Quiet and imaginative, Derek O'Reilly spends a lot of time watching a movie in his head. His fiancé Nathan wonders why Derek hasn't taken any interest in their wedding planning, and Aunt Fran -- his spiritual guru -- would like to know when her guilt-tripping nephew became a kept boy. When she drops Derek's childhood journal on his lap, he's forced to remember the name he's been trying to forget since he was twelve years old. Nicolai Lund. Nick was Derek's neighbor ... and first love. Weeks before Derek's engagement party, a chance meeting with Nick catapults Derek into the past. But Nick isn't that seventeen-year-old rebel anymore. He's a man hardened by invisible scars. A man struggling with grief. As Derek reads through his childhood diary, he realizes what Nick was to him, still is today, and yet might be ... NOTE: This edition has been expanded and substantially edited.

Split

But then this summer, this new boy called Corbin was visiting someone on our street and somehow, David and Nick started fighting all the time. So I heard.


After that boy left, they didn’t make up. Now David goes to Loyola. It’s an all boys’ Catholic school. Nick goes to Monseigneur Richard. It’s a French public school. It’s brown and looks like a jail.


Anyway, all this to say that yesterday was the first time Nick and David spoke in weeks. I think they might be friends again. Even though Nick had to give back the car because of what he did to David’s house.


Yesterday morning, in gym class, we’d been playing for ten minutes when Boone’s turn to serve came up. Him and Sebastian had both been named captain of their teams. Sebastian’s team was winning, on account of them cheating twice. Coach Angelos hadn’t caught Sebastian’s double hits (he never does for some reason), so we hadn’t gotten the points for them.


Chapter 14