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I MET MY three best friends on my first day of sixth grade at Caldwell Crossing Middle School.

I’d only been in town for a week, and I didn’t know anybody yet, and I was terrified to be going to school on my own—my sister, Rebecca, who had always looked out for me, was starting junior high.

I jangled with so many nerves when I climbed onto the school bus that morning it was a wonder my bones weren’t singing like wind chimes.

“You can’t sit here,” a boy with dark hair said as I approached his row, and my body tensed in the familiar way it did whenever the bullying started.

Then he continued, “Conor gets on at the next stop, and he broke his leg over the summer, so he needs to be close to the front.” He pointed to the seat behind his.

“Sit here, next to Haider. He’s got cookies! ”

A boy with wild, curly hair shifted along to the window seat, leaving room for me. I sat, and he grinned and shoved a Tupperware container of cookies under my nose. “Hi, I’m Haider. Cookie?”

“Um, thanks. I’m Ryan.”

“And I’m Sam,” the first boy said, waving at me over the back of his seat. Then, at the next stop, he yelled out to the boy climbing on board with the crutches, “Conor! This is Ryan! Let him sign your cast!”

Instead of writing anything on Conor’s cast, I drew a little green alien in Sharpie.

I’d been drawing a lot of aliens over the summer.

Somehow I’d gotten it into my head that I wouldn’t have to go and live in New Hampshire if aliens abducted me instead.

I’d spent a lot of time lying in our backyard in Florida, staring up into the night sky, certain that if I just concentrated hard enough, a spaceship would pick up the distress signals my brain was sending out, and they’d come and whisk me away to an entirely new galaxy full of amazing adventures.

Not this one, where I didn’t have any friends, and I was dumb, and we had to leave our house because my parents were getting a divorce, and Dad was having a new son with a woman from his office.

Mom had spent the summer in a frenzy of activity sorting out the move, stopping only to go on crying jags that could last hours at a time, Rebecca had spent it in a simmering rage that threatened to boil over at any second, and I’d spent every night in the backyard, gazing at the stars and wishing I could leave the entire planet behind.

“That’s so cool,” Conor said, his face lighting up when I drew the alien on his cast. “Wow!”

“Wow!” Sam and Haider echoed, and I tried my hardest not to smile too widely, to show how desperate I was for friends, because that was the sort of weakness bullies would only exploit in the end.

And I didn’t want to believe these boys were bullies—they sure weren’t acting like it—but I’d fallen for that before, hadn’t I?

However friendly these guys were right now, the one thing I knew for sure was that it wouldn’t last.

But somehow, it had.

Somehow, twenty years later, we were still all best friends.

“Ryan?” A rap on my workshop door pulled my attention away from the coffee table I was working on, and I turned to find Haider leaning in the doorway.

His curls were as wild as ever, and he was wearing the sort of smile that made me think he’d probably repeated himself more than once before it had actually registered.

“Shit. What time is it?”

“Six,” he said. “And nachos are calling my name.”

Haider and I had a long-standing Wednesday evening date at the local sports bar in Caldwell Crossing, where I bought him dinner and a couple of beers, and he went over my books to make sure I hadn’t screwed anything up. I got the better end of the deal, for sure.

“This looks great,” he said, nodding at the coffee table. “I like the curvy legs.”

“They’re cabriole legs. Mrs. Vickers loves Queen Anne-style furniture. And the cherrywood’s just beautiful to work with.”

“It’s amazing.”

I’d been lucky to fall into woodworking, and I had my shop teacher at high school to thank for it.

After my diagnosis of dyslexia at twelve, with bonus dyscalculia thrown in, I’d figured anything involving reading instructions or using measurements was out, but Mr. Carver—the best name for a woodworker—had told me I had an eye for the work and introduced me to story sticks instead of tape measures.

I couldn’t escape measurements entirely when it came to taking custom requests online or ordering timber, but my sister Rebecca helped me double-check anything that needed measuring, and Haider helped me with my accounts despite being incredibly busy with his own business, Harmony Chocolates.

It didn’t take me long to clean up, and then Haider and I were on our way to Caldwell Crossing. There wasn’t much traffic. Then again, outside of tourist season when the leaves were changing, there never was. The drive into town was short since I only lived a few miles out, by Harmony Lake.

