build me up. (ON HOLD)

PROLOGUE

prologue:
my first love

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PETER 

It was a name I had never forgotten. Even after fifteen years had passed, and I was now an adult, that face and name had never left me.

When I first met Peter, we lived in Detroit, and I was six years old, just started second grade. He was eleven years old and in fifth grade, excited to leave middle school and join the ranks of junior high. He quickly became both my best friend and someone I truly admired; even to this day, I value our friendship.

In elementary school, we had a pen pal system. Every fifth grader had a kindergartner as their pen pal, but only those two grades got to participate. The fifth graders gave gifts and read stories to the little ones, and the little ones got to sit with the fifth graders in their class and play at recess with them at least once a week.

Peter was my baby brother, Elijah's, pen pal.

Every day before school started, Peter would wait for us to get dropped off at school and walk us both to our classes. He also walked us to our car when the school day had ended. At first, I was very apprehensive about allowing a stranger to do such things, feeling as though he was trying to replace me as the older sibling to my baby brother. But eventually, he grew on me too as he extended his kindness to me as well and not just to my brother.

Our parents had also grown fond of one another.

At the beginning of the pen pal exchanges, monthly mandatory parent-teacher meetings were held, allowing the parents to converse and assure that we were doing well in school and that the relationship between us was healthy and viable. My parents were immediately on board with it. Though I was slow to come around, I recognized how happy Elijah had been to have someone who related to him on a different level.

My brother was a very quiet and timid child, oftentimes hiding behind my mom, Iris's, legs when approached by anyone that wasn't her or crying hysterically when she left us at school. He had a huge attachment to her and had struggled with her not being with him all the time. But once Peter entered the picture, Elijah gravitated towards him immediately, and that shell began falling, exposing a bubbly boy.

To say that Peter was only a childhood friend would imply that his significance was within the confines of us being naturally kind children. However, to me, Peter was my first love. Someone I had grown nervous around when his lively blue eyes gazed into mine or when he held my hand when dropping me off at my class or my mom's car. Or when he would occasionally lend one of his favorite chapter books to read or save a cherry Starburst for me to eat at lunch with my food.

He taught me innocence and kindness in its most natural and purest form, and for that, I liked him immensely.

So much so that in my little six-year-old brain, Justin Bieber had no chance of stealing my attention away. It was a big event the day I took down the "Never Say Never" poster that I got right after his debut in 2009. It was quite an embarrassingly emotional moment in my life, but I digress.

After finishing second grade, it seemed Peter had moved away. Or at least that's what my mom told me.

Before he did, we had one last play date together at the Toledo Zoo. The car ride there was filled with laughs and screams, watching the newest movies like "The New Karate Kid" or "Nanny McPhee," and food from Big Boy's, a northern dinner. Both of our moms had planned the day perfectly, with me not necessarily recognizing that Peter would soon be gone.

For a while, I would ask to see him or speak to him, and my brother suddenly seemed sadder and threw fits more often. Eventually, I stopped asking, and Elijah stopped crying as much. After a few years, I had the idea to ask if my mom still kept in contact with Peter's mom, but she said she hadn't heard back from them in years and figured it was best to let it all go.

And for a while, I had.

After 2 major state moves, graduating from middle and high school, and now as a senior in college, he momentarily popped into my mind. Granted, there would be some days his face would reappear in the depths of my dreams or randomly while walking around Walmart in search of something I needed.

I had my idea of searching through social media for him, but to my dismay, I could never find him.

For the life of me, I couldn't remember his mother or father's last name. I knew his mother's name was Ashley and his father went by Mr. S. I even asked my mom for her insight, and she told me she knew their first names but forgot their phone numbers as well and had known of some, at the time, marital problems they had, leading to uncertainty about what exactly to look for since we couldn't find them on social media under the names she gave.

My search for my long-lost love eventually came to an end when I started my sophomore year of college. I stopped trying and went on about my life, never knowing.

In the end, I may never see nor hear from Peter again, but he will always have a piece of my heart.

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