Duke, for not paying attention, for not sitting still, for having chronically untied shoes. The way he always got in trouble with our second-grade teacher, Mr. The time we both got pulled out of class during the lice check and the whole rest of the year other kids called us the Cootie Twins. I do have more memories of Cameron, things I know for sure, good and bad. Sometimes it's an endless loop, from start to finish. The memory of my ninth birthday is that way. They're like a song you hate but can't ever get completely out of your head, and this song becomes the background noise of your entire life, snippets of lyrics and lines of music floating up and then receding, a crazy kind of tide that never stops. Other memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn't.

But when it comes to Cameron I always want more than I have, would like to be able to take hold of at least one or two more pieces, if only because I'm convinced there are parts of myself hidden inside them. I understand that you can never have the whole picture inevitably, there's stuff you don't know, can't know.

Once in a while I feel them right in my hand, real as the present, but usually it's more like I'm grasping for vapor. There are only moments, snapshots, pieces of the puzzle. Most specific things about Cameron are fuzzy - the day we met, how we got so close, exact words we said to each other. He's a story I want to know from page one. I want to remember exactly how we became friends in the first place, a definite starting line that I can visit again and again. There are things I want to remember about Cameron Quick that I can't entirely, like the pajamas he wore when he used to sleep over, and his favorite cereal, or how it felt to hold his hand as we walked home from school in third grade.

Sweethearts by Sara Zarr