We used to have a code: I’d ask him “Hey Tom, you want to van­dal­ize the grave­yard tonight?”, this obscure line from an episode of Married…with Children.

If he responded with, “No, Jeff, that would be wrong” (the next line from the episode), that meant he’d agree to throw rocks into a lit­tle stream under an over­pass dur­ing our grade 7 lunch break. When we were fin­ished eat­ing in the cafe­te­ria, we’d walk to the stream with the remains of the hour, dressed in bur­gundy tie and pine blazer, heav­ing any appro­pri­ately sized rocks into the water. It was our goal to block the flow of the stream one day.

It was a fruit­less goal, of course, so much like every­thing we did back then, when noth­ing we did ever seemed to mat­ter. A goal we’d never hope to accomplish.

A way of say­ing, “I hope these days never end. I hope I never grow up, and I’m never too old to throw rocks with a good friend.”

Sometimes we’d throw what was left of our lunches into the stream, and be rewarded with the glimpse of a soli­tary fish break­ing the sur­face of the water and snatch­ing a morsel.

By the time we returned to class, the sheen on my brogues would be replaced by a fine layer of dust from walk­ing around in the gravel. I’d wear that dust proudly, because no one ever knew how it got there, a secret code between him and me.

Sometimes I check up on Tommy. Not that he knows. I won­der if we could be friends again. We lead two dif­fer­ent lives, but that’s never stopped me from being friends with some­one. Part of me is scared that he’s never changed, never grown out from the ele­men­tary school Tom I used to know — some­thing all too com­mon in my expe­ri­ence — and I’d just rather not know. It’s enough for me not to con­tact him.

But I still root for him, not because we used to be such good friends, but because I know that if he can make it, so can I.