Marry me under the chestnut tree

Bea was my best friend at school, a little red-haired princess look-alike everyone loved. I was never as popular, pretty, or welcomed as she was, but she chose me as her best friend. We sat together in class and played together in the playground. Every day, arriving at school was a party because I would see her, and my day would immediately feel better until, one day, something changed in sixth grade.

It was a regular autumn day. It was slightly cold, but not enough to wear our jackets, which we had left on the ground before jumping into our favorite thing in the world. The swing was the equivalent of a millionaire's jet: we could see everyone from above, with the wind blowing in our faces and the feeling that one day we would make a 360-degree turn, becoming a legend among the other students. There we were, swinging in the school's play yards, with our legs reaching to the sky, each trying to outdo the other, when Bea told me: 

"I think I am in love." 

It caught me by surprise so much that I almost fell off my seat, and the swing chains started dancing in a different rhythm.

"Are you going down?" yelled one of the younger kids, waiting their turn.

"Not yet!" I yelled back, trying to recover from the news. I moved my legs forward: one, two, three... I only looked back at Bea when I caught up with the speed and height of her swing. Smiling at me, she asked:

"Are you ok?"

"Yes, sure..." I mumbled. It took me a lot of courage to ask her:

"What did you say?"

"I asked if you are ok!"

"No... before!"

"I said I am in love!"

She seemed happy. Her smile filled her face, her teeth looked like pearls, and her eyes were as bright as blue diamonds. The little freckles on her cheeks seemed to dance, and her hair, floating on the wind, looked like orange cotton candy... I don't know if that's a thing, but it should. I was a mess, but she looked magical.

We kept on swinging, but I did not dare to ask anything. The kids below us were getting impatient.

"Are you going down?" asked one of the boys.

"Not yet. We need to talk," said Bea. The kid looked at her, and he tapped on his friend's shoulder. 

"We'll go play somewhere else!" he replied to Bea. She was the playground whisperer... if it had been me, if I had told the boys to wait, I would have caused a revolution. She had this thing: her posture, how she talked, or maybe some magical spell that made others behave as she wanted. People like this can make the world better or destroy it based on their wishes... that's what I thought then, and that's what I am sure about now, so many years later.

I lifted my legs and thought about what would happen if I let go, flew to the front, felt the cool breeze on my face, and...

"Laila!" she called me, and I looked at her. She was my best friend. I had to listen to her, even if I did not want to hear what she was about to say. In love? What was that?

"What should I do?" she asked me.

Up, down, up, down... 

"How do you know?

"I feel it. He makes me smile...!"

I also made her smile. Did that mean she was in love with me? No, she wasn't. Then, who was he? And what had he done to my best friend?

"... and I think he likes me too!" she continued.

I should have jumped out of the swing, but the more she talked, the more it seemed someone had glued my jeans to the swing seat. I was not the person to speak about those things, but she did not stop. Before I could realize it, she was talking about his eyes, his smile, how he combed his hair, and the cool sneakers he wore. I was not equipped to have that conversation.

"I think it is cold. We should stop now," I yelled at her, who kept on babbling things I couldn't compute. I slowed down, and then she asked:

"Do you think he loves me?"

At that moment, I couldn't think, and I had no answer to give, but something told me that if I left that swing without giving her any kind of moral support, I would be in trouble.

I raised my legs... up, down, up, down.

"Why wouldn't he? Everyone loves you," I told her. It was technically correct. Everyone liked her. She was cute, polite, and friendly. I guessed many could quickly jump from that to "love," but again, in sixth grade—my sixth grade—I had no full detail of what it really meant to love. I didn't think she knew either, but she seemed so sure of herself that I didn't want to burst her bubble.

"He knows I do."

"What?"

"That I love him."

"Can you please say you like him instead?" I asked. For some reason, the more I listened to the word "love," the more that conversation creeped me out.

"But I do love him!" she yelled, going higher and higher with the swing as if it was voice-powered. The more she screamed, the higher she was while I struggled to catch up with her.

