Rebecca Kauffman

As children, The Gunners could not have imagined that by the time they were sixteen years old, one of them would turn her back on the others, and the group would be so fractured by the loss, the sudden and unexplained absence of this one, that within weeks the other friendships would also dissolve, leaving each of them in a dark and confounding solitude. Mikey Callahan became a sinkhole; everything inside sort of loosened and then just collapsed.

I think at various times in life we’re either more or less true to who we really are. But that essence, that who we are . . . I don’t know that that ever changes.”

Mikey glanced over at Alice when a low vibration emerged from her lips.

“Are you purring?” he said.

“I’m relishing the moment.”

Just juice?” Alice said. “Good God. Does gravy count

Sally wasn’t one to reverse herself or to break a promise. She’d rather die with something hidden in her heart.”

Mikey said, “Or die because something was hidden in her heart.”

How strange, Mikey thought, that after longing for invisibility since he was a child, as it turned out, he would not become invisible to the world, but the world would become invisible to him

If you masturbate too much, you’ll eventually go blind or lose all your senses or something?”

“Oh,” Alice said. “If that was true, I’d be blind and deaf and dumb and dead.”

He wondered if she intended to spend the rest of her life in a static and unchanging version of grief, these flowers collecting dust but never dying. Never even fading.

That word love . . . it was scary and outlandish to him. But what was life if not a long series of scary and outlandish things you did and said and asked of your heart, so you could carry the wild and unreasonable hope that someday someone would hold your face and say, You are perfect. You can rest now. You were always perfect to me. Not because you were even remotely close to perfect, or brave, or strong, or even very good, but because you had been very dear friends for a very long time

He wondered if she intended to spend the rest of her life in a static and unchanging version of grief, these flowers collecting dust but never dying. Never even fading