Elmo liked slides, too. Matt could never figure out why. If Elmo couldn’t get up the stairs to reach the top of the slide, Matt or Andrea would pick him up and place him at the top. Once placed upon the lofty perch, Elmo would inch forward and let gravity take him. You couldn’t pass a playground without him tugging his leash towards the sand.

New Jersey didn’t last long. Matt and Andrea had made fantastic friends in the rolling green hills and it was difficult to leave. His father was transferred to Illinois, back to the suburbs of Chicago. Matt was saddened to leave his pals and the comfortable woods of northern New Jersey, but it also felt meant to be, whatever that truly was. He sensed it in his bones. His mother was the saddest of all about the move, telling them it was the best thing in the long run, but Matt wasn’t buying it— junior high age or not. They had lasted two years in New Jersey. It was a blessed time.

The transfer back to Illinois was jarring. The new school was built without much thought, and there wasn’t a window in sight. Madison junior high was a series of giant brick and concrete walls, and a circular center with the administrative offices right in the middle like a bull’s-eye. Between classes, students walked the circle, exiting at four points into different sets of steps leading towards other voluminous concrete rooms.

There was no sunlight. On their first day, Matt and Andrea sat side by side on the office bench as the students of this new world swirled around them in the circular passageway. Making new friends was rough, as the kids were nothing like New Jersey kids. The cliques were tighter, the atmosphere less friendly, the smiles fewer. Kids were doing things they had never heard of, like huffing paint.

The days were long inside the concrete tomb that passed for a junior high. The best part of the day for Matt and Andrea was walking towards their house, fresh off the school bus and seeing that big white and brown ball of fur sprinting towards them.

“Elmoooooo,” Andrea would shout. “Elmooooooo!”