She, Naine, has been following me since she could walk.  And she is pretty clever so she started walking early.

I told her I was busy but she followed me anyway.  ”Bairmlim, Bairmlim,” she used to yell, her pink cloth pants dragging behind her and bunching at her socked feet.  It was annoying especially because she couldn’t speak my name properly, and enunciated it ugly.

I was supposed to meet Marcel at the park.  I’ve known Marcel since we were about six or seven years old.  He used to live next door to us, then he moved to a bigger house in the neighbourhood in the middle of middle school.  The house he used to live in was attached to ours.  I remember sticking my finger in through the hole in the wood fence that divided our backyards so he could touch it and know the world wasn’t ending yet when his parents fought.  We were eleven.

He shaved his head when his sister was diagnosed with leukemia.  She’s a she and he’s a boy, but it was the thought that counted.  Anna - that was her name - died few years later after that.  I didn’t go to the funeral; the funeral was private.  Marcel decided to keep his head shaved.

For the longest time I was taller than him.  Then his voice broke, and his body sprouted and grew like Jack’s beanstalk plant until he resembled a spoon, with a thin, flat body and a rotund hairless head.

“Hi Marcel,” I said.  He was waiting for me by the brick washroom.  We always met at the park washroom.  He was dressed all in black.  I haven’t really figured out if he is still mourning Anna or if it’s just a phase.  I don’t want to ask in case he starts crying again.

“Hey,” he replied.  His eyes shifted to look behind me.  ”Hi, Naine.”

“Hi,” Naine pipped.  She eyed the red gift bag that hung from the grey cord which sat looped around his fingers.

“I got this for you.”  Marcel handed me the bag.  ”Happy belated birthday.”

I accepted the gift.  I already knew what it was.

“Open it.”  Marcel smiled.

“The tree,” I said.  We walked over to the closest tree to sit under the shade.  I reached into the bag and pulled out a handmade book.  I smiled because he made it.  I opened the glue-stiff pages and looked at the colours, images bound in the clean binding that only Marcel, who is patient and unassuming, could arrange.

“Let me see,” said Naine, her fingers pawing at the book.  I jerked the pages away from her touch, my eyes flicking up to meet Marcel’s to exchange secret and mutual expressions of annoyance and exasperation.

I turned the pages, eager to absorb the work and effort he put into my birthday compilation.  My eyes fell onto an old picture from last summer, of the rare occasion that I had allowed Naine to join Marcel and I.  It was after our show at the Cypress Theatre.  I had let Naine come after she wouldn’t stop begging to see me perform and to play with us.

“Hey!” Naine’s finger sprung out to point at her face.  ”I remember that!”

I closed the book, feeling guilty.  It was a happy picture, but all I could think of was how unfair I had been to Naine.  In retrospect, I should have had Naine on the same pedestal I had Marcel, in terms of friendship and loyalty.  I stood up.  The other two followed suit.

“Do you like it?” Marcel asked, his voice small and unsure.

“Yeah,” I said.  ”Let’s go get ice cream.”  I turned to Naine who stood with her eyes half-hidden under her fitted cap.  I don’t know why she wore that hat.  ”You come too.”