“When we are grown up we will be married,” he says casually, taking a seat next to Blaine. Blaine looks at him in surprise. He didn’t know that.
“We will?”
“Of course!” Kurt says, pouring Margaret a cup of tea and then raising it to her felt lips. “You are my best friend and I love you. So we will be married, I am sure.”
Blaine smiles wide. He likes the idea of growing up and marrying Kurt. It makes his stomach heat warm and his heart flutter happily.
“I love you, too,” he says, and Kurt smiles at him, blushing that pretty pink color Blaine likes.
Blaine makes a decision then.
“I want you to have Margaret,” he says, and Kurt stares at him.
“But Blaine, Margaret is your favorite.”
Blaine shakes his head. “No, you are my favorite. So you can have her!”
The beautiful smile on Kurt’s face as he holds Margaret close and rocks her back and forth is worth the way Blaine’s heart hurts a little at letting his favorite stuffed animal go.
Because it’s true.
Kurt is his favorite.
…..
Burt Hummel and his eight year old son Kurt drown on a gloomy Saturday in September, on a weekend fishing trip when their boat tragically capsizes in the middle of the lake.
Nobody tells Blaine at first.
But Blaine can hear his Mommy crying in another room, and being best friends with Kurt has made him very smart. He knows something is wrong.
When his Mommy finally tells him, she leans down on her knees beside his bed and holds his hand in hers.
“I have some sad news to tell you, honey,” she swipes her thumb over Blaine’s hand and Blaine tucks her hair behind her ear with his other small hand, wiping away one of her falling tears. Seeing his Mommy cry is making him feel sad.
“Your friend Kurt has died.”
Blaine looks at her.
At first he doesn’t understand.
He knows what death is, of course-- Death is what Cooper explained happened when he trapped that bug under a cup, the one Blaine showed to Kurt a day later because he knew he would scream.
He knows what happens when someone dies. He’s seen it in movies before. It’s what happened to his Grandma last year.
They go to heaven, up in the sky. They stop moving and speaking and they don’t wake back up.
But Kurt… Kurt can’t die.
Kurt is his best friend. He and Kurt have a play date this Saturday.
So Blaine says, “I don’t think I understand, Mommy.”
Because he doesn’t understand how Kurt could die. He’s supposed to see Kurt in just a few days.
But his hands shake and his head hurts and he begins crying, heavy, loud tears that make his vision go blurry and his heart feel very, very sad.
“Oh, Blainey, I’m so sorry,” his Mommy cries, pulling him closer, and Blaine sobs harder, feeling so sad he doesn’t think he’ll ever feel happy again, and he still doesn’t really understand, but he wants to see Kurt very badly and give him a hug.
And he can’t.
He understands that much.
……
It’s even harder to understand when Blaine asks why he can’t see Kurt’s body.
Because Saturday comes and goes, and Kurt doesn’t show up for their play date.
But Kurt must be somewhere, he thinks. He knows he’s somewhere. He thumbs over the beads of his bracelet and knows that his best friend is out there. He has to be.
He saw his Grandma’s body when she died. So where is Kurt’s?
He just wants to see Kurt again.
“Did he disappear?” Blaine asks while his Mother cuts up an apple, sitting at the counter top and staring at her curiously. “When he went to heaven?”
His Mother sets down a knife, looks at him for a long time with watery eyes that make Blaine’s heart feel heavier in his body. He doesn’t like it.
“No, sweetie,” she answers, and then she kneels down in front of him. “Kurt was at a lake when he went to heaven. That’s where he will always be.”
So that’s where Kurt is, Blaine thinks.
…..
Cooper is the first one who takes him to the lake where Kurt died.
Blaine sits on the dock and stares out at the rippling blue water. The color of it reminds him of Kurt’s eyes.
He looks around, at the trees, at the puffy white clouds in the sky, at the bug crawling across the wood near his foot.
But he doesn’t see Kurt anywhere.
“Cooper?”
“Yeah, Squirt?”
