Dedicated to my dear friend Bobby. May your spirit always remain present when the homies are together.

Drew walked through what seemed like endless rows of etched stone. Quiet laughter and talking echoed throughout the open, tree covered space. Each stone was adorned with their own unique sets of flowers and mementos. Some people sat in chairs near the stones in solitude or with others around them. Drew always loved how reverent the cemetery felt. Each spirit was sacred to him and all the others who stood on those grounds. This was never a scary place to him.

          He sat by his grandfather’s grave and lit a cigarette. He looked over his name and smiled as he held a silent conversation with him. Waves of comfort moved over his body as he heard his grandfather laugh and respond to everything he was saying. When the cigarette went out, he wiped away any loose grass that laid on the stone. He knelt in front of it, put his right hand over his heart, kissed his palm, and laid it flat over his grandfather’s name. When he got to the edge of the grass he hopped on to his skateboard and made his way down the road.

            He rode across Lotsworth, a town on the east side of the city of Palmview where he had lived all eighteen years of his life. He passed by a bus stop where some kids were waiting with chips and sodas in their hands. As he passed, he heard one of them say to the other “na you’re ass bro. I always got you on that shit.” The other kid snapped back “fuck you bro, let’s run it when we get back then.” Drew smiled as their voices faded away, remembering his own middle school years, waiting for that same exact bus.

            He hopped off his board when he got to a long, cracked driveway. He went through a chain linked gate and approached a semi-opened garage. Music, random sound effects, and talking could be heard from the outside. He knocked on the large metal door and someone from inside shouted “come around the side bro.”

            Inside was his three closest friends: Mykey, Ivan, and Lucas. This garage was Mykey’s and a sort of sanctuary/homebase for all of them. They were the ones who fixed it up and made it feel more like home all throughout their four years of high school. They carpeted the floor together, bargained at thrift stores and yard sales for furniture, perused various record shops for the perfect posters, and made sure to add their own little personal touches. Ivan and Lucas were sitting on the floor playing Double Dash on the GameCube which was hooked up to an old tube TV in the corner. Mykey was sitting on the couch rolling a joint on top of a large book titled “Atlas of The World: A Collection of Maps & Geography.” The turntable in the opposite corner from the TV was spinning Lady Soul by Aretha Franklin. The song “Chain of Fools” was coming from the speakers and intersecting with the soul warming sound effects from Double Dash.

            Drew put his board against the wall as they all greeted him and then plopped down next to Mykey on the couch.

            “You got here at the perfect time, must have sensed it” Mykey said as he licked the delicate paper in his hand and sealed it. He passed the joint and a lighter over to Drew, “may the lord be with you.” Drew smiled, “and also with you.” They both laughed as the spark wheel of the lighter was rolled.

            Drew had known Mykey for about four years. They met in their first week of high school. Drew had just moved to Lotsworth from across the city to live with his grandparents, so he knew nobody when he showed up for his freshman year. They were both in a group of people walking the track during P.E. when Mykey threw out a reference from the show Seinfeld. Drew laughed and was surprised he was familiar with the show since it wasn’t a common choice among fourteen-year-olds. It sparked a conversation between them for the rest of the P.E. period and they slowly discovered they had much more in common than just a love for that one particular show. When lunch rolled around Mykey invited Drew over to the table he sat at. That’s how he met Ivan and Lucas. All three of them had gone to middle school together. From that day forward Drew sat there every day at lunch. That small circular table expanded and contracted in terms of friends and acquaintances, but the two constants were Drew and Mykey.

            Smoke began to cloud above their heads creating a kind of world within the garage. Mykey nudged Drew, “look at us. Puffing on a lil kush with some entertainment. Watching these idiots battle it out. We’re like romans sitting in The Colosseum.”

            Lucas laughed, “yeah and you’d end up like Caesar. With knives in your back. Probably have a gay lover too.” Mykey smiled “I do have one and it’s you sweetheart. You’d probably be the one to stab me in the back too, all fucked up.” Everyone laughed as Lucas got hit by a blue shell, “no fucking waaayyy bro.”

            Lucas and Ivan wrapped up their race and then joined the sacred circle. All of them sat around bullshitting, their favorite pastime, as the joint slowly dwindled down. Once it went out they threw on Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards, a movie that went platinum in that garage.

            A quarter through the movie Mykey scrolled through his phone and then looked over to Drew, “yo these dudes are busy later, but what you up to?”

            “Not much. Just chillin’ honestly.”

            “For sure, well Liza and Jade hit me up to kick it later if you’re down to roll? Liza has some beer leftover from a family party last night or some shit too.”