Haider pulled his truck into the parking lot of the sports bar, and within a few minutes we were being shown to our usual booth at the rear of the place.

It was your typical sports bar: jerseys and posters lined the walls, a couple of big screens showed whatever game was on, and the place did a brisk trade in burgers, bar snacks, and domestic beer.

“How’s your mom?” Haider asked.

“She’s good,” I said. “She says she’ll be fighting fit again in time for her cruise.”

After coming back here post-divorce, Mom had stuck it out fifteen years before moving to New Mexico to escape the New Hampshire winters.

Kind of ironic, when I’d been the one who’d angrily sworn I’d run away from Caldwell Crossing as soon as her back was turned, and she’d been the one promising me it was the best place in the world.

We’d both changed our tune, that was for sure, though I was certain most of what she’d told me had been, well, not a lie exactly, but a sort of desperate plea for me to believe her and not make the move any harder than it already was.

I’d hated Caldwell Crossing with every burning fiber of my being for exactly a week, right up until I climbed onto the bus that first day of school.

“She said it’s Rebecca’s fault for telling her to get a hobby,” I said as Haider read the menu. “But Rebecca was thinking salsa dancing or something, not indoor rock climbing. She’s sixty-three. It’s lucky she only sprained an ankle.”

“Who knew your mom was such a daredevil?” Haider said with a laugh.

I snorted and rolled my eyes.

The server came over to get our orders. Haider took a moment to make up his mind before settling on the nachos after all, and I ordered my usual: a chicken sandwich with a side of potato skins and a beer.

“I haven’t seen Rebecca around for a while.”

“She’s been running around like crazy getting the house ready,” I said.

Rebecca had recently bought a cute little house on the edge of town and called it Maple Cottage.

She’d spent the last few months renovating it, and it was absolutely gorgeous now—not saying that was entirely down to the maple wood cabinets I’d built for the kitchen, but they did look fantastic—and she was renting it out to short-term stays.

Meanwhile, she was living in an apartment downtown with Chris, her boyfriend, and the three-legged dog they jokingly (I hoped) referred to as my nephew.

We talked for a while about our families and friends, catching each other up since the last few days since we’d spoken.

The evening wasn’t anything too exciting, which was exactly how I liked my life.

My friendship with Haider was warm and easy and familiar, just the same as it was with Sam and Conor, the other two friends I called my brothers.

The server brought our beers to the booth, and the food came out soon after.

Haider cleaned up his nachos quickly enough that I wondered if he’d eaten lunch today; out of the two of us, it was usually me with the terrible time-management skills who forgot to eat.

But Haider was carrying a lot of stress lately from his job.

Harmony Chocolates, a Caldwell Crossing institution, wasn’t doing so great lately.

It was obvious things were pretty serious.

Haider hadn’t told me much more than that, but his mouth pinched tightly when he brought it up, and he had bags under his eyes from not sleeping.

I swallowed down my guilt as Haider wiped his fingers on his napkin and held out his hand for my diary, which I kept in a leather book sleeve I also shoved all my emails and quotes and invoices into.

Haider set it on the table and unfastened the knot that kept it closed, shooting me a wry look at the mess of folded papers that had accumulated there over the last week.

Ever since Haider had told us his business was struggling, I’d felt bad for getting him to go over the figures for mine.

Despite the economy, I was doing okay. Maybe not by anyone else’s standards except my own, but I was making enough that I wasn’t worried about paying off the mortgage on my little lakeside cabin, and I got enough orders that I could pick and choose my customers.

About half of them were locals I’d known for years and who thought I was still the high school kid they were doing a favor by asking me to put together some shelves, and the other half were online orders from people who didn’t even blink at the cost to ship a finished piece across the country to them.

Haider flicked through this week’s invoices and fixed me with a stare. “Did you really charge Mrs. Ormond ten dollars to fix her birdhouse?”

“Had to argue her down too. She doesn’t like accepting charity.”

“Ryan.” His expression was both exacerbated and fond. “You’re a craftsman , not a handyman.”

“So now she has the fanciest birdhouse in the neighborhood,” I said and ate the last of my potato skins.