You Should See Me in a Crown

by Leah Johnson

In a concert band, you’re arranged into sections so that the instruments and sounds in your ear are the most similar to your own—so that what surrounds you is you, to a degree. It’s easier to know your clarinet part when you’re not fighting against a cello on one side and a tuba on the other. High school friend groups are something like an ensemble in that way. My friends are certified oddballs, the inkblots on an otherwise pure white page, and it’s why we work together so well. Because as long as they’re my people, as long as they’re the ones on my left and my right, sometimes I can forget that I don’t fit in anywhere else in this town.

But that limbo, the space between the people we used to be and the people we are now, feels like it’s always going to hang in the air between us.

I’ve learned all the ways to keep my head down, to hide, to make myself scarce. But I never really learned how to say when enough is enough. Until now.

But that’s just the thing. I already do trust Jordan—entirely, wholeheartedly. And maybe I’ve trusted him since the first day he sat next to me in middle school band, since he smiled at me and called me the second to his first, to the moment he brought me dinner while my brother was in the hospital without me having to ask him. It’s why I loved him so much all those years ago, because he’s sometimes vulnerable and always honest, and the warmth I feel for him in this moment is proof of every good thought I’ve ever had about him. Flaws and fears and mistakes all, he is every bit the friend I need him to be right now.

We are not above mistakes, not stronger than death, but we sure know how to love. Even if it isn’t always perfect, especially when it’s a little messy, we know how to love one another fiercely. With everything we have.