"How does he know?" I said.

"I told him."

"You told him?" I said, not sure about wanting to know the answer. Were we already there, in that phase where boys were a thing? I did not like boys. Boys were annoying. Did she like boys? And me? What would happen to me? 

"But I don't know if he feels the same," she said, slowing down her swing.

Feelings? We were in sixth grade, too young to discuss feelings, love, or boys. We were in our favorite spot, with no smaller children around asking for their turn!

Up, down, up, down... She had stopped, and her feet were already touching the ground while I kept going higher and higher. She was my friend. She had always been by my side; now, she was insecure, as I had been many times. She had always been there for me. I knew what I had to do. I took a deep breath and jumped. It would have been cool if I had landed like Spiderman and said something stupid to make her laugh, but that did not happen.

I jumped, fell, scratched my knee, and made a hole in my jeans, and when she ran to me, worried by the stumble, I said in the pitiest way possible:

"You should tell him you like him. Sure, he likes you too."

Bea helped me to stand up. The bell rang, and all the children in the playground ran to their positions in every class queue to enter their classes. I did not run and tried my best to speed up while contemplating my knee, which was dirty and scratched. I would have to explain that at home, and I was sure my mother would not like it. In the previous two weeks, I had ripped another pair of trousers and the sleeve of my white shirt, lost two buttons, and cut a hole in my T-shirt while doing some arts and crafts at school. I was pretty sure I would be in trouble at home, but I had other things to worry about at school.

When we arrived at our queue, the teacher counted all the heads and allowed us to enter the class. We sat at our tables quite fast, but the energy in the room took a couple of minutes to settle. When everyone shut up, the teacher started to speak. A few moments later, Bea passed me a note.

"Pass it to Javi." She whispered. 

Javi was the boy sitting on my right side. He was the son of a doctor and a nurse, shy and polite, and never would I have imagined he was the one Bea had chosen to... 

"What?" I told her, with the paper still in my hands.

"Ssh!" The teacher did not even turn. He was writing something on the blackboard, trying to make whatever he was explaining more appealing. 

My eyes did the rest of the job. If I could have a super-powered vision, I would have shot flaming arrows and little bombs-- "Pfew! Pfew!" -- But since I hadn't, all Bea saw was a very intense and somehow confused stare at her, then at the paper, and then at her again.

She pointed at the paper and then at Javi. 

What a contest that was:

Paper-Javi-Paper-Javi.

Bea-paper-Bea-Paper.

When my friend started combining her fingers-pointing with a super intense look at me—still with no bombs or arrows, though—I knew I had no great options, and I threw the note in Javi's direction.

He looked at me, and I pointed at Bea to make clear as water that I was just a messenger. After all, I had no idea what she had written on that little piece of paper. 

Bea smiled. Javi read the note and smiled. I saw him writing something on the paper. Shortly after, the paper landed on my table, and Bea snatched it with the speed of light.

I don't know what the teacher spoke about that day because my table was a landing zone for communications for the rest of the day, and my mission was to keep us out of trouble. By the time school ended, I had counted fifteen notes and a book of math traveling between tables. 

Everyone left the class quickly when the bell rang, except Bea and I. I always walked out with her, and if she did not move, neither did I.

"He likes me," she said nervously. She grabbed my hands and scratched me, but I did not complain because she was clearly in a weird state of mind, and I did not want to make things worse for any of us. I said nothing. I just looked at her because she seemed to have much to say.

"I am going to marry him!"

"Wooooooooow... you what?" My brain exploded a little at that moment, but I kept it cool-- sixth-grader cool. She passed me one of the notes I had seen flying that morning and asked me to open it. Javi had terrible handwriting, and it took me a bit to decipher the message, but then I did, and that was even more terrible:

"Marry me under the chestnut tree. Tomorrow. Love you. Javi"

I scratched my head so much that I hurt myself a little while trying to think of words to say to Bea, who looked at me all excited. Her smile, ear to ear, was almost scary. I didn't know someone could smile so much until that day.

