This is My Message to You

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High school changed a lot of things. It tends to do that, I think. New school, more people, harder classes, more intense sports practices, expanding friend groups – it all piles together into a blur of four years. So I guess it's really not surprising that Connor and I changed, too.

Sophomore year didn't see much shift in lifestyle, except that we weren't loser freshmen anymore. Connor finally made varsity that year – I loved to hold it over him that I played varsity before he did, even if I sat the bench half the game – although he constantly wavered on the edge of suspension from the team for his behavior in school.

I liked to read his detention slips.

"Crumpled art project into a ball and attempted to 'score a basket' in the trashcan."

"I made it, though," said Connor. "And from the back of the room, okay, it was pretty sick."

"...using Ms. Kiernan 'as a backboard'?"

"Well, the shot needed more air!"

In reality, though, I didn't see as much of Connor as I used to. I'd hear him trying to sneak in his house late Saturday nights, sometimes followed by fights at full volume with his parents, and I'd see him sitting blearily in church Sunday mornings, but other than one or two classes, we stopped running in the same circles in high school.

Soccer took over my life. Several seniors had graduated the year before, so I came off the bench more and more. I'm not trying to put myself on a pedestal when I say that I played better than half the upperclassmen on the team; it's just who I became. Being that hotshot kid who scores well both on the field and in the classroom didn't exactly make me cool, but it made me someone. Someone who I probably took a little too seriously.

Toward the end of sophomore year, my friend Grace started dating one of Connor's close friends. He played soccer, too, and while I didn't necessarily approve of her relationship with him, I did my best to support her – to an extent. At one point, she tried to get me to go on a double date with her and her boyfriend, with Connor as my date.

I straight-up refused.

"But it would be so cute!" she insisted, even as she fought back laughter. She knew us well enough by then to recognize the extreme un-cuteness in the idea.

"I would rather third wheel you," I said, "than go on a date with Connor."

Grace shrugged. "He's probably a bad influence on you now, anyway."

She started to say stuff like that once she started dating Connor's friend. I laughed it off as his usual antics so that I didn't think about how much it bothered me to hear her stories of her weekends at parties. While she never participated in anything too crazy, some of what she told me about Connor and his friends stuck in the back of my mind.

"I'm not judging him, Ri, everyone does crazy shit in high school – but jeez, I've never seen anyone so smashed. Even some of the older guys were telling him to slow down – and then he just passed out on the couch and probably didn't end up going home –"

You bet he didn't go home, I remember thinking. If his parents had ever found him in a state like that, they would have murdered him. As for me, I ignored Connor when he talked about his parties during the few times we actually held a conversation. If he wanted to go out and fuck himself up every weekend, so be it. I wasn't his mom.

God. I can't even think about that now.

Kids party in high school. I get it, even if it wasn't really my scene.

But if there was one thing I could've done differently.