Bullfight

The peak of a friendship is it's beginning, if you ask me. Might not be the case for everyone, but, as far as I'm concerned, everything goes downhill after you first learn that a person might just be something special in your life, because what can beat that feeling? Perhaps the future will award me with a different perspective, but until then, I'm going to be a bit more careful with who I choose to get close to. I just now know how to choose better, and that's thanks to Tristan Burns.

I woke up one spring break morning to delightful news from my dad.

"Hey Laith, guess who's moving here?" Dad asked me.

"Who?"

"Tristan."

"Tristan Burns?" I asked.

"Who else?"

It had been about four years since I'd seen one of my closest friends from back when I was in Brooklyn. There had been an occasional Facebook message or tweet, but ever since my family and I moved to New Mexico for high school, I was almost clueless about what the aspiring prodigy musician was up to. I, however, couldn't have been more thrilled. I missed my home quite a bit and had been wanting to visit for a while, but Tristan coming to New Mexico made it feel like Brooklyn was coming to me. And being off school for a week meant that my old best friend and I could enjoy some time before my college entry exams. A day prior to his arrival, I had a lengthy phone call with Tristan to hype myself up even more.

"So, you're just not doing music anymore?" I asked Tristan.

"Honestly dude, I haven't touched an instrument since you left," he confessed.

"That's crazy man. You used to be so good at it," I said. I was met with silence. "Well, what are you going to do now?"

"I was thinking... what if I joined you?"

"In nursing school?" I asked, confused by his interest in anything other than Rockstar fame. From my understanding, Tristan had a less than ideal high school experience. In fact, he was forced into homeschooling for his last year and even that was rough for him. That, however, wasn't my real concern. "The entrance exam is in 5 days. Even if they let you take it, that's a lot of studying man."

"Sounds good to me. You'll help me get it, right?" he asked, though it felt more like a threat, just without the consequences part of it.

"Yeah."

"Come on man. You and I in the same school again, how cool is that gonna be?"

Even though anybody who knew me in high school would have believed I was surrounded by people day and night, the truth is I never saw anybody around me as a real friend. Tristan, at least as I wanted to remember, was that one friend who was always up for anything and everything you wanted to do, as long as it was the same the other way around too. I figured we grew out of that no responsibilities mentality, but talking to him on the phone made me feel like I could convince myself to go back to it, for the sake of an everlasting brotherhood, I suppose.

I had come to terms with the fact that helping Tristan study would mean I would get less of a spring break, but he wanted to avoid sacrificing the relaxation of our time off.

"Hey, let's figure out some stuff to do before you start school again," he suggested on our phone call.

"Umm, yeah," I started. "Maybe we can take a break one of the days and go to the Cinema. New horror movie I've been wanting to watch."

"Eh. The cinema isn't really for me,"

"What about bowling or pool?"

"Not one for that stuff either to be honest. Oh!" Tristan shouted. "I'm looking at this cool rodeo you guys have down there. I've never been to one, wanna go?"

Considering that I rank going to the rodeo at the bottom of my unmade list of things I rather not ever have to do, I should have said, "not really." Tristan, however, was going to stay with us for a little bit until he found his own place, and that meant I had to treat him like a royal guest.

"I'm looking at their website right now and there are some crazy videos on here. They even have a bullfighting competition!" he said excitedly.

"That's crazy," I responded, chasing an Oscar for best actor.

"They have a show on Thursday. I can buy two tickets right now. Wanna go?" he asked.

"That's the day before the exam dude and the rodeo is 2 hours away."

"That's great. We'll study for the two days we have before that and then take a break before exam day. We're gonna do it, come on."

While it wasn't in my style to not use up a last day before an exam to study, I wanted to please Tristan during his first week in New Mexico. Plus, I assumed he'd do whatever I wanted to after that. "Alright, yeah, why not? But hey, I'm paying for the tickets."

Shortly before I went to sleep that night, Tristan texted me a video of the bullfighting competition. I still couldn't see the appeal, but I watched the video over and over again to excite myself, thinking that would make my day with him at the rodeo better.

The morning of Tristan's arrival, I unusually woke up after my first alarm, got dressed before my parents for once, and had a strangely normal breakfast. I think I believed that because someone from my past was going to be constantly accessible to me, it would change who I was for the better. That logic made sense to me back then.

At the airport, we were meant to pick Tristan up from just outside the gate, but upon arriving there right on time, we couldn't spot him anywhere.

"Text him and let him know we'll be around when he's ready," my mom instructed.

I reached for my phone only to realise that it wasn't on me, and I had forgotten it at home while I was anxiously leaving my house. "Crap! I left it back at home. I know his number though." I used my mom's phone to text him, hoping that I hadn't missed anything on my own phone. About fifteen minutes later, we hadn't received any texts back. I tried calling but he wouldn't pick up. I figured I should go inside to see if he was having trouble with his bags.

I entered the airport and looked for what baggage claim section he would be by. Upon looking for him by the carousel assigned to his flight, there was no trace of him, or anyone else for that matter. The only thing there, was a travel bag that looked like it was moving a city. When I went to look at the name on the tag, it read, "Tristan B." I checked the restrooms right by baggage claim and found no one there. I asked the employees, but they said that no one came for the bag. I went around the arrivals terminal over and over again like a mom with a missing child, but could find no sign of a friend anywhere. Eventually, I found someone who worked with the airline Tristan was using and asked them to check if anyone was still on the plane, but the plane he was supposed to be on was already cleared. I spent half an hour shaking my legs just sitting there waiting for him, before my dad finally came inside to shout for me to come outside. I calmed myself, assuming that they finally found him.

When I entered the Tristan-less car, my mom broke the news to me. "I just got a call from his mom," she said.

Turns out he never took his plane. Just before boarding, I guess the stress of leaving home got to him and he couldn't get himself to commit to a completely new life just yet, despite having already paid for it, which I'm sure his parents weren't crazy about. I wasn't too phased about it at first, because I wanted to believe he texted me or tried to call me to say something, but when I got back home that day, there was nothing from him. I tried to restart my phone, expecting that my texts would update, but I only ever got a video of a bull and its fighter staring back at me as a last text. Till this day, he has never bothered to say anything or apologise, and that's the really frustrating part. I get that people have their own lives and go through their own things, but I also believe in common courtesy. I've thought about reaching out to him to talk about it, but every time I open up our text history and see the video of that bull, I upset myself, remembering what should have happened even though I ironically didn't want to go to the rodeo to begin with. The tickets eventually expired without ever being used, and I paid for them, so that kind of sucks. Like I said, the future may well change the way I think, but at least for now, I'm going to take a step back before getting excited at the prospect of an endless and fruitful friendship, because more times than not, I fear that kind of thing will be unlikely. And I don't know if I'll ever see Tristan again, but if I do, he owes me, at the very least, a bullfight.