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Newt's family moved into the neighbourhood when he was four. Alby was six.
Their houses are right next to each other, no fence, just a hedge that Newt's father plants one day. He doesn't know that there is a gap in between the two rows of bushes where Newt and Alby meet, crawling through the undergrowth, their knees dirty, their cheeks red as they pretend that no one can see them, no one can find them in their secret hideout.
Newt's parents and Alby's mother get along well. They spend long nights over red wine and stories and lazy afternoons in the backyard, their laughter echoing all the way up to either of their children's windows where they are sat in front of Newt's TV watching a cartoon or on Alby's bed listening to one of his audio books. Their favourite is about a group of kids and a dog going on adventures together and solving mysteries. They always stop halfway through and make the rest up themselves. It turns into a story about Newt and Alby, venturing off into the unknown, a trusty animal companion by their side, evil to defeat.
Newt turns five when Alby is still six and Newt says it's because he's going to pass him next year and then be the older one of them. Alby thinks that Newt does seem a lot older. He is very mature. Alby always draws with chalk in the streets while Newt sits in the grass and watches him. His parents never have to correct his manners or his words whereas Alby stumbles linguistically and literally. Maybe Newt is really going to age faster than him.
When Newt joins Alby in primary school, his parents start going away. Newt tells Alby that they're very busy and that they visit foreign countries for work, sometimes for days sometimes for weeks. Then they're gone for a month and Alby's mother tells Newt to stay over until his parents are back. Newt doesn't mind. He enjoys staying at Alby's. His mother had to work a lot but somehow she manages to have lunch ready when the two boys get home from school every single day.
Alby is eight and Newt is seven and their hideout in the hedge is getting too narrow for them. In the summer, Newt's parents take him on vacation for three weeks. Every day, Alby sits in the bushes, imagining the adventures him and Newt could have had instead. He starts to write them down, messy handwriting, messy stickfigues in a booklet his mother gave him. The branches scratch his arms and the leaves get stuck in his hair and he decides to cut it off. When Newt returns, he laughs at Alby's new look but he likes it. He also likes the book. They sit on the front porch of Newt's house while his parents unpack the bags and Alby reads him their adventure Newt missed. They stay up far after the fireflies come out. Newt's parents carry their sleeping son inside.
For his eighth birthday, Newt wishes for a treehouse. His father builds a massive one in an old oak tree behind their house with a ladder and a trapdoor and a small sofa inside. Newt declares it their official new hideout. Alby takes their adventure audiobooks there. He wants to invite their friends Thomas and Minho but Newt says they cannot share their secret with anyone. He makes Alby swear it. They have a sleepover every other day until it is too cold to spend the night outside. For christmas, they hang fairylights on the outside of their treehouse and drink hot chocolate.
When Alby leaves Newt behind in elementary school, he loses touch. He hangs out with George and Will, who are older than him. They have video games and they help him with his homework. He doesn't see Newt for a week, then two, then a month. Then Newt goes away. A 6 month trip to Thailand. His parents cannot leave him alone for that long. Alby wants to tell them he isn't alone but he doesn't because it is a lie. Sometimes he calls Newt on the phone and they talk. Newt is going to school in Thailand and he is quick at picking up the new language. He sounds different on the phone. Even if he is talking in English.
Newt goes to middle school. He is several inches taller than Alby, which bothers him. Their treehouse is now pictures of music groups and a record player Newt found in the attic. He also found a guitar that neither of them can play but they like to pretend while the other is singing some made up song about heartbreak and love that neither of them understand. Alby writes their stories on his mother's laptop, while Newt sits quietly beside him, pointing out spelling mistakes, smiling. Alby is glad that nothing has changed between them.
Newt turns twelve the same day Alby's mother has a car accident. Alby is in the backseat when the other car comes out of nowhere and hits straight into them. Newt cancels his birthday party and spends the night over at Alby's listening to his exaggerated recounting of the crash where no one was hurt but the driver of the other car had to pay the repair costs. He tells him to write it down. Alby does, Newt watches. Alby feels less scared of the accident when Newt is there, he realizes.
For his second year of middle school, Newt goes abroad. He is in England, his parents in Poland, Russia, France. Newt is staying with his aunts. He doesn't know when he will be returning. He and Alby talk everyday. When Alby finally gets a mobile phone for Christmas, they text a lot, sometimes all night, because for Newt it isn't the night. Time zones make it hard to get proper sleep. Maybe Newt being so far away just makes it hard for Alby to sleep properly.
Alby doesn't recognise his best friend three years later. He is sixteen but Newt is older. His accent, that had been wearing off over the years in America is a lot heavier when he greets him, but that isn't it. It is the way he walks, the way he straightens his back, the way he smiles through tears when he gets out of the car and sees Alby standing there, waiting for him. Alby cannot smile, he just cries, he hiccups, he clumsily hugs his friend. He is a messy stickfigure, Newt is a neatly typed story. He has aged a lot more in three years than Alby has. He has passed him.
He doesn't notice at first. No one does. The twitches of his fingers, the dark circles under his eyes, the uncombed hair. When Newt is missing from school for a week and neither calls nor texts, Alby knocks on his door. He knows his parents are away but he hoped Newt would open up. He doesn't. Another three days later, Alby's mother gives Alby the second key Newt's parents have given her for emergencies. He finds his friend in his room. The walls have been stripped of all posters and photographs and handdrawn pictures. His furniture has been rearranged and make no sense. Newt sits on his bed in the middle of the room looking straight through Alby. That night and the nights after, Alby spends at Newt's. He makes sure his friend eats, showers and sleeps. He calls his friend's parents and they promise to come back as soon as possible.
Newt's sixteenth birthday party is cancelled. Alby sits beside the hospital bed reading one of the oldest adventures of them, one where they have to slay a dragon in order to save a small village from destruction. They succeed, of course, and are celebrated as heroes. Newt is a hero, Alby thinks. He survived the dragon. He holds his friend's pale, limp hand, trying to write jumping from a three story school building into an epic fantasy adventure with a happy end.
Newt turns seventeen and Alby is still eighteen. They sit in the old truck that Alby got for his birthday, the crisp wind blowing through the open windows. Newt doesn't have a license and Alby doesn't mind to drive. They have been on the road for almost a week already and they have six more to go. There's a song on the radio that Newt swears they listened to up in the old treehouse on the record player. Alby isn't sure but he agrees. Newt looks out of the window, his feet on the dashboard, half heartedly singing along and Alby feels like maybe Newt isn't as mature as he seems.
Newt asks Alby to be his prom date while they are filling cartboard boxes with Alby's belongings. He is going to University in a few months while Newt is going to spend several months with his family in England. Afterwards, he will follow Alby who is studying law and study psychology. Alby never asked if it was because of his diagnosis. He doesn't need to know.
They are dressed in all black, Newt's mother takes the pictures, Newt's father sheds a few tears. They join Minho and Thomas and Gally and Teresa and the rest of their friends and stay until the next morning. Alby drives them home. Newt is smiling, humming along to a non-existent tune. His eyes are closed and his cheeks are flushed. Alby is watching him and he thinks that he loves him. He really does.
Newt's family moved into the neighbourhood when he was four. Alby was six.
It is a messy love, a stickfigure love but it is. And he wants to write it down, yell it from the rooftops, write a song about it that no one understands but them. It is a messy life. But it is. And he feels less scared of it when Newt is there, he realizes.