Letting lil bro get shotty and us all going quiet, looking out windows, turning up that new Young Nudy, V commenting on the subtle genius of the understated, whisper flow, how Nudy was the best at it since 21 pioneered it, me looking out at the waves, feeling the body thaw, not till that moment realizing how tensed I’d been or that I’d even been tensed how when at the end of that school year they split I dipped for college and V for his gap year bike mish all over the east coast from Florida up to the ATL to Philly basically ghosting going Chris McCandless sleeping out in highway dividers and shit Into the Wilding out till that spring he pulled up unannounced to campus like he did looking all scraggly harassing randos for where I might be before finally finding me in the library how lit that reunion but then that next summer things different with V and lil sis how I tried to keep my distance let em do them living with the ole man who’d outta nowhere abruptly returned from Germany where he’d lived all high school years with the new wife only they’d divorced and this was supposed to be our reunion since he was on the eastside and the kids’ camp I was working at sorta was too till that once I went back to the ma’s for dinner and heard yelling out front and lil sis going Go away! and going upstairs to see what was good and seeing V out there spazzing yelling up at the window John Cusack boombox-on-shoulder-like except angry-crying and having to be the one to go out there and go You gotta make moves bud, leave it be, and not until later asking lil sis what happened what changed and she saying I love him, he’ll always be my first love but he left when things were good and then wanted things to suddenly go back to being how they were when he returned Wouldn’t accept it when they didn’t Couldn’t handle that they wouldn’t before, as we pulled into the beach parking lot, dropping all pretense of being like rap historians and turning up to “Sicko Mode,” which had just dropped.

V catching my eye in the rearview like This shit, huh.

Fkn slaps.

Then blasting the Drake part in the rental car speakers so loud I felt like I was picking up on aspects of the bass line as if for the first time.

Like it almost became a different song, when amplified that high.

•

“Nah it’s like. Like listening,” lil bro was saying. “Like openness. Or like, participation. With open listening,” toking from the bowl one time in the wind-protected open front passenger nook. “That’s what I’m tryna study.”

He’d just started school at Naropa, in Colorado, and was explaining his Special Major.