This is not what happened.

I was in eighth grade but maybe it was much later. Maybe in college. Maybe I was only thinking of eighth grade because that's the moment of my greatest shame. Not sixth grade. Those were only bad marks. C was average anyway. Average means normal. Normal is good. Sixth grade was good, even if I didn't smile. The shame I'm talking about is fear and inaction. Cowardice. I was younger or older, I don't know, when I saw those kids flogging a plastic trash bag in the stream, the cat long dead before I could stop them. I stopped them, though, so that's not the time. I had never seen those kids before. They weren't from the neighborhood, I didn't have to face them day after day with hatred burning, knowing evil so close.

You were sitting on the bottom bunk, my bunk. You had the smell of light sweat from a long walk. We didn't talk. Not then or ever. We should have. When I said I didn't know you I meant it. I still do. Young people do stupid things, sometimes even more stupid than old people. We are stupid because we have time, our futures long against our short pasts. What's 20? I quarter of your life? What if by then you have already felt all the shame you ever want to feel? What if by then the shame you've felt means you will never feel shame again? What if by then the grass outside, the pine needles, the sofa, the floor carpeted or not, the car -- even bucket seats -- all mean the same thing?

I stitched together what I wanted. I keep scraps of memory like spare cloth, picking up this thread and that swatch when I need it. When it suits. I have favorite patterns, nothing ever really matches though. Now I'm disappointed but then I wasn't. In eighth grade not everyone made the team. Is retroactive shame the same? It took me ten years to feel bad about being cut. Ten years for squandering opportunities, for not working hard. For not learning lessons. I still don't learn lessons. Time repeats his lesson whether you learn it or not.

I can't say positively what I mean. I am holding back. We carry things more heavily than others; others carry things more heavily than we do. It's rare that two people carry the same burden with the same weight. I return like a thief to the scene of my shame, to the sunny weekend afternoon that I watched them threaten you, pinned against a tree. I sat as if watching television, the action somehow not real until it was over and I understood what I hadn't done. I don't know if you carry that with you like I do. We don't talk about it.

It's ridiculous to assert. It's only a game. Basketball drew me closer, drew me further. I salvaged one relationship and killed another. It's only a game. We still use that common language. I can tell the story this way: a coming of age tale. I can tell the story this way: reconciliation. I can tell the story this way: overweening pride. They are all truths in one way or another.

I'm not sure this can be finished.