            Drew nodded “oooo hell yeah, I’m down.”

            They all grinned and laughed as they watched Sargeant Donny Donowitz break open a nazi officer’s head with a baseball bat. With his eyes fixed on the TV Ivan said “isn’t it crazy how our government went over there and was just like ‘yeah we need to bring home some of these fucking nazis.’”

            Drew laughed “yeah, it’s wild. You guys ever hear about how Tomorrowland at Disneyland was co-designed by a nazi?”

            Lucas turned around, “no way, really?”

            Drew sat up as they all turned towards him, the movie quietly playing in the background, “yeah, it’s a wild ass story. This one dude um . . . what’s his name . . .” he snapped his fingers once the name landed in his mind, “Von Braun! Wernher Von Braun. This foo was like this rocket engineering genius who worked for the nazi’s and he didn’t just work for them he was like a full-fledged SS officer. He’s the one who invented the famous V-1 and V-2 rockets that destroyed like half of London. Anyways, the US had this guy at like the top of their list of people to bring into the states. They got a hold of him and he came over here with no consequences at all. They rolled out the red carpet for him and the government basically attempted to wipe away any records of him being a nazi. He became the director of NASA and is responsible for basically our entire space program and our trip to the moon. But when that was all going down a lot of the public was real skeptical you know? They were like ‘the fuck we going to space for? Seems stupid.’ So, Walt Disney recruited Von Braun to come out to Cali and help him create a new land based on the future, Tomorrowland.”

            They all were completely blown away. Mykey sat back, “What the fuck bro that’s insane. Can you imagine how many more of these bastards wormed their way into our system?”

            Drew nodded “right? And when I was reading up about this, I came across this crazy article talking about the layout of Disneyland. This foo Walt Disney was crazy bro. So, basically like you have Frontierland on the East side of the park right and then you have Tomorrowland on the west side, okay. So, the whole point of this was to get people to think about manifest destiny as they moved from Frontierland into Tomorrowland. He was trying to like mimic the whole migration from east to west that Americans did in the eighteen-hundreds to get them to see how the new frontier and the new manifest destiny was to venture out into space. This is how him and Von Braun got the public to be all chill with the idea of space travel and support it.”

            Ivan laughed, “damn, Walt lowkey a lil genius huh?”

            Lucas shook his head “wild. I haven’t been to that place in a minute, the land of the big rat.” They all let out small laughs.

---

Ivan and Lucas eventually headed out for their own plans and Mykey and Drew got ready to hang out with Liza and Jade. They packed up all the necessary supplies: an old cigar box filled with stoner paraphernalia, a portable speaker, two old blankets, and a beat-up pack of Uno cards.

            They hopped into Mykey’s nineteen ninety-four Mazda Navajo. The fact that the car was still running was a goddamn mystery to everyone, but Drew always liked rolling around in it. He felt like it had a certain vibe to it. Mykey popped a CD into the radio and out came “Teen Age Riot” by Sonic Youth. They picked up both girls at Liza’s house. Drew got out to greet them and offered up his seat to Jade. She happily accepted. He knew there was a little something going on between her and Mykey. Drew had had his own small moment with her the year before when he met her in a physics class. They hooked up one time, but neither of them thought of it as anything serious. Naturally their relationship just turned into a good friendship and she started coming around Drew and his homies more. Neither of the guys ever saw it as weird either. Jade was cool and Drew knew how him and Mykey could be like two different unique candy flavors, but both come from the same exact box. He always thought that’s why there was a common attraction. She had style, an impeccable music taste, she knew how to let the jokes fly, and had golden hazel eyes that were so easy to get lost in.

            Drew hopped in the back grinning, “what up Liza.” She put up two peace signs in front of her “what up dude. Check it ouuuttt.” She opened her knapsack to reveal a big pile of Pacifico cans. Drew put his hand next to his mouth as if he was making an announcement and shouted in a deep voice, “everybody give it up for Liza! Liza, ladies and gentlemen!” Jade and Mykey laughed and gave an applause from the front seat as they took off down the road.

            Their destination was a set of hills that sat at the edge of Lotsworth. They had spent countless hours up there. It was the perfect island of isolation for teenage antics. They all felt a sense of freedom and escape whenever they ventured out into the hills. A place where they could shed everything that made teenage life feel suffocating and a space that truly felt like theirs for the moment. No one around to tell them to act right or shame them for making trouble. The view was also a draw. A starlit painting that conjured endless dreams in their minds. It was also a place defined by myth and mystique. Stories were told of the wars between indigenous groups that took place their hundreds of years prior, all of the people who had gone missing, how various cults had resided within them, and how the most powerful people in Lotsworth used its shroud for their own dark practices. How could a teenager not fall in love with this enigmatic backdrop?

