3 Chapter 3

“Don’t say that, Dougie.”

 “Why?”

“Becauseyou probably don’t.”

“I’ve known you my whole life, since we were both little kids.” We were a year older, now, than we’d been that heroic summer, seventeen going on eighteen. “I think I always loved you in one way, and then it turned into something else. Isn’t that, like, the best kind of love there could be? I think it is.”

Every time Dougie tried to touch me, I squirmed out of it. “Yeah…you think.”

“I know, Justy.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You call me Dougie, so I can call you Justy.”

There was no denying an eerie feeling still hung there at the stream, like the murky scent in summer or the clean, fresh smell in winter. Maybe it always would, but it was a place I still wanted to be. There was also no denying the feeling in my head at odds with the ones in my body.