[18+ ONGOING]
Josephine Devereaux has spent her entire life wishing she liked change & spontaneity. But when she gets accepted into Southern Chicago U's forensics program, change suddenly isn't so scary. Fast forward two years- she's a junior at the...
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I don't miss basketball.
I really don't.
But as I sit here, near the top of the bleachers, waiting for Kofi and Sawyer to finish practice so that we can grab an early dinner, I find myself reminiscing.
I met Sawyer because of basketball.
Sawyer lived on my street when we were younger. I had seen him but not ever really interacted with him until sixth grade.
We both were pretty tall from a young age. I was around 5'3 back then, and he was at least 5'7. We both spent all of middle school sticking out like sore thumbs.
So it was no surprise that we both went out for basketball when the time came.
We were easily both the most gifted on the team, but even from a young age, it wasn't hard for me to distinguish that I liked basketball, where as he loved it.
He was always a quiet kid, so I took initiative and befriended him.
He didn't really respond to my attempts at friendship to begin with. Back then, boys didn't necessarily have concrete friend groups. We had surface level friends, but there were very rarely ever true friendships because we were so young and irritable. So it didn't bother any of my "surface level" friends when I decided to befriend the quiet kid that refused to speak to anyone and would occasionally show up to school with nasty bruises on his face.
He'd blame it on basketball when teachers asked and blamed it on travel basketball when our coaches would ask. And since he had no friends, nobody ever questioned him or pushed. If any coach did, nobody knew what happened.
Except me. Because one day I got nosy and watched as his six foot, thirteen-year-old self, snap at an assistant coach for pestering him about the bruises. I watched the coach experience firsthand the wrath of Sawyer Cohen.
And I watched as he turned around and saw my nosy ass watching the whole interaction from the cracked door.
Most would've been scared to see that man's anger directed towards you. But I wasn't. Because I had spent years attempting to befriend him, and even though he rarely gave in to my persistence, he sometimes would. And soon, sometimes turned into normally.
And then by freshman year of high school, we had been attached by the hip.
I learned that Sawyer had an abusive alcoholic dad and that his mom passed away at birth. Sawyer was embarrassed to tell me, which is a completely rational feeling, but I could also tell that he was relieved to have someone who knew. And he didn't realize that by telling me, he had just made his way out of a hole that he'd been stuck in for years.
My parents passed away in a car crash when I was two years old. I mourn them, and I miss them everyday, but I was given to my grandparents shortly after, and they raised me as their own.