            They all hiked their way to the top of one of the hills, joking and laughing through every step. Once they got to the top they set up camp. Cold cans were passed around, a blunt was lit, and music was bumped. Mykey thought, what else could you possibly need or want? Drew opened his can and when the top cracked open he smiled and told all of them “that’s the greatest sound in the world right there.” Jade laughed and in her best fifties transatlantic impression said, “can crack heard round’ the world!”

            At one point Liza and Jade got up, “we’re gonna go find a place to release all this beer. We’ll be back.” They walked away laughing and talking with each other. The song “I Wish” by Stevie Wonder began playing and both Drew and Mykey moved to the rhythm while sitting.

            Mykey looked over to Drew “so you heading out for college next year bro?”

            Drew looked back at him “I don’t know man, I haven’t really decided yet.”

            “What the fuck? What do you mean?”

            Drew laughed and took a swig from his can, “I’m just not sure if I’m down for all that like I love this place and everyone here and plus I got accepted to a few colleges closer to here.”

            Mykey shook his head “bro that’s crazy. I get it, I love this place too. But this place ain’t going anywhere bro c’mon. Everyone and everything will always be here. It may change and look a little different over time, but I don’t think the feeling will ever really go away.”

            Drew nodded his head “I guess.”

            Mykey put his hand on Drew’s shoulder and told him “you’re my homie so I have to be real with you. You have a gift and you have to use it. You have something special that none of us really got. Think about that bro. A scholarship to a place you’ve been talking about going to since I met you. Imma pack you up and put you on that fucking plane myself.”

            Drew laughed again, “yeah . . .”

            Jade and Liza walked back up. Jade joined Mykey in dance as Stevie sang the chorus over a timeless bassline. Drew smiled as he watched them dance. He looked out over all of the lights of the city and thought about both the past and the future. How every moment behind him had led him there and tried to imagine what each of the moments in front of him would look like. Out of all these hypothetical pictures, the one he liked best was of him and Mykey. He imagined them two decades from now. Ther lives established and built, the loves of their lives found and treasured, and one of them was making their way over to the other’s house. They would be sitting down for dinner, music playing in the background of course, drinks flowing freely, herb being burnt, and everything would be as beautiful and free as it ever was.

---

Two years later Drew was sitting in the living room of a friend’s place from college when someone played the song “I Wish.” Even though he found himself joking and talking with everyone around him, a part of him had stepped out of the moment and thought about that one night on the hills back home. A night that didn’t feel as far away as it actually was. He smiled then thought about how long it had been since he had seen Mykey. It had been a while and each time it seemed like the gap between seeing each other got wider and wider. But it was okay. Drew always said that no matter how much time had passed it felt like it was all erased once their hands met during that timeless homie greeting. Drew pulled out his phone and went to send a text to Mykey.

---

A selection from one of Mykey’s notebooks

which was sitting on his bookshelf collecting dust:

We were a family of social rejects and eccentrics just trying to carve our way through a confusing reality. Most of us had ADHD and some kind of dependency issue. Some of us came from broken homes while others came from large, extravagant empty ones. We all bonded over this umbrella feeling of personal isolation, connected by the strong ideas from our wild minds. We never disliked people for the sake of doing it, we just couldn’t stand anybody who was afraid to be themselves. These people are built by a system to ensure the survival of that system. You can tell who they are by the scars they received from the assembly line. We were never really award winners or praise earners. Actually, we were quite the opposite. Just a bunch of shame receivers and troublemakers. We weren’t made to live in cutout matching little boxes. Liberty of the mind and freedom from the takers is all we wanted. Those takers would steal even a penny from you if they had the chance. The beauty of romance and kindness was appreciated by us in all its many shapes and sizes. Camaraderie was the driving force of everything we did together. We would wear each other’s blemishes to erase feelings of fear and tell the worried members of the family that it was okay. I think that’s all any of us really wanted to hear, that everything was okay. We lived lives full of people complaining to us and bickering about us. Paradise was found wherever we marched together, free to move about and express anything we wanted. This is my love letter to those who have built a life on impulses and those who seek the answers of the existential. Our family has an unfortunate vulnerability for accidentally finding the exit sign of life. Some say it’s hereditary and passed down from generation to generation. No matter what it is, I know it’s no coincidence. So, to my family I say, “shine on you crazy diamonds.”