I was thinking about fears, and how each person’s fears are unique—not necessarily the fear itself, but how they developed that fear, assuming they even know why.

I was thinking tonight of my quirk, my strange fear, when I started to think about the details of that fear, and whether others remember it the same way I do.

I was in fourth grade at Central Elementary. Mrs. Schaffer was our teacher, and I had just transferred. We hadn’t moved–my parents had just decided that they wanted me to go to a different school, and so it was that I was in a new school where I knew no one.

But this isn’t about me.

Shelia sat near me that year, at least for part of that year. Shelia was beautiful and tall, but then compared to me, everyone was tall. She was from Bangladesh, and she told us how the boys she went to school would prove their bravery by rubbing erasers on their arms until they drew blood. It was my first realization that boys were weird no matter where they were from. Shelia didn’t come back for fifth grade, and although I wondered where she was at the beginning of the year, I soon ceased to think of her.

But this isn’t about Shelia.

When I think of Ronnie, I picture him as small and slight, with close cropped hair. He was a boy, so our paths didn’t cross much. That was the way of fourth grade. Boys played with boys, and girls played with girls.

I don’t remember what time of the year it was, although I vaguely remember it as cold, perhaps fall with the trees in color, crunchy, brown leaves along the sidewalks as I walked to school. We came in one morning, and Mrs. Schaffer sat us all down and said she had something to tells us. Ronnie was dead.

I can not remember if she told us the details then, or if we found them out later, but they remain even now. He had slipped in the shower and drowned.

Only Aaron Marko went to the funeral. I remember him coming back to school, in his suit, somber and serious. If anyone asked him about the details, I was not there to hear them.

Later that year, we all went to the library, because our class donated a book in his name. I remember standing in the children’s section, staring at the giant mural of a castle with the dragon twisting round. Standing there as the librarian said something brief, and then placed the book on the shelf of featured books. I remember thinking to myself at the time: “Is that all there is?” But then we had to leave, to go back to school.

For years after this, I would refuse to shower unless someone else was in the house, and even now, twenty five years later, it still bothers me, and I think of Ronnie, of Ronnie’s death, if no one is home when I shower. I still think that I could slip, and fall, and drown, and it would be hours before anyone found me.

This evening the house was empty except for me and the cats, and as I showered I thought about Ronnie, but I then wondered who else remembers him. His parents of course. But who knows where they are now? Did they remain here after his death? Or did they leave, to escape their loss? I remember Aaron, coming back from the funeral in his suit. Does Aaron remember that day and think of Ronnie? Is our book still at the library? Could I go and find it? I don’t remember what book it was, only that we dedicated a book to him, our whole class.

Do the rest of them remember, or was his death something they quickly forgot? Does anyone else mourn quietly for him, after all these years? I hope so, and I hope they have done a better job than I. I hope that someone remembers what his favorite food was, and what he liked to do at recess. That someone remembers his birthday, remembers his last name.