“W . . . w-ell, I have a new job and also . . .” Tate stops talking, works his jaw. He used to tell me that when he got stuck on a word, he taught himself to think about a pair of otters gliding through still water, and that image helped him to stop and regroup. But Tate’s stuttering was always the worst when he was upset or nervous about something. His dad made him nervous with his mood swings and fits of rage, especially when it came to his stuttering. I feel a pang. I never made him nervous.

I hold my notebook against my chest. “I thought you’d never come back to Whittier.”

He shifts his weight before saying, “He died.”

I know instantly who. “Your father?”

He nods.

It hits me like a bullet. The man who caused Tate so much pain, the man responsible for driving him away from Whittier—from me—is gone. My thoughts drift back to a summer morning just after Tate’s eighteenth birthday. We’d gone to the Buckner Building; it had become a habit of ours—something about its neglected ruins spoke to us. Tate had shown up with a black eye, and we’d sat side by side on the loading dock, legs dangling off the concrete stoop, feet inches above a pile of broken bottles, rusted beer cans, cigarettes. Morning light peeked through the busted-out windows, dusting our skin. Dark maroon stained my fingers—paint that had dripped from the bottle when we sprayed our newest image across the cement walls: a huge fist, middle finger raised.

Tate inhaled off a joint, passed it to me. Our exhales mingled in a cloud, thinning, then disappearing into the cool air.

Remember that night the bear got into the lobby?

I nodded. That bear was huge.

Tate inhaled again, held it in until he coughed. It was my fault.

The weed moved languidly through my body, dampened my surprise. How?

Dad w . . . w-as at the bar, and I didn’t think he’d be able to g . . . g-et back in. So I propped the door open.

I laughed. It wasn’t funny, except it was. Everything was funny and stupid and tragic, but at least I had Tate. He understood Mom’s absence ate at me, left ragged bite marks that festered as I watched Dad’s back stoop with every year she broke off a chunk of his heart when she didn’t sober up. I remember thinking that in some ways, I was the lucky one because at least she was gone. Tate’s dad was as mean and as drunk as ever.

I’d inhaled again, closed my eyes, and let the smoke lay over the places that hurt. Tate fell silent, threw his can of spray paint against the wall. It clunked, then fell with hardly a sound onto the mound of litter below.