Memories of B.

FIRST GRADE
1) B. is the kid with the cool motorized dirtbike. A real one. He rides it around the hills behind our apartment. We are the same age. Enviously, I watch B. ride freely on his bike, and talk a little to his father, who has long hair, even though he's a man. He tells me something interesting about the formation of the thin rocks that break cleanly and easily off the hillside. Perhaps seeing the look on my face, he asks if my mother would let me ride B's bike. I go and ask, but she says "absolutely not!" I report this to the Dad. He looks like he feels guilty for even suggesting it. And maybe he even commiserates with me, verbally. It is interesting to commiserate with an adult.
2) I go into B.'s apartment and meet his mother. She might be an artist. They have a cat. I tell them cats aren't allowed in the apartments. She laughs, says she knows, but they keep the cat anyway. I am shocked.
3) J., an older girl, teases me about B. She saw us holding hands. That means he's my boyfriend, she says. I disagree. I don't think holding hands with a boy means anything more than friends.
4) B. and I are playing and I begin to stare at him and tell him I think he could come from a spaceship, like maybe be a martian or something. He doesn't really like it, and I don't know why.
SECOND GRADE
1) We have moved away from those apartments and live in a totally different town. I am shocked when B. shows up as the new kid in my second grade class. One of the first things he does is draw an apple with a diamond in it, to indicate shininess. Me and some girls think it looks really cool. Boys make fun of it. I think they should not make fun of B. But B. doesn't particularly seem to remember me.
THIRD GRADE
1) B. and I are in the same class. We have to work on a project. We argue over something, and I stab his forehead with a pencil, "on accident." He doesn't like me for doing that. The teacher also disapproves. I think B. is being a little bit of a whiner about it, and don't feel that sorry for doing it, although I feel a little scared to hear talk of lead poisoning. But I'm sure B. will be fine, and he recovers.
2) I am attending my last roller skating party at my school before I move across the country. Sometimes boys and girls in the class are starting to roller skate holding hands. It might be that one or two boys have asked me to do this. B. asks me to roller skate. He is the last one I roller skate with, holding hands. The music ends, perhaps too soon, and it's both with reluctance and relief that we part. The last memory of B.