September 28

I'm trying to cry, but I can't force the tears to come out. We tried making the day the best it could be, and it was one of the best of my life. But I can't help feeling empty. I'm going to miss Charles.

Early in the morning, I snuck out, slipping my bright pink sticky note onto my bed, making sure that Mom and Dad would see it and not panic. Grandma and Grandpa were awake, but they didn't know what I was doing, and even so, they wouldn't be able to stop me. I tip-toed around beds strewn with everyone's sleeping bodies, and grabbed two cans, gently putting them in a backpack. I also made sure to grab the amber bee from the market. After double-checking to make sure that no one else was awake, I slipped on a mask and snuck out of the door.

I had woken up a bit after six, so the skies were still dark. The air, however, was faintly blue, cloaking me in a dark turquoise, as if I was walking underwater, and the stars in the sky were fading away while the giant moon remained strong. I took my time walking to the railroad tracks, listening to the rush of the creek and for a moment, I even thought that I heard the chirping of birds and droning of cicadas. The sky was lightening, and by the time I reached the railroad tracks and saw Charles, it was a pale turquoise and the flecks of starlight had vanished.

"Hey," I said and waved.

He waved back. "I feel like we should have a more iconic greeting since it might be our last in a while."

"I think it might be too late for do-overs," I replied. "How are we going to greet each other again?"

"Wait," he said and disappeared behind the tree line.

"Where are you going?" I called out jokingly, as I walked towards him because I knew that he was going to pull some weird prank on me.

He walked out from behind the trees. "Welcome to the kingdom of Charles. My subject, please state your name, your purpose of visit, and, most importantly, the passphrase for entry."

"You are being super weird," I said, kinda confused by his performance. "And you already know what I'm here for."

"Sir 'You are being super weird,' the passphrase, please," he said. "Or you must kiss the king's foot."

"I'm not doing either," I said.

"You were supposed to play along," he said with a sigh, breaking out of his regal character. "You just made this greeting an iconic fail."

"I feel like you're stalling for something," I said.

"No, I'm not," he said, and I rolled my eyes at him. "Okay, fine, I am. Follow me."

He ran down the rusting rail tracks, and I followed him. After a minute or so over dried weeds and gravel crunching under our boots, we reached a place where the dense tangle of tree branches cleared out, as we stared at the mountains on the east. The sun was peeking out from behind the hills, as roses and lavenders swirled around the shadowed ridges.

"It took me a while to find, but this is the best place around here to see the sunrise," he said. "See the little gap in the mountains where the sun pops out from."

"I thought that you didn't care about stuff like this," I replied. "Remember when you said that you were going to miss the 'most important astronomical event of our lifetime' for SATs."

"Well, I've disowned the old me. He didn't have his priorities straight," he said and sighed. "This is the last time that I'm ever going to see the sunrise here."

"Obviously," I replied. "You'll probably never stand in the same spot again, just a slightly different one next time."

He gave me a sad look that said, "You know what I mean," and then, he turned back to face the sunrise. The tangerines and goldens had blended with the roses, as amber light filtered through the woods around the railways and shadows flickered on the ground around us. It was a majestic dance of light, and when the sun ascended high enough that the colors disappeared and the pale blue returned, I broke my gaze to turn to Charles.

"What do you want to do?"

"We're completing the rest of our bucket list," he said. "Starting with your book. Do you have any ideas or are we going with mine?"

"I kinda do," I said. I was going to tell him about the idea of making a story of our friendship, but I thought it might've come off a bit weird. So much for my vow for honesty.

I, instead, said, "Never mind. It's a bit weird. You go first."

"Okay," he said. "You wanted to create stories to help remember, so what I was thinking is that we should take a jog down our memory lane—"

"Like a montage or collage of us," I said, slightly cutting him off. "That's what I was thinking too."

"Geniuses do think alike," he said with a smile. "We each pick five of our greatest moments of our friendship and go around and visit the places they took place, maybe even leaving something behind. It's not really a written story, more like an oral one."

"I'll need time to think about my first one," I said.

"Think all you want," he said. "Because the walk to the first place is going to take a while."

He started walking but turned back. "Since this might take a while, do you want to say what your last bucket list item is?"

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"I thought we were going to do yours next," I replied. "Wasn't that part of the rules?"

"We will," he said. "Just later. Let's just say that it's a time-sensitive activity."

"Totally," I said sarcastically (and misguidedly) before taking a deep breath to calm my nerves. "My final wish is weird, but I just want for us to be totally honest today, like holding nothing back."

"So I can ask about anything?" he asked. "And you'll give me an honest response."

"Well, I guess," I said. "Though it's meant to not be abused to interrogate each other. So no super invasive questions."

"So no love or deepest secrets questions?" he said. "You're no fun."

"Let's go," I said with a small laugh. "Wait, where are we going?"

"To the place it all started," he said and began walking down the railroad. "Fourth grade in elementary school."

We began walking towards the creek behind our elementary school, the soft trickling of water becoming a more distinct rush of water. That little stream held many memories of afternoons spent searching futilely for crawfish, chasing little water gliders in the muddy eddies, and trying to catch tadpoles in glass jars.

After I left elementary school, I had never actually returned back there, but when I came with Charles, everything looked practically the same, only a bit smaller than I expected. Everything used to feel so big, the tree branches seemingly as high as the sky, but now, I could touch the lowest branches without tiptoeing. Charles and I used the stepping stones in the middle of the brook to cross, though I nearly slipped into the water, a fact that Charles used to tease me all the way until we reached school.

