And Zander never taught me anything. On vacation, he would leave early in the morning to go fishing with his dad, and I wouldn’t even know he was gone until I woke hours later for breakfast. I’ve never fished. Why did he never invite me? Or take me out later, and show me how to cast a line like he could, in one smooth motion, the line flying over his shoulder, out into the water.

But Aiden is running across a field while telling me funny stories, and he’s been so patient with me—with my wheeze-filled hiking, and my beginner-level canoeing; even my string skills aren’t that great, but he’s not stressing about the way some of my lines are slanting toward the sidelines.

After he finished the stakes he took over with the string, running that back and forth too. It was hundreds of feet of him asking me about my Aunt Sarah, as he ran one direction, and telling me embarrassing stories about Ellis as he ran the other. And as he ran, I barked out questions like a coach would. A coach on TV, at least. The kind that rides on the sleds barking things like Do you want to win or not? Is this as fast as you can go? while the players shove it across the football field.

“When’s your birthday?” I shouted as he ran from the ten-yard line to the thirty with the length of string.

“March twenty-fifth,” he replied, not even winded.

“Do you have any siblings?”

“Two,” he told me. Both sisters—one in college and the other already graduated and working as a kindergarten teacher in Tennessee. He talked about them for a while, telling me about what they liked and that one was probably going to be engaged soon. Once he’s done, the grass is covered in a giant grid of string. We’re sitting on the bleachers, looking down at the spidery web we’ve woven across a third of the football field.

“Have you figured it out yet?” he asks.

I take a drink from the bottle of water I pulled out of my bag-of-preparedness a few minutes ago. “It reminds me of weaving. Do you remember all the weaving we did in Ms. Wilson’s class?” Middle school was the last time I took art, back when everyone had to.

I tip my bottle toward Aiden and he smiles and takes it from me, taking a giant drink that wipes out half of the bottle.

I grab at it. “Oh my gosh, you’re a fish!”

He laughs and hands it back to me. “It’s all the wind-sprints! Is this the only bottle you have in your gigantic bag?”

It’s not. But I’m not telling him that, and getting teased about my over-packing again.