Albany was my last stop; I’d visited thrift stores in every decent-sized town within forty miles of Hudson, and found three guitars. All of them in shit condition, as far as I could tell, but none of them totally hopeless.

I would get them fixed up. I would leave one at my house, hidden behind the porch swing. One for the abandoned railroad shack by what Solomon called the Blighted Spaces. One for him to stash in another of his secret locations. That way, wherever he was, whatever he was going through, he’d be able to make music.

Albany was a shithole, but it had its moments. Like this one. An eerie calm; Friday night; the highway full of people heading home for the weekend. The full weight of Saturday and Sunday ahead of us. The sun was setting and the wind was picking up and the moon was already out. The place was magic. Across the parking lot, Albany’s only Indian restaurant was making the night wind delicious.

The feeling came upon me out of nowhere: happiness. An overwhelming sensation, all through my body.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened. It just didn’t happen very often. The meds weren’t exactly causing it; I knew that. But maybe they helped to quiet down the fear and the sadness and the rage that sometimes shattered this feeling before it could flower. The world around me was beautiful and I was wearing my favorite sweatshirt, and the hood of my car was still warm from driving and I had just bought a gift that I knew would make Solomon happy. I felt so full of love right then that I really could have cried.

Instead, I took out my camera. Snapped a picture, then another. Then five more.

But it was no use. I knew it without needing to go back to the darkroom and develop them. The images I caught contained none of what made me break out in goose bumps.

I could feel it in my arms, up and down my spine, like electricity—this bliss, this joy, this perfect contentment—but I couldn’t capture it on film. All anybody would see, looking at these images, was a dirty, darkened parking lot where the lights were just coming on.

Love for the world, and hatred for the world. Somewhere between them, or in both simultaneously, lay the truth. About life, about Solomon . . . about me.

I got in the car. I drove back toward Hudson, but I did not go home. I went to Connor’s.

And yeah, maybe part of me just wanted a hookup. But Connor was my friend too. He made me laugh. He thought I was way smarter than I actually was. He hated a lot of the same things I hated.

And I had questions.

The kind he was uniquely positioned to answer.