and he is something steady, something familiar, someone to talk to at lunch and hang out with in a few accelerated classes together. Then one day, after some sort of assembly, where we sit next to each other and he doesn’t hold my hand when I reach for him, he’ll tell me.
“We have to break up,” he’ll say. “There are just so many other hot girls here.”
I’ll feel buoyed there, drifting in a crowded ocean.
But in that other moment, as Captain Hook with my friend, I am jumping around with a bravado even I’m surprised I can muster and that future boyfriend is just another boy in class, someone I play basketball with over the summers at the YMCA. I am sometimes on his kickball team at recess, and our whole class goes to his mom’s house at the end of the school year to swim in his pool, where I will still get in and splash and cannonball and get my hair and face wet because I am not yet aware of my body or my hair or my face and how much other people are going to place their value in me based on how I look. For now, I am just pretending to be Captain Hook, chasing my friend with an invisible Smee by my side, not yet knowing the rules of love or longing or desire. Not yet knowing Captain Hook is so mad all of the time because he was forced to grow up.