He did not share our sweet and sensitive natures. The first time we ever worked as a team, without bickering excessively, was when we built the Nature Hut. It was right in my front yard, but it became our own little kingdom. Naturally, his older brother was the king and he would order his lowly, obedient servants out of the hut to pick his blueberries. Things were never the same again as they were my eighth summer.
City kids grow up faster, and they have to in order to survive.
We tried to remain friends but he had become more introverted, perhaps, in order to survive in the concrete wasteland. I never stopped believing in that eight year old in spite of what had changed him. Years later, in high school I wrote a poem for an American Literature assignment about him and his older brother and that memorable summer. I was tormented with feelings of guilt and loss. These questions followed and nagged me well into adulthood.