Chapter Text
Alex Walter and Kiley Zhou have been best friends since Kindergarten. Ask anyone in Silver Falls who knows the pair, and they'll say they grew up like they were attached at the hip.
It all started on a day in late August. The weather was pleasantly warm, as the tail end of summer fizzled out. Katherine Walter dropped off a freshly five-year-old Alex at the doors of one of only three kindergarten programs in town, not including the Montessori program run by Mrs. Lacey from the church.
Taking one look at the frog-themed classroom decor, Alex dropped to the floor and clung to his mother’s leg, refusing to let her leave. He was not happy to be leaving his brothers at home. He had never been on his own before, without the constant presence of his brothers Cole, Danny, and Nathan. Will was much too old to be playing with him, being already fifteen and in high school. His girlfriend, Hayley, however, always loved to play with him when she came over.
Katherine had to convince him to let go for ten minutes, through fits of crying and pouting. Eventually, he calmed down and started playing with some blocks in the corner, near the door, just in case his mom came back to get him.
That’s when he saw her.
Dark hair pulled into partially done pigtails, with bangs cut bluntly straight across her forehead. Her clothing was a size too large for her tiny frame. She looked as nervous as he was. Her backpack was a little worn but with delicate embroidery stitching out her name on the shoulder strap.
Kiley.
Kiley was not having a good day, but most days were iffy lately. She had just moved to Silver Falls over the summer. Moved is a generous term for it. Her mom had dropped her off at her grandparents'... and never came back. She remembers calling out for her, watching as the little red sedan drove away, her twin baby brothers in the back.
“Mommy!” she cried out while her grandma rubbed small circles on her back, the knees of her pink leggings getting grass stains that wouldn’t come out. No matter how hard Grams tried.
She stayed inside that whole summer. Gramps and Grams called her mom every day for the first couple of weeks. Then every week. Then they stopped trying.
That’s when the lady in the suit came by. Silver Falls doesn’t have a child protective services office in town, so she came all the way from Lockwood. Kiley watched as the strange, monotone woman talked with her grandparents at the dinner table.
“Due to parental abandonment, she will have to be placed within the system.”
“We can’t do that to her!” Gramps grumbled in hushed tones. “That is our granddaughter. She will live with us.”
“Can we become her legal guardians?” Grams asked, backing up her husband. “We are her next of kin.”
The strange woman paused before speaking again.
“That would require her mother giving up parental rights. What about the girl’s father?”
Kiley stiffened. She’s the one who found her father asleep, but he never woke up. Doctors said he had an aneurysm. There was nothing they could have done to prevent it or save him.
Her mother was never the same after that. Grams called it postpartum depression. Whatever that meant. All Kiley knew was that her mom was sad. So sad that she wouldn’t get out of bed most days, except for a month ago when she dropped Kiley off at her grandparents.
“He passed away six months ago.” Gram's voice.
“Then we just need to get her signature on this document. I will try to see if the agency can get in contact with her.”
Kiley clutched onto her backpack tightly as she walked into the classroom. She had never seen this many kids her age, except when she went to the park back in her neighbourhood in Denver.
She felt like crying, but Gramps told her to be strong. To make friends.
Alex noticed the tears threatening to fall from Kiley’s face and felt his body move before his brain could catch up.
“Wanna come play?” he asked her. For some reason, the sight of her tears unnerved him. Maybe it was because he’d never seen a girl cry before.
Kiley took in the sight of the boy in front of her. He was shorter than her, with dark brown hair that slightly curled at the nape of his neck. His face was tanned and covered in freckles, like little constellations.
His hazel eyes were filled with hope, as well as trepidation. He came from the corner, away from the other kids. Maybe he was just as nervous as she was. That gave her a sense of comfort.
“Sure.”
When Katherine Walter came back to pick up her son from Kindergarten that afternoon, she was shocked to see him hand-in-hand with a girl, a huge smile on his face. She was nervous about how he’d be at pickup, based on how she left him that morning. The little girl looked up at her shyly as Alex rambled on about her meeting his brothers sometime. She remembered, briefly, a rumour that the Grafton couple had their granddaughter staying with them for the summer.
Her suspicions were confirmed when Mr Grafton came to pick her up.
Alex and Kiley made both adults promise to set up a play-date in the near future.