“I don’t think I understand death,” Blaine admits, and his eyes are starting to get wet and fuzzy with tears. “Because Mommy said this is where Kurt would always be, but I don’t see him here.”
Cooper walks over and sits down next to him.
“Kurt is here,” he explains gently, and Blaine looks up at him. Cooper is so smart, just like Kurt is. “But you won’t be able to see him, squirt. Because he’s down there, beneath the water. Remember how Grandma went in the ground?”
Blaine nods. “So this is where Kurt went in the ground?”
“Yes.”
Blaine bursts into tears, sudden and quick and shaking through his small frame. Cooper pulls him into a hug and Blaine goes willingly, burying his face into his shirt.
“I want to see him, Cooper,” he cries, and Cooper strokes through his curls. “But I don’t think I can.”
“I know, squirt,” Cooper says soothingly, voice wet with tears, and Blaine burrows further into his chest, squeezing around his torso.
Suddenly, Blaine understands a little too much.
…..
“Hey, Kurt,” Blaine smiles softly, staring up at the blue sky. He throws a pebble into the clear, reflecting water, just to see the ripple echo across in waves.
“I’m starting middle school tomorrow,” Blaine tells him. “You would be, too, if you were still here.”
He sits in silence for a moment, chest panging a little too tightly for words. It eases though, when Blaine soaks in all the brilliant shades of blue around him, and thinks, not for the first time, what a magnificent place this is for Kurt to rest.
It’s beautiful, just like he was.
“I’m really nervous, but I’m going to be positive because I know that’s how you would want me to be.”
Blaine looks down at his bracelet, strokes over the beads, and finds the courage he needs to brave the daunting halls of middle school.
Which, just like Kindergarten, isn’t all that bad.
…….
“Hey, Kurt.” Blaine dips his feet into the water, feeling the chill on his toes. “I hope you’re doing well up there.”
He looks over the pine trees he knows so well, every distinct branch and needle that frames the shimmering lake.
“Cooper says it’s silly that I still come here and talk to you, but I don’t think it is. He says we might not have even been friends by high school, but I think we definitely would have been. I think you would have been positively fabulous and I would’ve pined. Hard.”
He laughs to himself, looks down at his wrist and thumbs over his skin. His bracelet fell off a long time ago, but the action is an old habit.
“I guess it’s weird to think we still know each other, but you are still the best friend I’ve ever had. And I miss you. Every day.”
Blaine looks up at the sky, as he so often does, and hears the rustle of Kurt’s laughter in the breeze, feels his touch in the warming rays of the sun.
…….
“Hey, Kurt.”
Blaine settles down on the dock, twirling his ring between his fingertips.
“I know I haven’t been here in a really long time… I’m sorry about that. I promise I haven’t forgotten about you.”
He’s changed, grown a little taller and a little wiser, but the lake hasn’t, looks exactly the way it did when Blaine first visited.
“You see… I’m here today because I’m getting married tomorrow. And seeing as we were supposed to be married… it didn’t feel right to go through with it without asking if you would give me away first.”
Blaine wipes a tear away from his eye.
“I know it’s silly. That was seventeen years ago. But I’ve loved you every day since and I always will. I know you’d want me to be happy, just like I know you are up there. So I’d like to ask for your blessing.”
…....
“This is beautiful,” Kurt says, sitting down next to Blaine and breathing a deep, full breath of fresh air.
“Isn’t it?” Blaine asks, sighing contentedly and staring up at the sky. He hasn’t been here in years, but he can feel him welcoming him back in the singing chirp of the birds.
“Dad?”
Blaine looks down at his son, ruffles his unruly curls with a chuckle, and takes a deep breath.
“I brought you here because when I was eight years old, this is where my best friend died.”
“Kurt?” Kurt asks, and Blaine smiles, nudging his shoulder.
“Yes. Who you’re named after.”
Kurt smiles, gazing up at the sky alongside Blaine and taking his father’s hand in his.
“I love it.”
Blaine smiles, thinks about his beautiful, sweet Kurt, and lets the sunbeams fill him with joy.
“I do, too.”