“Why…  is he…  moving away?”

“His mother said that their house was too small and uncomfortable, so they’re going back to Washington in the summer.”

This all happened on what I thought to be a normal day, just a normal morning, a normal school day, and a normal drive in our car. It never came to my mind that something as terrible as this would ever happen! That time was a nice day in the month of April, probably a around 5-ish or so. Mom and I were in our car driving home after picking up dinner. We were pulling up to where my townhouse was very close to Joseph, my closest friend’s, house. I rambled on about what I did at school, how it was, and if any interesting had come up. Suddenly, she inquired me about Joseph, so naturally, I said,

“Joseph is such a great friend! I hope we can keep in touch for a very long time-”

“Oh… yeah… Joseph is going to have to move back to Washington at the end of the summer. You can’t tell him because he doesn’t know.”

My heart immediately sank. I could feel my tears forming in my eyes, it just felt like I could burst into crying at anytime. But I held back my tears and softly asked,

“Why… is he… moving away?”

“Joseph’s mother told me that their house was too small and uncomfortable, so she said that they would need to go back to Washington again.”

She seemed very nonchalant explaining that, tugging on my heartstrings more and more. His house is the perfect distance from mine. I could simply walk right over and do our homework together. In fact, that’s what we did sometimes. I would go to his house or he would arrive at mine. When my mom broke the news to me I was mostly sad, but a little agitated at the same time. Do you know what it felt like? It felt like his mother had little to no consideration of my feelings when she had made her decision, as well as had little consideration to what Joseph’s friends might feel too. I went on with the rest of this dark night feeling miserable and sad. I was going to have to lie to Joseph and his other friends if they ever question me about my mood. For an entire year.

“Do you promise that you won’t tell him?”

“Yes, mom. I promise.”

The next day, the warm sunbeams had shone down upon my face. I woke up facing my purple puppy poster. I thought it had just been a dream, that Joseph would stay with me forever. I soon realized that was me trying to make myself feel better about last night. I got up from bed and trudged to the next small room to have my breakfast: a vegetable soup. Now, that might sound appetizing if it weren’t for the fact that I had it everyday, so it slowly lost its appeal to me. Then, it was time to take my contacts off, brush my teeth, change my clothes, and get in my car and go to school. I seemed a bit sadder than my usual optimistic self at school.

“Hey, are you OK?” Joseph asked with a concerned look on his face, “You seem a bit down in the dumps. Is everything alright? Did anything happen to you?”

“Uh… No Joseph, I’m absolutely fine! Nothing happened here!”

“Okay… I’ll take your word for it… Just let me know if anything happened” He seemed a bit more suspicious while saying that.
At that moment, it made me very insecure that I had to lie to my friend like that, but I can’t make people suspicious about me or break my promise with my mom. So, I went on the rest of the day trying to seem as realistically happy as can be.

(Time lapse - End of summer trip)
It felt like my trip had only been few seconds. (Gee, I wonder why…) The cool breeze of the deep night was whisking gently across my face. As Mom and I waited for the shuttle bus to pick us up and take us home, I began thinking about Joseph. How close it was until he’s, poof, gone. Maybe, I could make our last week together the best week ever! That seems like a great idea! I need to plan fast, it’s already July. This needs to get started on this right away!

“C’mon Joseph, let’s go!”
“W-where are we g-going!”, Joseph stuttered, his glasses almost coming off his face as we ran.
“We’re going to the park! Now, let’s go, The park isn’t going to come to us any time soon!”

I was so excited to do this, I could actually do something with my friend! Though, once we got there I realized there wasn’t much we could do. We did slide down the slides a couple times, but it really wasn’t all that great. The two of us had even more fun when we did the environmental assignment here, which is really saying something. We were sitting on the swings when:

“Is there something you would like to tell me?” Joseph said out of the blue.

“Nothing! Nothing whatsoever!”

“C’mon, I know there’s something going on with you. You always had this suspicious tone when I if ask if anything was wrong. You also…” He kept rambling on and on that eventually the words sounded like: “Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah.”
I couldn’t take this anymore. It was very stressful to keep this bottled in that my mind could feel like it could explode! Plus, Joseph was rambling on and I would usually make nothing of it. Except, right now, it really ticked me off. I don’t know why. Suddenly without thinking, I had blurted out.

“YOU ARE MOVING BACK TO WASHINGTON THIS FRIDAY!!!”

“... What?...”

“Look, sometime in April, your mom told my mom told me that you had to move back to Washington. So, I tried to have us do something nice and active, then we had something to remember when you needed to go back.” I confessed.

“WAIT, YOU KNEW BEFORE I DID?”

“I THOUGHT YOU DIDN’T KNOW!”

“WHY ARE WE YELLING!”

“STOP YELLING, PEOPLE ARE GOING TO LOOK AT US!”

“So,” Joseph continued after we calmed down,”why didn’t you tell me before?”

I explained to him the promise I made with my mother, and he understood immediately. After a moment of awkward silence, I recommended we did puzzle I brought back from my trip and he approved.

It was actually a lot of fun, even though I kind of needed my mom to translate the puzzle instructions since I couldn’t understand the language on it. We didn’t manage to finish, but it was a lot of fun trying to finish it together. It was time for Joseph to leave, I had to accept that. I gave him a little hug, gave him a little present to take to his parents for a gift, and said goodbye to him forever.