They played together whenever possible for the next couple of months. Be it on the playground at school or in the loft in the Walters’ barn. Their favourite game, by far, was make-believe. They would make up impossible missions for them to combat and solve. Whether it was a dangerous quest, a sci-fi alien battle, or going on a jungle adventure, they would defeat the evil together.
It was their own special world, where they could be anything and do anything. She didn’t have to be the girl whose mom abandoned them, and he didn’t have to try to be cool all the time to impress his older brothers.
It was all fun and games… until it wasn’t.
The incident happened on a warm-ish day in March. The snow had been melting and then freezing all week, making it the perfect conditions for building snow forts. It was to be their fortress of solitude, just like Superman’s!
They had built it up against the barn, the wooden walls acting as a load-bearing support for the piles of ice and snow that they had stacked.
Nathan and Danny were helping build it when Alex heard a loud C R A C K. A large icicle from the eaves of the barn dropped far off one of the corners.
Nathan shrieked with alarm. Danny, however, saw an opportunity. He ran to grab it, using it as a sword, using all the acting skills that he learned from his summer drama camp.
“I am the evil ice wizard! I’ve come to kidnap the princess!”
Alex laughed. “You hear that, Princess Kiley?”
“Who?” Kiley puffed out her chest. “I am a knight, just like you. Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I have to be the princess all the time.”
Both of their gazes fixate on Nathan, building up the castle walls in his black ski pants and light blue mittens.
“Princess Nathan! Watch out! There is an evil wizard after you!” Alex exclaims, taking his role as co-knight seriously.
Nathan, to his credit, fell in line with the idea right away, dramatically letting out a wail.
“Get behind the safety of the walls!” Kiley insisted, grabbing him and pulling him into the fort. She scanned the battlefield in front of her.
Alex began to dramatically fight Danny outside, throwing snowballs at him. Most missed. Danny was too fast. Kiley knew she had to help him!
Running out of the fort, she squatted next to a pile of snow that was perfectly untouched. The ideal material to make snowballs. It packed perfectly between her damp purple mittens.
Alex looked over to her to see what she was doing. As soon as he laid eyes on her, he heard another loud C R A C K. An icicle fell right next to Kiley, who backed up into the barn in shock, letting out a scream.
Alex watched as her sudden movement sent vibrations rippling up the worn barn siding, sending more icicles loose from the eaves.
One was dangerously close to falling on her.
Abandoning his battle against the ice wizard, Alex ran.
He remembered his dad’s warnings about playing too close to the barn in winter. About how those icicles can really hurt someone, so he and his brothers shouldn’t try messing with them. Cole still tried, but he could never throw high enough.
Alarm bells flared in his mind as he pushed Kiley out of the path of impact, rolling them both away from the barn.
A searing pain etched across the back of his neck as the icy blade of the falling projectile sliced into the delicate skin right below his hairline.
Alex doesn’t remember much else, pain clouding his mind. He remembered Kiley crying to Danny to go get help. Nathan stood in shock at the red that now tinted the snow below, and his dad came out of the house and picked him up in his arms.
Kiley was crying the whole way to the local hospital as Katherine held gauze to the back of Alex’s neck. She made soothing noises to both of the crying kindergarteners.
He needed three stitches.
Three.
Kiley felt so guilty as Grams picked her up from the hospital waiting room. She went to bed that night in a fit of sniffles. Her only friend got hurt because of her.
When she got home, Gramps gave her some of her favourite white rabbit candies. Grams told her it wasn’t her fault. That Alex was going to be okay. That everything would be alright. That he was still going to be her friend.
The next day at school, Alex showed off his new “battle scar” to Kiley.
She could feel her eyes getting watery again.
“But you got hurt because of me!”
“But you didn’t hurt me?” he asked, confused. “An icicle hurt me? You’re being silly, Kiles.”
The nickname sent a wash of warmth and relief over her. Her guilt was eating her alive. The what-ifs were running wild in her head. What if he abandoned her like Mom? What if he had died like Dad?
“So you don’t hate me? You’re not going to stop being my friend?”
“Why would I stop being your friend? Friends protect each other.”
That lifted a weight off of her tiny shoulders, a weight too heavy for someone the age of five to be carrying.
Kiley straightened out her back and offered him her hand. “Then we are more than friends. We are best friends now.”
He took her small hand in his.
“Best friends forever!”