The chestnut tree was a massive piece of nature on the school grounds. For years, it had been a witness to kids from many generations doing all their best and worst, so we had listened to all kinds of urban myths: sweet love stories, first kisses, scheduled fights, incredible climbs, and terrible falls. That tree had seen it all, and apparently, it would see a wedding, too: "Yeeeeh..." 

I returned the note to Bea, who put it in her jacket pocket and told her I would be there, as I always was. I had no idea what they meant by a wedding, but it would surely be a first of its kind in the playground. Bea was fantastic at organizing her birthday parties- with some help from her mother, of course- so I was sure a wedding would be a piece of cake. Cake? Would we have cake? I was so absorbed by my thoughts that Bea had to pull me from the jacket to leave the class and go home. That afternoon, Bea dreamed about the following day's event, and I listened to my mother complain for two hours about the cost of life and the repair of clothes... 

I was already in my chair the following day when I heard some "woooooooh" in the corridor. As everyone around me did, I stood up to check what happened and saw Bea walking to the class. She looked like an angel, all dressed in white. When she saw me, she ran to me, giggled, and said, "I told my mother we were going to church." She was wearing her first communion dress, which was nice, but even if we were in a catholic school, it seemed a bit much. Of course, I did not tell her so because I was a good friend and super supportive, but seeing her there was quite a thing, sitting by my side, wearing that puffy dress and a little pearl tiara. Everyone liked Bea, so the teacher said she looked lovely, and our classmates navigated the situation exceptionally well. Did they know? I realized some girls were using lipgloss, and plastic flowers were popping up from a couple of backpacks. It was weird.

The class finished, and it was time to play. It was Friday, which meant we would go to the biggest playground, up in the school terrain. As it happened every week, we walked there, but looking at Bea walking on the dirt with her white satin shoes hurt a bit that day. If it was me, and those were my shoes, I would have trouble by the end of the day. When we arrived at our destination, a few kids went to play with a ball with the teacher, but most of the class walked to the big chestnut tree. 

When I looked at the tree, I saw the plastic flowers from the backpacks creating a corridor, Javi in the end, and another of the kids dressed as a priest standing by his side.

Bea told me:

"Will you walk with me?"

I took her hand, and we walked together. Our classmates threw dry leaves before our feet, laughed, and sang something similar to the nuptial march. We arrived at the fake priest and the "husband-to-be," and I left Bea's hand.

Standing there, face to face, they told each other things the rest of us could not hear, but shortly after they looked at us, the "priest" said they could kiss, and when they were about to...

"Everyone, stop right now!" The school principal yelled from the top of his lungs. Bea's mum followed him, and our teacher arrived with our sporty classmates. The principal held the minister by the ear, the teacher grabbed Javi by the arm, and Bea's mum did not even need to touch her daughter, who ran faster than I had ever seen her run in gym class or any of our playdates outside. The rest of the kids scrammed, me included. We were all there. We knew we would all be punished for that day's theater the next school day, but it had already started that Friday when the teachers kept us silent for two hours until each parent picked us up from school. The only kids missing those two hours of reflection were Bea and Javi.

My mother came to pick me up, worried because she had received a call, but no one had explained what had happened. I had to do that several times during the weekend, but the more I explained, the less sense it made for both of us. It reached a point where she stopped asking about it, and we continued with our family routines, and then, Monday arrived. 

When Bea arrived that morning and sat by my side, she did not look so happy. Her mother had discovered the ceremony plans because she had found the proposal note in Bea's jacket and rushed to call the school. Despite the fact the kids had not married for real or even kissed, the request to impersonate a priest and create a bridal ceremony on school time was not well received by the teachers or parents, and Bea was grounded at home "until she could vote and marry" -- that's what her mother had told her. I don't know what happened with the boys. At school, Bea, Javi, and "the priest" had to clean the chapel and pray one hour daily for three months. 

The rest of us, best friends and ceremony guests were reminded about the importance of that sacred moment so many times that I am surprised anyone has gotten married by now. I haven't—not under a tree.