Mikey was like a brother to me—annoying as hell sometimes, but I knew I’d never know another as well as I knew him. There was too much between us, too much time, too much friendship, too much shared experience I was going to miss when I went away to school. Part of our bickering stemmed from the knowledge that the time we had remaining was short and neither of us wanted to squander it, though we knew nothing else to do.
After his father left us a second time, Mikey punched his pillow into shape and stretched out on his bed, ingeniously lying so as to keep me from finding a place to sit. I didn’t care—I plopped down on his knees, and when he raised them to shake me off, I slid in the space between his body and the wall, my legs draped over his. To make peace, I accepted the magazine he ga
