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Anthony shook his head. “No dice.”

“Crap.” Omar sighed. “I’m stuck with a real weirdo too.” He leaned over and dug into his pocket. “Look how this kid Ricky wrote his phone number down. He was worried that I couldn’t read it, so he wrote it twice, but like, he literally spelled out each number.”

Omar showed them a folded piece of paper. Beneath a string of digits were the same numbers except as entire words.Nine one three…

“What the hell?” Dave said. “He even wrote out the dashes.”

“He’s a freshman,” Omar explained.

The rest of them nodded as if this made sense.

Anthony included. “I’ll see you after school?” he asked as people began migrating toward the trashcans with their trays.

“Yeah,” Omar replied. “I just hope your brother doesn’t make us hide in shame again.”

“He won’t,” Anthony said. “I mean, at leastwe’renot freshmen anymore.”

— — —

“I hate your brother,” Omar murmured as he rolled his neck to work out the kinks. “Did he have to make us duck the entire way home?”

“What’d you say?” Mike grumbled, stopping at the front door and turning around.

“I was just thanking you for the ride!” Omar said cheerfully. As soon as Mike’s back was to them again, he stuck out his middle finger.

Anthony laughed at this. At least the ride home was short. The high school wasn’t far. Just a twenty-minute walk, which they sometimes took, but not when the weather was still so hot. Five minutes of air-conditioned comfort, even when squatting on the floorboard or curled up on the seat, was better than their clothes sticking to their skin. And now that his oldest brother had moved away for college, they no longer had to deal with Mike once inside. Sharing a room with him all the way through junior high hadnotbeen fun. At least they had a house. His parentsweren’t rich, but they’d managed to get their own place when he was still young. Anthony remembered how excited he’d been to have his own yard for the first time. The two-story house looked and felt a little seventies, but he couldn’t imagine his entire family crammed into a small apartment. Especially considering how big his brothers had grown up to be.

“What do you think?” Anthony asked after they grabbed two cans of pop from the refrigerator. “Should we play some Mario Kart?”

“Yeah,” Omar said, following him up to his room. “Hey, can I borrow something to wear? I can’t stand this anymore.”

Anthony turned around in time to see Omar stripping off the polo shirt. He caught a glimpse of the dark hair under his arms, which he’d spotted a few times during summer while swimming together. And when those arms came down again, the chest muscles reappeared. Anthony forced himself to tear his eyes away before Omar noticed. He turned around to prove how uninterested he was and went to the small closet, a poster of Robert Smith seeming to judge him for this behavior before the door it hung on swung open.

“I have a shirt of yours actually,” Anthony said. “Remember when you stayed the night and got pizza all over yourself?”

“Hey, the cheese slid off the crust,” Omar said defensively. “Archie’s always goes heavy on the sauce. That’s why they’re so good.”

“Well my mom washed your shirt, so here you go.” Anthony tossed it to him. He was glad to get the T-shirt out of his closet, especially since it was Mötley Crüe themed. Strange then that he’d waited nearly a month to return it.

“Trade ya,” Omar said, tossing the polo to him. “You can keep that.”

“You looked good in it,” Anthony said, quickly adding, “like you could wear it on a date.”

“Yeah?” Omar asked. “Give it back to me when it’s washed then. I want my mom to panic when I come home without it.”

Anthony laughed and averted his eyes while Omar pulled on the new shirt, his friend exhaling like he already felt better. He wasn’t alone. Just being in this room again, as they so often were, made Anthony feel much more secure. He was surrounded by everything he cared about. The posters and torn-out magazinepages that featured the bands he liked. The pirate flag hanging above his headboard, a gift that Omar had brought back from a family vacation to the Caribbean. The wooden crate-style shelves that held all his cassette tapes. The stereo, Super Nintendo, small hand-me-down TV, and even the bed they sat on, all of these were reassuringly familiar. They did things outside too, of course, but this was where most of their friendship took place. Either here or at his best friend’s house.

“It’s good to be home,” Omar said, expressing the same sentiment. “Hey, before we start playing, I had an idea for another video.”

“Uh oh,” Anthony said with a wry smile. He was expecting them to film another sketch. The most recent had involved him smearing toothpaste all over his cheeks to give himself a fake beard, so he could play an old man who was upset about the world not changing fast enough. It was a nice inversion of the usual stereotype. Omar had even found an excuse for the old man to yell, “Get on my lawn, you dang kids!” so they could join him in a protest.

He watched his best friend set the camcorder on the dresser, next to the TV. His parents had a lot more money than Anthony’s did, and they hadn’t spared any expense when giving him the camcorder for his birthday last year. Omar had raved about it so much that Anthony still remembered the make and model—a Sony Hi 8 HandyCam something-or-other. He watched his friend plug the AV cables into the television, and as so often before, what the lens saw appeared on the screen in black-and-white. Anthony didn’t even squirm anymore, like he used to when faced with a living image of himself. Sure he saw himself in the mirror all the time but being on TV was different somehow.

“I thought we’d record a message,” Omar said as he adjusted how the image was framed. “Like a time capsule. Except it’ll be for us to watch at the end of the year.”

“Great idea!” Anthony said.

“Cool.” Omar plopped down next to him, their legs and shoulders touching so they’d both fit on the screen. His dark eyes sparkled as he looked over at Anthony with a smile. Filming things always made him happy. It could even get him out of a bad mood. “Hey, future Omar,” he said when turning to face the camera.