We started hanging out again that summer after middle school. Elijah showed up on my front porch one morning, and that was it. From then on we were always together, tossing the football back and forth or riding our bikes down to Jake’s Convenience for Cokes and bags of hot Cheetos. We compared the hairs on our chins and made bets on who would be able to grow a beard first. We dared each other to eat the ghost pepper wings at Sir Clucks-A-Lot. Elijah taught me how to jump from the Main Street bridge to the banks of the creek below without breaking an ankle. I taught him Morse code. That summer, we were as close as we had been when we were seven. Never saw one of us without the other.

Maybe that’s why it hurt so much that I was the one who found him there that day a few weeks into our freshman year, the window already broken, shards of glass scattered across his raggedy tennis shoes. He had seemed to turn a corner the summer before we started ninth grade. I’m pretty sure the change in his attitude had something to do with football. He knew, as we all did, that the high school coaches didn’t put up with any crap and they’d replace you in a heartbeat if you screwed up in school. Even if you were Elijah Vance, Meridien Middle School’s Defensive Player of the Year.

But that night, there stood Elijah outside the school, wearing Crenshaw football shorts and a bright red tank top, the rock already thrown into the football coach’s office window.

I was the one who turned him in.

I don’t know if he knows that or not.

I left an anonymous message on the school’s tip line. I still remember what I said. “Elijah Vance broke the window into the football coach’s office. He was trying to steal the car wash money.”

Even now, three years later, I’m not sure that I did the right thing.

I remember Birdie jumping up from her La-Z-Boy later that night when the spinning yellow light from the school resource officer’s car streaked across our living room.

“What in tarnation…” she whispered. “Julian, what in heaven’s name is going on over there?”

I didn’t answer her, but I did follow her onto the porch.

It seemed like all the neighbors were out on their porches on Rudy Street that night, wondering what the officer was doing in the Vances’ driveway. It wasn’t like the Vances were strangers to officers showing up at their doorstep, but most of their troubles disappeared when Mr. Vance was put away for good up in Huntsville.