The Summer I Learned to Dive - By Shannon McCrimmon Page 0,24

the only other kid reading a book during recess. Together, we sat under our special tree reading our favorite stories while the other kids chased each other and played on the jungle gym equipment. We were a pair. Most of the kids thought of us as social lepers or circus oddities. We were the “brainiacs,” the nerds, the smartest and brightest kids in the class and that intimidated them all. Chloe and I didn’t notice, nor did we care. We had each other.

The year I started sixth grade, it all changed. Chloe was moving away to Kansas. Her dad was offered a job and she had to leave. I begged her to stay. I didn’t want her to go. I knew it wouldn’t be the same without her. She was the only person I felt a connection with and I didn’t want to lose that.

That year was one of my worst years in school. I didn’t deal well with Chloe’s absence. Middle school was a different animal. There was so much emphasis on popularity. Intelligence was seen as a stigma rather than a gift. I immersed myself in more books, forgetting about the others. It was hard to find anyone that I felt comfortable with, that I could be myself with. It was one of the loneliest times in my life.

But things slowly improved. I met other students with similar interests but they never quite filled that gap, that hole that Chloe had left behind. I was never able to develop the same type of friendship with them that I had with her. They were just people that I knew, that I had a few things in common with. It wasn’t the same.

Chloe and I kept in touch after she moved, but time and distance changed things. She came back to Florida to stay with her grandparents the summer of our ninth grade year. She had changed and we found that we didn’t have much to talk about. She didn’t care about reading anymore. All she wanted to do was go to the mall and flirt with boys. She put more importance on things that I thought were superficial. She was only concerned about her appearance.

After relentlessly asking me, I reluctantly went to the mall with her one day. That’s all she had talked about the moment she came over to see me. Going to the mall to check out boys sounded like a complete waste of time to me.

We had been at the mall for barely an hour when she met a boy. He asked her to go see a movie which was something I was not interested in doing. I told her I didn’t want to go. She tried persuading me to go with her but in the end she went to the movies with him instead, leaving me alone. It stung me to the core. I cried in the department store bathroom, feeling deserted and alone. I ended up calling my mom to come pick me up, crying the entire ride home. My mother tried to console me, telling me that people change and that I would find other friends who were like me. The part I was most upset about was that I felt Chloe had turned into a vacuous drone. She had given up her uniqueness only to fit in.

She called me later that week to say goodbye before she left to go back to Kansas. She never apologized for leaving me. Instead, she berated me for being so serious. “You’re never going to get a boyfriend if you keep this up,” she said.

“Maybe I don’t care about that,” I replied sorely.

She scoffed, “Well, your high school years will suck then.”

That cut deep. “That’s fine by me,” I said defensively.

She sighed and said, “I’m just trying to help you be cool, Finn.”

“I’d rather be me, thank you,” I replied indignantly, hurt beyond repair. The conversation lagged and was awkward. She promised to keep in touch but I knew it was what people said to each other, that it was a broken promise. I said goodbye to her knowing it would be the last time I would ever speak to her.

***

Meg whispered in my ear, “Ugh, you get this table okay, Finn.” She rolled her eyes.

“Okay,” I said deciding not to press the issue.

Two boys and one girl sat down in one of the booths. They chatted loudly which caused some of the other customers to stare at them. And the fact that they were dressed