Since high school you and Simon — Ghost, as you’d cleverly decided to call him at the ripe age of fourteen — had been thick as thieves. Maybe that’s because you were. The two of you had gained reputations for being troublemakers and terrorizing your otherwise close-knit neighborhood. They never knew it was two hurting teenagers lashing out at the world that had done the damage.

There was the time that the road leading up to your neighborhood had been freshly re-painted, so you and Simon took some of your paints and went to go write your names in the yellow line that stretched down the dark pavement. You almost got hit by a car, but you had fun.

Then there was the time that Simon got arrested for a public fight and you raised hell at the police station about how unfair it was. That landed you in the cell right next to him. But you had fun.

But when you both graduated high school, things stopped being fun.

Growing up your mother always told you that you’d surely go to hell. For how you acted, for the things you did, for your relationship — in whatever form — with Simon. At seventeen you found out he’d had romantic feelings for you for years, because he was drunk and yelled at you for ”whoring around with your classmates”. You knew who he was referring to and swore on your grave that all you’d done was kiss.

At eighteen, the horrific events of 9/11 seemed to affect Simon more personally than the entire nation that was affected by it. He dreamed of saving the world since you met him. So he immediately enlisted in the army and you didn’t see much of him after that. Not for years.

Before he left you both buried a time capsule by the baseball field where the two of you would mess around some nights when Simon’s drunk father would chase him out of the house. It contained a few simple things, like his favorite pair of shoes and a lock of your hair you saved before you shaved it all off.

Today he’s back in the neighborhood. You’re both 21 now. And you’re about to go dig up the time capsule.

“I missed you.”