“I don’t think so, Frankie,” he said.

“I just . . . I can’t imagine it not being the two of us,” I told him.

“It was so long ago,” he said.

“It doesn’t feel like that long ago to me, honestly,” I told him. “I think about it all the time. I think about that summer. I say the phrase to myself. If I’m just sitting by myself, not really thinking about anything, I see those hands that you drew, just kind of hovering there in my mind. You don’t have that?”

“No,” he admitted, and he looked so sheepish, so sad. But I think he was sad for me. “I work hard not to think about it. And I don’t.”

“That summer is why I’m who I am,” I said.

“Me, too,” he told me.

I had thought I was going to bring Zeke back, and I had thought he’d be grateful, once the shock wore off. We’d be friends again. Or at least when people thought of the poster, they’d think of us that summer, the two of us, and even if we never saw each other again, we’d be linked. I wanted to cry.

“It was our secret,” he said. “We said we’d never tell. It was just you and me. And I really did like that, Frankie.”

“I have to tell,” I said. “It’s happening, whether or not I tell.”

“But, couldn’t it still be our secret?” he asked. “You can tell them a story. You can tell them that it was you. And that will be the truth. And people will believe it. From here on out, even after we die, that will be the story of that summer. And it will just be you and me who still know what the truth is.”

“I think I’m a little scared to do it by myself,” I said. “I don’t think I would have done any of it that summer if I hadn’t met you. I feel . . . Zeke, I feel like you made me the person that I am. I’m really grateful for that.”

“I like that,” he said.

“But did I make you the person that you are?” I asked him.

“Yes. You did. Or we both did. Or the world did. I don’t know. But it’s not bad. I’m not sad about it,” he said.

“I wish you hadn’t gone away,” I told him. “I wish that summer had never ended.” When I said it out loud, I realized how childish it sounded, how self-absorbed. I didn’t exactly wish that Zeke had stayed, I now understood. I wanted us to be frozen in that moment, for time to have stopped moving forward.