"Did we meet here?" I asked as we stood in the middle of a field. The nets on the soccer posts were torn and the grass was all brown and partly covered in ash.

"Do you not remember?" he asked.

"I honestly don't," I said. "I felt like we didn't know each other, and then suddenly we were friends. It just happened."

"You're going to need a check-up on your memory," he said. "Because I remember this day clearly."

"Well then tell me about it."

"I had heard from another person that you had a shiny Pokémon card," he said. "So I had to see it for myself."

"That's how we met?" I said. "I remember the card you're talking about. I thought that shinies were just shiny cards, not actually different colors for Pokémon."

"And then after that, we started talking about the Pokémon game that we were both playing," he said. "And I said that Infernape would easily beat Empoleon, and we started arguing a bit about that since it was your favorite starter—"

"It's my favorite Pokémon period," I said. "Even now."

"To be fair, it's not a bad choice," Charles said. "And after that you know what happened."

We had spent hours talking with each other about Pokémon, holding fictional battles and trading rare cards with each other. We even sneaked in our Nintendo DS's one day and hid under the tumble of trumpet flowers to help each other advance to the end of the game, even when our school had a strict technology ban. Everything that we have all started with a flimsy card that I had lost a long time ago. It sounds almost too surreal.

"Do you have anything here?" Charles asked. "Any important memories?"

I didn't respond for a couple of moments. It's not that there wasn't anything good, but on the contrary, there were too many good memories here in elementary school. Playing hot-lava monster and four-square, stalking butterflies flitting around the school garden, running after each other in capture-the-flag, catching the ball midair in the annual kickball tournament and winning it. But I decided to go the other way.

I told him to follow me to the monkey bars on the playground. The whole structure, like everything else, looked a bit smaller than how I remembered it. Charles stood and grabbed one of the monkey bars, as I stayed a bit away.

"Remember how I fell from the monkey bars here in fifth grade during a grounders game and broke my arm?"

"Of course," he said. "You were, like, the third person in the school's history to break their arm on the playground."

"You wrote a card for me when I was in the hospital," I said. "The one with the Lucario and Luxray hand drawn on it, with everyone in class's names written on the bottom."

"Did they look good?" he asked. "I've always wanted to ask since I'm bad at drawing."

"Well, if you suck at drawing, then they looked like masterpieces," I said. "They were great, and that's actually what inspired me to start writing with my left hand. I learned how to draw Pokémon before I could write letters."

"I didn't know that," he said after a while.

I guess I wasn't surprised when he said that because I'm not super forthright. That's why I tried being better at that today, so that no feelings were left untold. But even then, I felt like I could've said more about how his card helped lift me from the misery that was swamping me in the hospital, and how writing with my left hand went from something that felt impossible to something I became so good at that I nearly refused to switch back to writing with my right.

"What should we leave behind?" I asked.

"Let's draw Pikachu with the tanbark," he said. "I'll take the head and ears."

"I'll do the tail," I said

We began sketching out an outline of it on the playground, before pushing aside more tanbark to make it more distinctive. While Charles worked on the pointy ears, I traced zig-zags into the ground for its distinctly lightning shaped tail. For the eyes and the red cheek dots, we didn't have anything appropriately colored, so we took off our shoes, using my black ones for eyes and his brownish boots for the cheeks.

"It looks a bit demented," I said.

"Yeah, I think my drawings were better."

"For once, I actually agree," I said and put on my shoes. "You want to stay here? For a little while longer maybe."

"Yeah," he said. "Let's swing by the, well, swings."

I groaned while he chuckled and grinned mischievously, running towards the rusting swings as I followed behind. We sat next to each other, swaying back and forth in silence, until Charles pointed up at the sky, at the giant, fading moon in the sky.

"You know that I used to want to be an astronaut when I was younger. I used to stare at the moon during recess, whenever it shined during the morning."

"I thought you were into computer science and stuff."

"I mean, later, yeah," he said. "But whenever I would swing over here, I'd always reach out to try and touch the moon. That was before I learned that it was 240 thousand miles away, and that I'd suffocate and freeze to death in the emptiness of space and moved on hard. But it was good to dream freely."

"Then let's try 'going to the moon'," I said. "For old times' sake. I'll push you."

So I stood behind him and helped push him on the swing. After a couple of pushes, I was already tired, and I put on my mask as dust got kicked into the air. Charles moved higher and higher, as he shouted, "Screw you, Moon. Just because I don't have an asteroid doesn't mean that I won't try moving you away."

Instead of attempting to touch the moon, like he described in his childhood memories, I saw that he was curling his arm back. Before I could stop him, he attempted to punch the moon, but he knocked himself out of balance and tumbled off the swing.

I grabbed the swaying seat and ran towards him. "Are you alright?"

He was laughing, and I couldn't help but crack a smile even as I said, "Don't do that again. You nearly got hurt."

"I might have a little bruise," he said and grabbed by hand. "I'm perfectly fine. You don't need to worry so much. And I think the moon moved back a little."

"I just want to make sure that you and your family have a safe journey," I said, but he ignored me.

"C'mon. Let's get out of here," he said. "My second one is just down the road."

We left our childhood haven, walking around desolate halls, and opened the chain-link fence before leaving it all behind. It was the end of this era.