“What are you two doing,” Bobby’s mother said when she opened the car door.

We were both quiet as we pulled out shorts back up and were made to sit on opposite ends of the bench seat for the long and quiet ride home. I looked over at Bobby, at his steady stare out of the window, like a statue he never moved. I wanted to reach over and touch him and make sure we were still friends, but I could see his mother’s eyes in the rear view mirror as they quickly darted from the road to the mirror, checking to make sure we hadn’t moved.

My insides felt crushed and thrown out for the garbage when my mother found out and yelled at me and made me stay in my room until I had an answer for why I had pulled my pants down. It was a question I didn’t have an answer for, there wasn’t any reason, except I wanted to, just like Bobby did.

All the plans I made in my mind about Bobby and I, they never happened. I don’t know why, things were just different. We never went in the bushes again and were never in each other’s bedroom by ourselves. We never even talked about what happened in the fifty-six Plymouth; it was like it never happened. And in nineteen sixty-four, right before my thirteenth birthday, we moved and I never saw Bobby again, but I still remember what we did and how it made me feel