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I laugh "So it’s not what you expected?"

"No" He laughs with ht that if I cah school"

"College was really that bad?"

"It wasn’t what I expected Like I said, I thought I’d be playing ball and going on to bigger things I thought if I came back here I could at least have fun with s and buying houses and having kids, and I don’t think I’m ready for that"

This conversation feels very adult-ish andto me about it, but I can tell he doesn’t want to "Okay, on to alances up, wary

"What’s yourmoment?"

"What?" He looks amused "That’s your important question?"

"It’s very i not to crack up

"Okay, well, if I tell you this, you can’t tell anyone at school Understand?"

"Pinky swear" I link h school, this buddy of mine and I discovered that if you climbed up on top of the lockers in the boys’ locker roo tiles up and crawl into the ceiling next to the girls’ locker roo?"

"I didn’t fall through the ceiling! At least…not then anyway"

I laugh "I gotta hear , the wall between the two locker rooot this idea that we could chisel through the concrete Likethrough the concrete"

"Weren’t you worried about structural dae? Why didn’t you just run into the locker rooirls so bad?"

"I was sixteen I wasn’t thinking about structural da about how if Evan and I ran in the locker rooirls would screah school Why’d you need to spy on girls to see theoes redder than the ketchup "That’s beside the point"

"Oh really?"

"It was about the adventure!"

"The adventure of chiseling through concrete to spy on girls?" I snorggle

He gives me a look "Do you want to hear the rest of the story?"

"Yes"

"Then behave"

I salute "Yes, sir"

"Would you stop calling me that?"

"Tell the story already"

Our drinks sit untouched as Brian and Iacross the table toward each other We’re laughing as Brian goes on to explain that after they chiseled through the concrete, he edged onto the ceiling tiles on the other side, they couldn’t support his weight, and he fell straight down into the locker roo while he sprained his wrist and got suspended for a week

"Now I get to ask you an i tears of laughter off my face "What’s your earliest s the cheese fries, and we dive in He invited me out, so screw the calories I nod, I listen, I ask hih

To be here with reat ti in the now And so am I

It’s not my earliest memory, but it’s my favorite

When I was eleven, I packed up my suitcase and went to sleep-away camp for the first time Cumberland Creek church ca and cooking burgers over a crackling caed races in Field Oly and writing inand how I loved being a Christian because it ood person

During night devotion, the counselors allowed us to write prayers on slips of paper and burn them, so whatever we prayed for would be just between us and His like relief for Graic to animals so my parents would let me adopt a yellow lab puppy already

Campers received mail, but if you receivedin front of the entire ca "Twinkle, Twinkle" in front of three hundred kids But I didn’t care My parents loved h to send fifteen postcards

That’s ht of ca dates Nobody asked Laura and Allie, and they felt disappointed because that was the activity we’d been looking forward to ether and held hands I’d never done that before At the end of the night, he kissed ain because he was from Nashville, but Laura and Allie saw the kiss, and I saw the envy in their eyes Laura toldtoo fast and should be careful or I would end up pregnant, or worse, I would sin After that, I worried what other girls thought of me I kne pretty I was, I knew that boys liked uy until after Mo, never even kissed a boy on the lips But my church turned on me anyway

Brian pulls his truck up to usted by the stench of fried chicken and laundromat "This is it?"

"This is it"