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He closed his eyes. The snippets of Mitchell’s voice he could hear carried him through memories of warm summer days, curled up in secluded corners of Glenbridge with Bren.

“What does an Irish jock want with Joni Mitchell?” he asked, his voice a whisper.

“She reminds me of you,” Bren said, matching his quiet tone.

They listened to another verse before Bren spoke again.

“I wish I was still there with you.”

A.J. let his head weigh heavier on the pillow as he breathed out something from deep in his chest. It wasn’t any fun being reminded that Bren wasn’t a few blocks away now, but at least he’d stopped beating himself up over it. Mostly.

“Me too.” He rolled over to look at the picture on his nightstand. The two of them in their country-swapped jock costumes had been replaced by a photo of them walking shoulder to shoulder along the river path in Wakamow. Yu’s penchant for documenting every moment of their lives came in handy every now and then. A.J. figured he was the only person keeping Foto Source open.

“School’s going OK?” he asked no, one distant song fading into the next.

Bren made a sound, something between a groan and a scoff.

“Sixth year’s everythin’ I’d ever hoped for.” The mocking tone of glee didn’t last.

A.J. could practically smell the cloud of anxiety from the sixth-year classes all the way from Saskatchewan. He’d come to accept that the Irish took pride in their misery, but he still didn’t think that was a good reason to pile it on every seventeen-year-old born there.

“Hey, uh—” His left hand curled into a fist before he realized it and he forced himself to focus on the sounds of Joni Mitchell’s Help Me coming from behind Bren. “Cian isn’t giving you a hard time, is he?”

Bren was quiet for longer than usual. Maybe A.J. needed some music on his end too.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

A.J. set his speakers to low as Coat of Many Colors began.

“Yeah, but,” he squinted his eyes as he tried to remember the exact words Mr. Laurier had used during their last session, “I don’t want to, like, feel like I can’t talk about him, you know?” He didn’t give Bren a chance to respond now, the words unable to sit still behind his lips. “Like, if I think, ‘Oh I can’t talk about Cian because it’ll get me all upset,’ it just gives him more power. Talking about him gives some of it back to me.”

“Like openin’ the closet to prove there’s no Boogieman?” Bren asked, to A.J.’s surprise.

“Exactly. Wait, was little Bren afraid of the dark?”

Bren’s grunt was something A.J. knew he’d call manly, but it came out closer to a huff that tacked a squeak on behind it.

“You’d be scared too if your Nan popped out of your closet with a Freddie Krueger mask and a machete.”

“Those two don’t even go together,” A.J. said, and when Bren didn’t react, he chuckled. “Did your mom cuss her out at least?”

Bren sighed.

“Who do you think let her in the house?” Even though A.J. couldn’t see him, he knew Bren was smiling when he spoke again. “She didn’t think it was funny when I woke her up every night for a week.”

“Poor wee Bren,” A.J. said.

“Hey, I was, like, eight.”

“Yeah,” A.J. said, remembering the month of nervous sleeps he’d had after he’d seen Night of the Living Dummy for the first time. Goosebumps was usually a good time, but Slappy was just plain unsettling. “I’d have needed therapy for sure.”

“Pretty sure I could still use some.”

“Did you ever try the stream thing?” A.J. closed his eyes to stand on the bank of his consciousness. A secluded forest filled with swaying trees and bits of dappled sunlight playing across the undergrowth—the crystalline stream of thought that wound its way through the expanse of green.

Cheesy as it was, the scene had clicked in a way that felt right the first time he’d tried it. And visualizing it had become second nature whenever he had the presence of mind to slow down his thoughts and stop by for a visit.

He thought of Nat and Yu, of Bren, of music that stirred his soul. He could scoop those memories from the stream and peer into them to his heart’s content, even step inside and live in the moment if he wanted.