But one person can change what the weight feels like.
Her name was Alison Park.
She was small and Korean and had the specific quality of someone who had decided, early, that other people’s social configurations were not binding on her behavior.
She sat next to me on the first day of freshman biology.
Not because she had to.
The teacher assigned seats alphabetically, and Weston and Park were separated by several letters, but the person who should have been next to me had not shown up on the first day and Alison had slid into the empty seat and said: the lab would be better with a lab partner.
She said this as if
it were a practical decision rather than a kindness.
Which was exactly how to make it land.
She became my friend.
My only friend, which sounds sad and is also true, and which I have made peace with because the truth of it is that one Alison Park was worth more than several dozen of the alternative.
