“Maybe he’ll come around,” I say. I don’t actually believe that, no matter how many times Ms. Birdie says it.

“Do you think it’s because of what happened before we left? Or is it something else?”

“I honestly don’t know. He’s barely said two words to me that Ms. Birdie hasn’t forced him to say.”

“You can do this, you know. Everything will work itself out. I know it,” Frankie says, her voice strong and confident.

I wish I felt the same.

· five ·

JULIAN

I can hear his voice through the wall. I can’t hear any words, but his distinct low mumble floats through the cheap insulation and drywall and dances through the air right to my eardrums. I lie on my bed with my English homework, but I can’t concentrate on anything with that deep hum lingering around in my head. It sounds like before.

His eyes are the same.

And that crooked smile.

But his hair is longer, falling in golden waves across his forehead and curling behind his ears. When I first saw him sitting on the stool in my kitchen, my first instinct was to touch him. Hug him. Put my hands on his skin in some way. But when he stood up and his frame filled the kitchen doorway, all I could remember was that he left without telling me where he was going, or even saying goodbye.

Things had been complicated before he left, but had I not meant anything to him at all? All those years we were friends, and maybe something a little more than that, and he just disappeared from my life overnight.

He had never exactly been a model citizen or a great student. It wasn’t that he actually went out and got in trouble every day or anything, but he always seemed to be around when bad things happened, you know? The teacher’s candy stash disappearing in third grade. Fights in the middle school hallway. Elijah always seemed to be in detention for something. Or sitting in the hallway outside of class because he was mouthing off or otherwise annoying someone. Never serious trouble, but enough that he had a reputation of sorts. He was a joker. A class clown.

But we were still friends.

We had been friends since we were seven years old and played peewee ball together. We kind of grew apart for a few years after fifth grade. We were still in each other’s orbit, just not connected at the hip as we had been when we were really little. It had started to bother me that Elijah didn’t take things as seriously as I did. Later on, I realized that maybe that was one of the things I liked best about him, too.