Alexa Daskalakis

Phoebe​

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My first real friend was named Phoebe. We met in Montessori.

 

She had red hair—soft, coppery, hard to miss.

 

I think I gravitated toward children who didn’t look like me.

 

Even then, I liked contrast.

 

We played Polly Pockets and searched for the pot of gold near the sandbox.

 

We fed the fish. Repeated the same games, like rituals.

 

I scraped my knee once, and she knelt beside me, pressing on a Band-Aid.

 

Not in a dramatic way—just like someone who already knew how to care for things.

 

I remember getting a hair tie stuck in my hair once.

 

One of the teachers looked at me and said,

 

“We can either cut your hair or the hair tie. Which one do you want?”

 

I said the hair tie.

 

It seemed like a strange question—though no one else thought so.

 

Every day, I found Phoebe in the sandbox.

 

That was the center of everything, somehow.

 

Warm. Enclosed.

 

We’d sit with our hands in the sand, not really talking.

 

Just side by side.

 

Like we already knew each other.

 

I never went to the reading station.

 

Not because I couldn’t read—because I didn’t feel like it.

 

I was drawn to movement. Sand. Familiar faces.

 

They probably thought I was behind.

 

I wasn’t—I was choosing freedom.

 

I don’t remember what we said.

 

Only that I never wanted to leave.

 

Phoebe made the world feel held.

 

And for a while, that was enough.

 

Years later, we found each other again.

 

We were nothing alike.

 

But I still remembered the quiet part—

 

the part that never needed to be spoken

 

to be real.