Alright

So we lay passive on the hill making friends with ants

[Thinking back on it now, the air smelled like the stale feeling of Boxing Day after a month of pre-Christmas hype]

And he’s entertaining himself by tracing the outline of my Jellyfish Scar with the sharp sword point of a piece of grass. I don’t laugh or shiver—it’s too warm and my water bottle has decided of its own accord to take a trip down the hill and into the lake (“bye forever, I guess”)

His watch yells at me in bright blue flashes: Jun-20 16:27:19, and he knows that soon it will be time for me to swallow two little pills (“I hate being sick, it’s like being forced to do your daily activities with the underwire of your bra poking you and not being able to adjust it”)

And he’s wearing the shirt that I’ve already suggested he throw out, but I really like his smile today.

I dislike talking to him because it makes me realize how little time I’ve spent thinking about things like why the earth rotates one way and not the other,

But I like it because we can repeat the same three-word sentences for up to twenty-four minutes at a time without getting bored because I keep finding new meanings in the baby spaces between the letters

[I remember that later our thoughts turned to in-depth discussions on the correct way to pronounce the word “dandelion”]

When a bee falls off the nearest daisy, I cough; he falters and a concerned and significant look is tossed in my general direction. I brush it off—we have three hours left and I don’t want my mother to be the first person I call with my brand-new Nokia (“I’m not lame, I have other friends”)

We try our best to keep hidden from the scorching sun using hats made of our sticky palms, but apparently there is no way to escape a beating since Helios has decided we have somehow failed him (“haha, it’s actually Apollo” “shut up, you haven’t even read the new Percy Jackson”)

I really want to try writing a limerick together, but he’s suddenly lost the ability to form coherent sentences or to fit his lips around the shape of a word, so he is watching over my shoulder as I write

And he informs me that h-a-r-t a-t-t-a-c-k is most certainly not spelled that way, but I like the way it burns my retina.