Right, so now that I’m here I guess I might as well start with the basics. I’m Ryan, Ryan Brett. I was born over the summer of 1997 in Seattle, Washington, but my parents moved while I was still a baby. I grew up in Boise, Idaho. I’m an only child, always have been, always will be- I guess my parents took one look at me as a baby and decided that a bunch of cute little mini-me’s to follow in my wake would not be a good idea. I don’t really blame them.
I was definitely pretty normal as a kid. I played with toy race cars, and Batman action figures and had posters of old R-rated movies in my room. My parents put a really big emphasis on me having friends, even from an early age: So they signed me up for play groups, swimming lessons, the little league team regardless of whether or not I was really on board.
But, being the good old all-American boy that I was I took it all in stride, what can I say? So let’s bring this up to the present. I’m fifteen years old, and only a few months away into starting my second semester at Boise High School. I have two best friends; Liz Lowe and Morgan Caldwell. Collectively, we’ve all known each other and have been best friends since the fifth grade.
Liz was definitely always a bit of an outcast. To a lot of kids she was plain and mousy-looking, with gray eyes, dirty brown-blonde hair; and a lanky build and a chest that was flat until sophomore year. She was always reading books and graphic novels and obsessed with Star Trek; she was definitely pretty fluent with the Klingon lexicon despite it being a fictional language.
But for all her so-called quirks, I really loved Liz. She was like the sister I never had. She had a great sense of humor and was always quick for a joke, but if you were ever down or needed someone to talk to; she was pretty understanding and would always lend a shoulder to cry on.
Morgan was a bit of a stereotypical nerd himself, but he was also pretty athletic. Morgan was pretty average in height; with dark brown hair and eyes that are a few shades lighter. He’s always got some sort of brooding, intense expression on his face; but try not to let that stop you from approaching him- I know it made me have my doubts about him at first, though, and I definitely regret thinking that today!
He was on the soccer team in middle and high school and always took sports pretty seriously. But whereas Liz was always casual, laid-back; and a lot of fun, Morgan was outwardly serious and hard to get a laugh out of.
But once you really got to know him and understand him, he’d let his guard down. And, like Liz; he was pretty damn smart, a lot more intelligent than I could ever hope to be.
I’d always been aware of Liz and Morgan’s existence, but I didn’t really get to know them until the spring of fifth grade. I’ve never done well in science, but at that point in time I was failing; and my parents were really concerned about my grades. So my teacher at the time figured that maybe I’d do better in class if he paired me with these two geniuses and that we could all do our science project together.
I was definitely a little intimidated at first. I didn’t know Morgan and Liz at the time, but I was under the impression that their grades were perfect and to say the least; they were probably a lot smarter than I was. I was terrified they’d think I was some dumbass on the brink of being put into special ed classes and just wasn’t ‘cool’ enough to meet their standards.
But then Liz started talking about those Legend of Zelda games (The newest one at the time was the Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.) and I jumped right in- I’ve always been pretty unabashed in my love for Nintendo and had at the time been trying to acquire every Zelda game there was; as fruitless a goal as that turned out to be.
Somehow the conversation segwayed into the shitty animated series from 1989- to this day I don’t know how- and suddenly all three of us were talking about things like how they couldn’t even get Link and Zelda’s hair colors right, to the crappy animation, and that lame running gag about Zelda and Link getting interrupted every time they try to kiss.
From then on, I had a pretty close rapport with Liz and Morgan. Even when we weren’t goofing off the way most little kids do when you leave them to their own devices; we each had our own strengths and weaknesses, but we were great at collaborating together.
So our project was about dinosaurs; when and where they lived, what they ate, how they died, you get the idea. We ended up producing this nice little flip-book that was pretty well put-together: Morgan did the bulk of the actual research, Liz did the writing, and I did the artwork. I remember our teacher was pretty impressed by our good work; and by the time school finished in June I’d gotten my grade up to a B+.
Needless to say, my parents were pretty in debt to Liz and Morgan for saving my ass in science that year; so they called up Morgan and Liz’s parents and asked if we could all get together over that summer. To make a long story short; the answer was yes.
When I started middle school and entered the sixth grade that fall, I was elated to discover that Liz and Morgan were in most of my classes. We began to talk a lot and continued hanging out at each other’s houses even when we weren’t at school; and we’ve all been together ever since.
Together we’d gotten through pranks, adventures (well, what constitutes as an adventure in school) and bullies together, and I always hoped we’d go through a lot more. But alas, all my dreams of having an ordinary freshman year with Liz and Morgan beside me were shattered one day in December when my parents told me over dinner that they were moving.
I don’t think my life has ever been the same since.
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