Kyle and Kenneth, the Lake twins. We don’t remember them nearly enough. In every generation on my block, a group of friends loses someone. One of the Big Kids, Benton, drunk-rode his bike into traffic a couple years ago. I don’t know the details beyond that, but I guess it could be said that Kenneth took one for the team. The least we could do is fucking remember him, especially when Kyle can’t.

My heart is racing just thinking about it, the way it pounds when I’m the last one standing in a game of manhunt. “Would you ever do it? The procedure?”

“I have nothing to forget, and I wouldn’t if I did,” Thomas says. “Everyone plays a purpose, even fathers who lie to you or leave you behind. Time takes care of all that pain so if someone derails you, it’ll be okay eventually. You?”

“When you put it that way, I have nothing I’d want erased either,” I say. “Well, maybe clowns. I could go without circus memories.”

“Doctors should work on erasing clowns. Period.”

11

TRADE HANGOUT

   I’ve been picking up extra shifts at Good Food’s because Mom’s not feeling well. She’s missed work two days in a row already, and it’s really going to set us back. Mohad even trusted me to close up last night, and all my friends naturally wanted to lock themselves in and have a party with every beer and cigarette and snack available to us. The last thing this family needs is me getting thrown in jail and sued.

It’s my first day off since witnessing the Leteo rally with Thomas, the last time I saw him. I’m meeting him in a bit, but until then I’m chilling with Brendan and Baby Freddy on a staircase. On one of the steps, Brendan is rolling up some weed on top of graph paper and overdue bills.

“I thought your clients do all that themselves.”

“These aren’t for my clients,” Brendan says, licking the tip of his freshly rolled-and-folded blunt. “I’m branching out. I’ll work some corners and colleges and if I roll it myself they won’t realize I’m skimming them twenty percent of what they’re paying for.”

“My boss is looking for another dishwasher,” Baby Freddy says. “If you want to stop dealing.”

“Washing dishes is for spics like you and Skinny-Dave. I’m good.”

“Whatever. Can I get a freebie?”

“You can have half off.” Brendan’s smart. I’ve seen Baby Freddy trying to smoke and it would be a waste of the weed he’s saving from shorting others.

“Kenneth liked to smoke,” I say.

Brendan looks up. “Fucking shame Kenneth’s brother fucked the wrong guy’s sister. A guy with a gun.”

Baby Freddy ignores him. “He loved acting like he was Kyle even though Kyle hated that.”

“Maybe that’s the real reason Kyle forgot about Kenneth,” Brendan says, lighting up the blunt he just rolled and inhaling deeply. “Great, now you got me smoking someone else’s shit.” He tosses all his blunts into a Ziploc bag and sprinkles the remaining weed in. “Let’s go get a game going. I feel like running.”

“I’m about to link up with Thomas, actually. I’m down when I get back, though.”

“Okay then,” Brendan says.

We all leave the staircase and a security guard sees us with Brendan’s Ziploc bag. He calls us delinquents but carries on. Baby Freddy tells me he’ll see me later. Brendan keeps it moving.

I definitely should’ve left the memories of Kenneth and Kyle dead and buried.

“What should we do?”

“I have this thing I do with Genevieve—”

“If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, that’s off the list,” Thomas says, patting my back.

“Hilarious. No, this isn’t going to sound great either, but we have Trade Dates.”

“Is that where you hang out with another couple and swap girlfriends or something?”

“No. God, why doesn’t anyone get this?” I hate repeating myself almost more than anything in the entire universe, but I tell him what a Trade Date is in the hopes we can do something fun like it, but in a No Homo way. “I was thinking we could go maybe do a Reverse Trade Date—without calling it a Reverse Trade Date or a date at all—where you take me somewhere personal for you and I’ll do the same.”

“Sounds cool. We’ll skip the rooftop since you’ve already been there. Let me think about it. You go first.”

We go to Comic Book Asylum. I tried applying for a job before, but they told me I have to wait until I’m done with school because of some bullshit, like labor laws or something, I don’t remember. I can’t think of a cooler atmosphere to work. “This is the best fucking place ever,” I say as we arrive. “I mean, look at this fucking door. Isn’t this the best fucking door you’ve ever seen?”

“It is the best fucking door I’ve ever seen,” Thomas says. “You curse a lot.”

“Yeah. My mom used to get really pissed whenever the bus driver told her I was cursing on the school bus with Brendan, but once a year she would host late night spelling bees for me and my brother only using curses. I think it was her way of letting us get it out of our systems.”

Thomas laughs. “Your mom is f-u-c-k-i-n-g awesome.”

He goes straight over to the cape closet and tries on both Superman and Batman capes, quoting lines from each movie. (“KRYPTON HAD ITS CHANCE!” and “SWEAR TO ME!”) He follows me over to the bargain cart, picks up a comic, and says, “I hate how superheroes can be twenty for thirty years so comic book artists never have to create new characters. It’s lazy.” Some hard-core comic geeks turn around and glare at him. I’m a little concerned for his life.

“I don’t know. At least those cash cows finish their comics. My comic—”

“You have a comic?”

“Not one for sale.”

“Where is it?”

“Not here.”

“Can I read it?”

“It’s not done.”

“So what?”

“It’s not good.”

“So what? Stretch, I let you use my rooftop for your girl’s birthday. You owe me.”

“I thought I was going to help you figure out who you are.”

“Just let me read your comic.”

“Fine. Soon.”

I think about the page where I left off in the comic, with Sun Warden torn between saving his girlfriend or best friend from becoming dragon food. If someone asked me to choose between saving Genevieve or Thomas, I would rather dive headfirst into the mouth of the dragon. I’m about to tell him how I haven’t drawn a whole lot since my dad’s death, but I look up and see Collin from school—and he sees me too.